Excerpt From The Course
You will always improve your success in cutting propagation, if you use the right equipment and materials for the job.
STOCK PLANTS
Stock plants are those plants from which you take your cuttings or other vegetative material (e.g. bulbs, layers, divisions). Stock plants are frequently the most under-rated aspect of vegetative production.
Note: ‘Your Cuttings Are Only Ever As Good As The Plants They Come From!’
If your stock plants are in poor condition:
- Your cuttings may have a lower rate of success.
- Your cuttings may be slower to form roots.
- You may transmit pest or disease problems from your stock plants to other plants in your propagation bed or greenhouse.
- Your cuttings may not develop as strong a growth as they might otherwise.
Selecting Stock Plants
Only use:
- Plants free of disease and pests.
- Plants which are true to type. The stock plants need to be correctly identified and clearly labelled.
- Plants which have been grown under preferred conditions.
- Plants which have been growing well.
- Plants which have been adequately fed, and are free from signs of any nutrient deficiency or leaf burn.
Selection of a ‘true-to-type’ cultivar is something which may require the expert knowledge of a botanist, a taxonomist or a horticulturist. Clonal selection, practised in some countries, involves careful selection of one plant of optimum quality and type. All stock plants are then propagated from this one parent plant.
CRITERIA FOR SELECTING PLANTS
When deciding what plants to grow or stock in a nursery, you should take into consideration the following criteria:
Ease of Propagation
Is it very easy, of average ease or difficult?
Very easy to propagate plants may bring a lower wholesale price, and their supply in the marketplace might be greater. Difficult plants may be more costly to produce, and more risky to get a profit from unless you have better than average skills.
Availability of Stock
Can it always be purchased in the form you want it (i.e. is seed or tube stock of the plant available for purchase). If the propagation material is to be imported you will need to consider quarantine restrictions.
Time to Grow It
Some plants can be ready to sell within months, others take many years. Plants that can be produced and sold quickly will generate income quickly.
Suitability to Your Facilities
Do you have the right buildings, propagation equipment and other facilities to grow the particular plants under consideration?
Do you have the money and the space to provide those facilities?
Suitability of Climate
What plants are most suitable to grow in your climate?
It is always more efficient to work with the environment rather than trying to modify environments.
Distance from Potential Markets
Transport is costly, and can be risky.
Your Staff’s Skills
Don’t try to do what you are not skilled to do.
Someone with more or specialist skills will probably do it better and cheaper.
Stock Plants Must Be Labelled CorrectlyAlways cross-check the spelling with a reputable publication – such as the Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary or Hortus.
Planting Out Stock Plants
Stock plants should be planted and maintained in the very best conditions. Aspect, light conditions, soil type, etc. should be considered carefully. Avoid areas that have been used in recent times for any form of crop production, particularly if crops grown in the area are in any way related to the stock plants you wish to grow, or the pests and diseases that are common to the crops that were grown are likely to be problems also for your stock plants.
Any stock plant area should be cleaned thoroughly before planting. Remove all weeds and rubbish from the area.
Stock plants should be kept apart from the main production area of a nursery, so that disease or pest problems in the nursery can be stopped before they infect the stock area.
Treatment throughout the Year
Pruning may be necessary to control the type of growth as well as the size and shape of the plant. Pruning a few months prior to taking cuttings can stimulate more growth of the type which is best suited for cuttings.
Feeding should be adequate, but be careful ‑ too much nitrogen can stimulate too much soft growth.
Irrigation is important, particularly during the main growing season.
Some types of plants (e.g. those grown from hardwood cuttings) may require very hard annual pruning to encourage suitable cutting material to develop for the next season.
Susan Stephenson