Try Growing Versatile African Violets

Hi Again

One of the most popular plants in the world is the African Violet. World wide, this little plant has a huge fan club, and for a lot of reasons.

African Violets flower all year, and your collection of plants can be increased easily and inexpensively by leaf cuttings.

Years ago the plant was best known for it's blue flowers and green leaves, but today African Violet has many flower and leaf groups. Some of the amazing range of flower colors include: white, pale blue, medium blue, dark blue, purple, red, pink, orchid pink, lavender blue, apricot, bicolor, and multicolor. The flower forms can be singles, doubles, semi doubles, fringed singles, fringed doubles, crested doubles, bicolor doubles, and many more. Leafs are divided into groups including the plain leaf, the girl leaf, oak leaf, quilted leaf, serrated leaf, fluted leaf, variegated leaf, black leaf, and the list goes on. Each of these different groups are in turn divided into thousands of cultivars.

African Violets are versatile plants that will grow equally as well in natural or artificial light, allowing you to grow them anywhere, from a basement to high rise unit, caravan or office, I even grow them in the bathroom.
Easily propagated from leaf, seed, or cuttings, and given just a little tender loving care these beautiful plants will reward you by brightening your home with a colorful display of flowers all year round.

Until next Time Happy Gardening

Margarete
www.antspantsgardening.com

Did Your New Plant Really Cost That Much ?

Hi Again

I had an interesting conversation recently with an old friend that I hadn't seen for several years. For many years he had been the manager of a large retail nursery, but after making the decision to live in New Zealand, now travels looking for plant varieties to hybridize, and dream up a catchy name and design labels for. The money he claims, is in the labels.

I have to admit that as a wholesale nursery owner it's interesting to see how quickly the plants with large colorful labels sell. The bigger the label the more popular the plant. Of course most of the time it doesn't matter to the buyer that the new, big, bright, colorful labels can add substantially to the cost of the plant. The retail nurseries like the labels because the bigger and brighter the label, the more noticeable their displays are.

For growers like me there are disadvantages of course. Many of the 'new' named plants can only be grown commercially by purchasing a special license, usually very expensive, and again, adding to the cost of the end product. Then of course there is the pretty colored pots they MUST be sold in, the fancy colored sticks to hold the big bright labels, as well as the wages for staff to transfer the plants to their pretty pots and add those already costly labels before transporting to the nurseries.
In the middle of all this packaging is the now expensive little plant.

I think my friend is right, the money IS in the labels.


Until Next Time Happy Gardening

Margarete
www.antspantsgardening.com