Rooting your own cuttings or buying bare root plants

Should you start your backyard plant nursery by rooting your own cuttings or with purchased bare root plants or liners? Almost any plant you might grow and sell can be purchased as a seedling, transplant, liner or bare root plant. You can also grow plants from your own cuttings. Cuttings of course are free if taken in your own backyard or even from friend’s yards! Purchased bare root plants (Also called liners as they are meant to be “Lined Out” in a growing field) are an easy way to start growing hundreds or thousands of plant.

Bare root plants do cost money with 1-4 year old baby plants costing just $0.75 to $2.50 each. Wholesalers will typically sell these to you in quantities of 25-50-100 and up. Prices do go down when buying more and the best prices seem to be available when buying 3-500 of all the same plants. Which is best for you when Starting a Backyard Plant Nursery?

 

The advantages of rooting your own cuttings

Cuttings that you root yourself have the advantage of being basically free. You could own a few “Mother” plants in your yard and take dozens or hundreds of cuttings from these plants each year. A row of 6 foot tall arborvitaes of 6 to 8 trees will yield you a couple hundred nice cuttings per year. You can take cuttings every year as the plant continues to grow each year. As your business expands just start keeping a few of your propagated plants to increase your cutting plant stock. This can be a perpetual plan to keep your nursery going forever!

Your own rooted cuttings can keep you well stocked.

You likely already have many plants you can use in your backyard plant nursery. You can also offer to trim your friends plants for free and use the cuttings. When we started we had some very mature Azaleas, Rhododendron, Lilac, Andromeda, Dogwood as well as some smaller spruce, viburnum, and pine shrubs. Some of these are super easy to propagate and can yield you hundreds of cuttings. We take summer softwood cuttings and winter hardwood cuttings so we are always trying to root more plants and increase our inventory.

Rooting cuttings from clearance sale plants help you diversify

As mentioned in our article about Building your plant business from clearance sales you can buy new to you plants for 40 to 50% off from stores like The Home Depot. These plants will yield you some softwood and hardwood cutting material each year. Just don’t buy any patented plants. You can plant these clearance plants in your yard and take cuttings for years. You can also just go about potting up plants that you purchase in a larger pot, grow them out and sell them for 4 times what you paid for them. Do, first take some cuttings to root and get your plant stock started.

We have a few hundred Emerald Green Arborvitaes growing now that came from a 50% off big box store sale. About 20 $15.00 plants purchased for $7.50 each have become 200 small arborvitaes. Not to mention we grew out the original 20 plants for a year, up potted them in a larger container and sold them for $25.00 each. You can do the same.

The downside of rooting your own cuttings.

Rooted cuttings do take a long time to become plants that you can sell. Often the cuttings don’t even root and you get nothing. Our overall average is about a 50 to 80% success rate on woody plants. Though the cutting is basically free once you add a pot, soil, fertilizer and water plus 1-4 years time it’s slow going to get to a profit. However if you have the space, by year 2, 3 and 4 you will have a steady stream of plants maturing.

We don’t have these plants in anything larger than a 1 gallon pot for at least 1-2 years so they don’t take up a lot of space. to give you an idea, 20,000 plants would fit in about 1/2 an acre. You can even keep some in beds for a year so they don’t take up a lot of space if you are tight on space. In year 2-3 we would transplant some to 3 gallon containers to be sold in 1 to 2 more years. From free to a $20 to 35.00 plant in 2 to 3 years.

Growing plants to resell from purchased bare root plants

Growing plants out to a saleable size from bare root liners is a pretty predictable activity. Some of the advantages are:

• You can select what you want to grow.
• Plants are delivered right to your door.
• A wide choice of prices and sizes is available Vs rooting your own cuttings.
• Plants are generally well rooted and healthy.
• Quantities are up to you with only 25 to 100 plant minimums from some growers and rarely a maximum. You can be growing hundreds or thousands of plants in a season or two.

You can start in a fairly small way with some growers having minimums of just 25 or 50 plants. Yes, you will pay more but you can test and increase later. The great option from many growers is the ability to buy fairly large quantities of plants. We are by no comparison a larger grower but we sometime buy 300 to 500 plants of a single type or 100 each of the same plant in 5 different colors. See our page on Fall Tree Planting to see us planting hundreds of bare root trees.

Buying larger bare root plants that sell faster.

Buying larger bare root plants is a faster way to have saleable plants. For example, we start 2/2 Spruce transplants in 3 and 5 gallon grow bags. 2/2 means 2 years as a seedling and then transplanted and grown 2 more years as a transplant. So, these are 4 year old trees when we get them. Once potted we can turn them in 1-3 years as pretty good size plants. So, we are often selling 5 to 7 year old trees because we buy them bigger to begin with but we only grow them for 2 to 4 years. If your plan was to be only rooting your own cuttings to sell you would spend the full 5 to 7 years growing the same plants. That’s a long time!

The investment is +-$1.50-2.00 per plant plus +-$2.00 for a grow bag, potting soil and fertilizer. We try to plant in the Fall and hold for about 18 to 24 months. By the 24th month they should have all reached at least 30-36” and can be readily sold.

Grow some of your bare root plants out even larger

To speed production we buy a lot of the largest seedlings/transplants we can. About 80% are planted in trade 3 gallon containers to be sold in 1-2 years. The rest are planted in larger trade 5 gallon containers. The plants in larger containers are earmarked to be sold in 3-4 years at a larger size and higher price. By doing this we can offer customers more options and will have a crop that is saleable over 1-4 years. In practice the bulk of the work in growing plants is the work of Potting up plants. Once plants are in containers we only need to weed, fertilize, water and give them an annual light pruning. So, if we grow some plants to a trade 3 gallon size and some to a trade 5 gallon size the work is about the same. The difference is the larger plant can be sold for about twice as much, sometimes more with only a little more work. The trade off is of course time but it is worth the wait. So, we do some of both to even out production and keep our revenues growing.

Rooting your own cuttings Vs buying bare root plants summarized

So, this won’t be the only answer, we can can only tell you what we do. You might go in a different direction especially if you are working with different plants. That said our plan is always shifting a little as we learn but we are always planting and propagating one way or another. We do attempt to root at least 1,000 cuttings per year. One reason we do this is to keep plant buying costs down and it is super rewarding. Money saved is money you earn later.

We also have a lot of space and cuttings don’t take up much room the first couple of years. Another reason we take cuttings is this can often be done at off times of the year. We will take softwood cuttings in the middle of the summer and hardwood cuttings when things are slow in the winter. The cuttings do take longer to become saleable plants but after 2-5 years you will have an entirely new income potential with very little cost.

Purchased seedlings/liners and transplants cost more initially but are ready to sell in much less time. Many can be sold in 1-2 years. So by using different size purchased plants, different containers and starting rooted cuttings you will be both selling in 12-18 months and have a steady stream of different size plants maturing 2-5 years from now. So, our answer is to be rooting our own cuttings and potting lots of purchased bare root plants.

All the time! Now time for you to get started!