Sales Possibilities For Plants

Unrooted Leaves
Leaves of the newest varieties often sell for as much as $1.00 to $1.50; older varieties bring about 15 to 35 cents each. There is a minimum of work connected with selling un rooted leaves. All you have to do is snip them from the plant, place them with a label in a plastic bag, seal the bag, and you're ready to ring the cash register.

Sales of un rooted leaves from just one or two plants of newer varieties may bring you enough cash to pay for greenhouse necessities—fertilizer, insecticides, etc.

Rooted Leaves
Given good conditions, African violet leaves root in a month to 6 weeks and they sell for about a third more than un-rooted kinds. Growers who sell rooted leaves can remove them and sell them direct from flats. If you want to pot them in small thumb pots you can add another 15 cents to the price.

Small Potted Plants
If you aim to sell potted plants, put them into thumb pots as soon as the plantlets are about an inch high. Should several small plants appear at the base you can separate them for this first potting or let them grow until shifted to a 2-inch pot. Weekly feedings of M strength fertilizer will hasten growth.

Selling Small Plants
You may be able to dispose of small named plants—even when not in bloom—at plant counters. Or you may have a friend in some type of retail business who might want to handle a few plants on a commission basis. Small dress shops, variety stores, dry cleaning shops—all are possibilities.
Then too, you might offer your violets in dozen or more lots to other greenhouse growers. Many of the larger greenhouses do not grow their own African violets and are delighted to purchase well-grown stock at a price low enough to give them a fair mark-up.

Small plants are easily shipped in paper pots or by removing them from their original pot and wrapping the root ball in foil. The plant is then placed in a cellophane or plastic bag and wrapped lightly with newspaper. Thus packaged, it will reach its destination in a safe and sound condition, barring long exposure to severe cold weather, of course.

How to Scoop the Market
Most African violet hobbyists have every available inch of window space and under-fluorescent-light space crammed with plants. These are the collectors who prefer buying small started plants or leaf cuttings and growing them to specimen plants.

A good way to get a scoop on the newest in African violets is to attend the national conventions..
At these conventions, which are held in a different city each year, you will find commercial dealers set up and ready to give you all kinds of information as well as sell you the newest varieties. Usually they have plants in 2- or 3-inch pots and most of them take orders for varieties in short supply. However, you can bring home from a convention some of the very newest kinds. Assuming that you cater to the collectors in your area, you will find it advantageous to insert an ad in your local paper informing your customers that you are off on a buying trip to obtain for them the most exciting new African violets.

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