Written by my sister-in-law Carolyn Yoder from Wythville, VA.
Have the winter blues set in yet for anybody with all the dreary, cold days of the winter months? Let me brighten up your day with ideas of lovely green plants and colorful flowers!đWho doesnât love to think about the beauty of spring and new life bursting forth about now? Eventually the long, dreary days of winter will pass, I promise!đ
A number of years ago I had the opportunity to get a cute, little greenhouse from a friend who no longer needed it. I had such fun âplaying in the dirtâ, starting seeds, and watching them sprout and grow! This was all very new for me and I had very little experience with starting my own seeds, but I learned as I went. Not everything I tried was a success, but it was successful enough to be fun and feel worthwhile. I started both flowers and vegetables. It was so rewarding to eventually have beautiful hanging baskets overflowing with wave petunias after weeks of watering and caring for the little plants! Believe me, wave petunia seeds are extremely tiny, but they produce such lovely flowers!
Fast forward a number of years now⌠my husband Millard and I started dreaming about the possibility of having a greenhouse/garden center as a business, where we would grow beautiful flowers and have a lovely space for people to enjoy and buy flowers and vegetables to take home with them. (You know in a perfect dreamworld your flowers always grow well, stay healthy and everything is beautiful!đ) We had some hurdles to cross to be able to pursue our dreams, but we are now doing what we had dreamed of doing for years. If youâre ever coming through Wytheville, VA stop by Oasis Garden Center and check us out! We are only several miles off the interstate! You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram if youâd like to check us out there.
Our first season of growing flowers and vegetables to sell (2023) was very much of a learning process! We had one 25âx85â greenhouse, so we started out fairly small, which was a good thing. All of our flowers we get shipped in as tiny plugs. All of our vegetables we start from seed. One thing we learned the first year was that we had our flower plugs shipped in way too early and our vegetable seeds we started too early as well! We had our first shipment of flowers come in about the second week in February and soon after that we also started vegetable plants from seed. What happened then, was the flowers got so big for their pots by the time we were ready to open for customers. And the vegetable plants got so huge by the time it was garden planting time. I told someone that by the time we sold the last of our tomato plants, we had tomato trees instead of plants! But, you know what?! Thatâs how you learn, and for the 2024 season, we knew to delay the whole process a bit! By spring of 2024, we added a 34âx96â greenhouse, so the workload definitely became heavier and we could grow so many more plants!
Before our plugs arrive from our supplier, we try to make sure we have all the proper sized pots, baskets, and planters that we need. And we of course need lots of potting soil on hand. We order big bales of Berger BM6 soil. Itâs really nice to have a bunch of pots filled with soil a day or so before the plugs arrive, so that once itâs time to plant, there are pots all ready to go!
We also like to put the proper identifying tag in the pot, before actually planting. And then we grab the tray of plugs that goes with the tags weâve placed in the pot, and get them transplanted. Getting flowers and tags mixed up is not something you want to happen. Some plugs are easily identified just by looking at them and some are not! We try to be super careful to not get things mixed up!
We design some of our own hanging baskets and also order combination kits from our supplier. Ordering the combo kits takes the guesswork out of things for me because I donât need to try to decide what will grow well together in the same basket. Itâs rewarding to go from thisâŚ
To this!
But getting from tiny plugs to beautiful, filled out plants takes awhile! The first week after we plant the plugs we water them with clear water. After the first week, we fertilize every day except Sunday. Itâs good to give the flowers a break from fertilizer one day a week and Sunday seems to be a good day for us to do that.đA lot of our flowers need to be âpinchedâ at certain stages so that they branch out nicely. Sometimes we also go through and cut back flowers that are getting too big too fast. I like to walk through the greenhouse every day and just check on the flowers and be on the alert for anything that looks unhealthy or like it needs some special care. Aphids and other tiny critters also show up sometimes and those have to be taken care of or they can soon do a lot of damage. Plants that look stressed tend to also cause me stress! I love for our flowers to all look vibrant and healthy, but truth be told, we do loose some flowers at times. We do feel blessed though, to so far not have lost huge amounts of flowers from a disease sweeping through or something like that!
