Butterfly Garden vs: Nursery Garden

Since my nursery garden has occupied a great deal of my time this summer, I still haven’t given up on the butterfly aspect of my garden. I still have a devoted area set aside for the butterflies. Although I did discontinue raising the milkweed plants I still have other plants that are also beneficial to the butterflies. At there is a general improvement in the appearance of my garden. By getting rid of the milkweed plants, I have successfully gotten rid of the Mexican beetle that was devouring the plants before the butterfly larvae could benefit from them.

Since my hobby of a plant nursery is somewhat stabilized, I have a little more room for more plants, but that will develop now over a slower pace. My next step is to begin working with cell culture in developing new plants. I’m not sure yet if I will start it this late in the season or not. I may wait until next spring when the weather will be more acceptable for developing this hobby.

I have some lantana plants in my butterfly area and they are somewhat of a problem. I planned on using them for base stock for cuttings, but they are a very intrusive plant with vines going all over. I haven’t quite made up my mind what I’m going to do about them. They are beautiful, but a problem. In Texas we treated them as weeds.

Brad Vigansky

Skype: bradley:vigansky
Phone: 941-343-3184
Tomorrows Home Business
Contact Us

Visit My Frugal Living Site

Croton Cuttings

When I moved to Florida 20 years ago I had never heard of a croton plant. My neighbor had one and I just thought ho hum and never got interested in them. It wasn’t until my daughter started a landscaping business that I began toying around with the idea of beginning a hobby of raising some plants. Together we have observed and learned what people are using in their landscapes and I began to experiment with several plants. It is then that I began to get interested in the croton. Although it is not native to Southwest Florida I decided to go with it because it is not invasive and does very well in this climate and is quite hardy to the weather extremes.

I began to visit my neighbors with my garden clippers and over this past summer have gathered about 100 cuttings from various species of the croton plants that are doing well in this neighborhood. I have about 80 growing croton plants in my inventory and have some more coming on from some fresh cuttings.

I have experimented enough with cuttings from the croton plant that I have a very specific procedure in producing the rooted plants. I will go into more detail later on the specifics but will mention that the first few I trimmed the excess leaves so that they wouldn‘t take up much room in my plant rooting box. Then I did a batch of cuttings where I only removed the lower leaves and left all the top leaves whole. They take up more room but the results were startlingly different. The untrimmed ones are doing much better and are exceeding the growth of the trimmed ones. However it is a little more work for the first month because of the cuttings having no roots you must mist the leaves so that they will survive the heat and absorb moisture and survive and grow roots. Here in Florida we have an advantage over the snowbirds in the north because we have a much longer growing season and with care can get double the growth over the north’s shorter growing season.

Brad Vigansky

Skype: bradley:vigansky
Phone: 941-343-3184
Tomorrows Home Business
Contact Us

Visit My Frugal Living Site

More Information About My Garden

I lived in Michigan for the first 50 years of my life and have always been exposed to gardens, my own and others. The biggest problem that I had in Michigan was taking care of all the excess produce that was produced in my little back yard garden. Most of the plants were very productive in the fall of the year, September, October and November. My garden saved me a lot of money on my grocery bill.

Gardening here in Florida, for me is another story. Because of year around warm weather the bugs here are a terrible problem. I have gone from the butterfly garden to a nursery garden, a small scale process of producing several new plants for my daughters use in her landscaping business. Right now I am using the cutting method of producing the plants required and it is working pretty well. As a hobby I would like to branch into experimenting with in-vitro cell reproduction from parent stock. Just in the thinking stage at this time, however the expensive labs for in-vitro cell reproduction has moved into the kitchen and is becoming available to people that are interested in experimenting and developing their abilities in plant production and reproduction. If you are interested in this and would like more information click here on this link.

After I get set up and have experimented with their recommended plant The African Violet, I want to continue with the Plumeria Frangipani which is the Hawaiian flowers that they use to make their Leigh’s. After being successful with the Plumeria I want to experiment with the croton plant. From there who knows. With my failing eyesight I don’t know if I will be able to do what it takes to get cultures to grow.

As it is right now I have variety of about 30+ different plants that I’m working with and experimenting just to see what I can do with them. I have a total of about 450 plants all at various stages of development. I am working with primarily native plants of this area that will do well in this harsh climate. Yes I said harsh, at different times of the year is is arid, cold, hot, rainy and to the extreme. It’s a very challenging hobby but very interestin.

Brad Vigansky

Skype: bradley:vigansky
Phone: 941-343-3184
Tomorrows Home Business
Contact Us

Visit My Frugal Living Site

My Nursery Garden

For three years I tried to have a butterfly garden and loved it except for the Mexican beetle that attacked the milk weed plants that I was raising for the butterflies. Things change so has my gardening. My youngest daughter Rosemarie has a landscaping business and I am raising some of the plants that she will be using. It’s kind of like a family enterprise which is by the way a home based business.

I am still encouraging the butterflies and I think I can be successful in combining the efforts of a small nursery operation and still have a butterfly garden. I’m working at it. I am primarily interested in raising the Plumeria Frangipani. I have about a dozen of them started; they are the flowers that they use to make the Hawaiian Leigh’s. I also am very interested in the Croton, a plant primarily raised in the tropics. I have about 80 crotons started and doing well.

At this time my inventory of plants is quite small but I have a few of several varieties. Some I am experimenting with to learn how to take care of them. I will be working with the kind of plants that require little attention and can do well in this very hot climate. The climate alternates between being excessively wet to excessively dry. This year it has been near normal. When it rains the weeds and grass really grow fast. During the dry seasons and it has been excessively dry for about 3 years. I work with plants that tolerate the extreme climate and will do well when transferred locally to another garden or field.

Since this is a home based business, that’s what I’m about. If you would like to know more about it go to the links at the bottom of this article.

Brad Vigansky
Skype: bradley:vigansky
Phone: 941-343-3184
http://www.TomorrowsHomeBusiness.com
http://www.contactus.tomorrowshomebusiness.com