Adventures In Living and Gardening

Un rooted 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.

Buying securities is somewhat like buying an automobile. The decision to buy something is relatively easy. What, specifically, to buy is an altogether different problem. Before you drive your new car home, you have to choose a certain make, a certain model, certain upholstery, a certain color scheme. You decide between six cylinders and eight, between regular shift and automatic transmission, and say yes or no to white walls, radio, heater, and a dozen other optional extras.

So with securities. Although there are only two major categories—bonds and stocks—to select from, the variations and refinements and optional extras are as numerous as they are confusing.

For many investors, one factor may be sufficient reason to determine a choice. The man of modest means will very likely find corporate bonds at $1,000 apiece too steep and their 3 per cent interest payment too small for what he is trying to achieve. A wealthier investor might be fascinated by the potential in common stock but find that he would obtain a greater yield from tax-exempt municipals. All investors, however, will do well to become familiar with the various kinds of securities represented in corporate capital structures in order to understand their effect on each other and their bearing on the choice he eventually makes for himself.

The corporation is an entity marvellously adapted to the requirements of all parties involved. It developed in response

to the needs of the business community for funds over and beyond its own resources to enable it to build, expand, and grow.

The basic, one-celled form of business life is the individual entrepreneur—the store owner who merchandises goods, the artisan supplying services, the small manufacturer—whose capital needs are met out of savings or through a modest bank loan.

Somewhat more complex is the partnership, the pooling of the resources of several individuals to share in a joint venture. Presumably the credit of the group is somewhat stronger than that of the individual. The partners also assume responsibility for management of their company, participate in all profits accruing, and are legally liable for all debts outstanding.

As long as firms remain relatively small, either type of organization is adequate. As opportunities for expansion present themselves, however, when new plant and equipment are required, when greater amounts of raw materials must be stockpiled, and branch offices and distributors underwritten, and personnel increased, the individual and the partners are hard pressed. Their surplus generally is too small, their normal lines of credit too limited to do the job.

Enlargement of the partnership is no answer. Outside investors willing to take on the mutual responsibilities of partnership, or to immobilize their funds in a partnership agreement, are hard to come by. In any event, the range of financial needs at this stage usually is so great that only by increasing the partnership to ridiculous proportions could they be met.

The solution? A public stock corporation. Ownership thereby is spread among as many hundreds or thousands of people as are willing to buy in, their proportional part of the firm being represented by the amount of stock—or number of shares—they hold. Their reward is likewise a proportional share of their firm’s profits. Their control is exercised through the board of directors they elect. And because their stock is a standardized, known quantity—and because there are stock exchanges—they can readily withdraw from the company and sell their piece of ownership to someone else.

The corporation, once established and in being, is an impersonal thing of indeterminate duration. Directors and officers may come and go, investors may buy in and sell out, but the corporation has a momentum and life force which may enable it to run on indefinitely.

• Gardening Seeds Might Be Very Profitable
• Successful Gardening Ventures
• Outdoor Gardening In Pots & Boxes Advice: Favorite Flower Bulbs
• Business Tips for Small Contractors
• Out Door Gardening Tips In Pots & Boxes: Geraniums And Others