While I love to transplant plugs and watch them grow, I do also enjoy starting our vegetable plants from seed and watching them pop through the dirt and start steadily growing! Cold crops like cabbage, cauliflower & broccoli are about the first seeds we start. Last season we started these the very end of February and then did another round the middle of March. Usually peppers need to be started fairly early too. I know some people like to use special seed starting soil to start seeds, but we just use the soil that we use for our flower plugs and itâs worked fine. Also a lot of people use heating mats for seed starting. We do not⌠however, we do have a method we use to provide heat under the tables where the seed trays are setting. Iâm not going to try to describe how we do all that.đBut seeds, especially certain kinds, will germinate better with proper soil temperatures.
Our cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower we start the seeds in the 4 pack containers that we eventually sell them in. Some seeds need to be lightly covered with soil and others need to simply be pushed into the dirt a bit and left uncovered. Most seed packets give instructions on the back for if seeds need to be covered or not. Once the seeding is done, we mist the dirt and try to get it evenly moist and then cover the trays with a clear plastic lid to help keep the moisture inside. You donât want your soil too wet for too long, but neither do you want things drying out too much. Once most of the seeds have sprouted, we remove the clear lid.
Our peppers and tomatoes we start in seedling trays. The seedling trays are about an inch deep. We fill them with dirt and then I like to make little rows with my finger and try to fairly evenly space out the seeds. (You can also get seedling trays that are already divided into rows but we prefer the flat tray without the dividers.)We have a little handheld, battery powered vibration seeder that we like to use for seeding. Eventually we may have a more commercialized way of starting seeds, but for now this works! Usually around the time that the plants are well established and growing nicely, we transplant them into their own pot from the seedling tray. After theyâve been transplanted several days to a week, we start fertilizing. And then watch them grow! Some of you may be wondering why we take the extra step of planting in seedling trays instead of directly into the pot the plants will be sold in. It does make more work, but our experience has been it makes for a stronger/better plant if we transplant. I know, weâre newbies here, so feel free to choose your own style for starting seeds. đ
Now tomatoes we would definitely say you want to transplant! The seeds need darkness to germinate, so we put cardboard over top of the clear lids so itâs relatively dark. We just need to keep a close eye on them, because once they germinate if the cardboard isnât taken off right away, the tiny shoots will try to reach for the light and fast become long and leggy. Once they have several sets of true leaves we transplant. And we transplant them deep! We try to bury the whole stem all the way up to the first set of leaves. This makes for a better, stronger root system and overall better plant. We hear comments over and over about our tomato plants, how strong, thick stemmed and healthy they look! And we really think the deep transplanting does make a difference! Since I love to get my fingers in the dirt, I enjoy the transplanting! đHere again, it is super important to have your tomato and pepper varieties properly tagged! You donât want them mixed up and a customer thinks theyâre getting a beefsteak tomato and it ends up being a cherry tomato instead! Of course, if youâre only growing plants for yourself, this is not so important.đLast season our first peppers were seeded the very end of February and then again in March several times. I think this year weâll wait til March to start the first ones.
Fast growing vegetables like cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe and squash do not need to be started until April in our area.
I mentioned earlier that all our flowers we get shipped in as plugs. However, I do start flower seeds in trays for our upick flower field. Carnations, rudbeckia, gomphrena, amaranth, are some of what I started in the greenhouse. Some seeds I direct seeded in the flower field once danger of frost was past. Oh the rewards of seeing the flowers grow and beautiful bouquets being made throughout the summer!! I had never before been able to just go cut as many flowers as I wanted to, making bouquet after bouquet!
I hope Iâve been able to chase the winter blues away a bit with thoughts and pictures of spring and summer beauty!đ
Here are just a few more random pictures for your enjoyment.
This gives you a bit of a glimpse of what we do, but we will readily admit that we are still very much learning as we go and we donât guarantee our methods to be the best way of doing things when it comes to greenhouses. If youâre a reader who has been in the greenhouse business for years and have advice for us, weâd be glad to hear tips!
Iâm Carolyn Yoder, blessed and happy wife to my pastor husband Millard, and mom to five children, ranging in age from 18 to 7. I love coffee (very much!), quiet time in the morning and a good book. I delight in the beauty of nature and flowers! You can contact me at yoderfamily05@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you!
of windowsills and breezy hills 