FlyTrapCare Forums

This is an update on a ton of seedlings I planted last year. In February, they looked like this:

Here they are today: I've got a ton of work ahead of me in the spring when I go to repot these guys...

That's awesome. Going to take days to repot all of those!

Nickrober wrote:That's awesome. Going to take days to repot all of those!

I know! I'm not looking forward to it at all...

Looks Very nice matt. Yea, I bet repotting wont be fun.

Admittedly, I am sort of curious as to when you hit the point where it's just too much. Are you planning on thinning out your collection, or are you just going to continue to build?

If it's going to be so much work why don't you sell/give some away to make it easier?

nesler wrote:Admittedly, I am sort of curious as to when you hit the point where it's just too much. Are you planning on thinning out your collection, or are you just going to continue to build?

Yes, I'm planning on starting to sell some plants next year. I'll planning add a store section to the main site in the spring to unload some TC plants and other plants that I have just too many of.

Eric wrote:If it's going to be so much work why don't you sell/give some away to make it easier?

I've considered the idea of selling those pots of little plants for $20 each. I'm not sure if that would be too high of a price or not, but with about 75 to 100 plants per pot, I think that would be a good deal.

But if I let them mature a couple more years, I can probably sell them in the store for $5 a piece, which means each pot would be worth $375 to $500 (assuming none of them die)...might be worth the wait. Though it will be a lot of work to repot them, I actually kind of enjoy that work.

Selling them by the pot would be pretty cool.

Matt wrote:

nesler wrote:Admittedly, I am sort of curious as to when you hit the point where it's just too much. Are you planning on thinning out your collection, or are you just going to continue to build?

Yes, I'm planning on starting to sell some plants next year. I'll planning add a store section to the main site in the spring to unload some TC plants and other plants that I have just too many of.

Eric wrote:If it's going to be so much work why don't you sell/give some away to make it easier?

I've considered the idea of selling those pots of little plants for $20 each. I'm not sure if that would be too high of a price or not, but with about 75 to 100 plants per pot, I think that would be a good deal.

But if I let them mature a couple more years, I can probably sell them in the store for $5 a piece, which means each pot would be worth $375 to $500 (assuming none of them die)...might be worth the wait. Though it will be a lot of work to repot them, I actually kind of enjoy that work.

$20 a pot seems very cheap for the effort you put in Matt i would wait.

And very nice seedlings Matt.

Nice looking "nursery" Matt!
You are going to have a load of two year olds next year...
Peace!
E.S.

If you decide to sell the seedlings by the pot, I would definitely be interested. However, if you choose to go the route of selling them individually a couple years from now, I'd understand. But... you might want to sit down and figure out how much time you will have to invest in the plants in order to get to that point.

If, two years from now, you've spent a total of, say, 20 hours on the contents of one of those pots--watering, carefully separating them, potting them individually, repotting them once or twice, getting them ready to sell, prepping them to ship, and getting them shipped off--and you receive 500 dollars for the contents of that pot (which might be a bit idealistic, as that is assuming that there are 100 plants, and that they all survive), you've made 25 dollars an hour, before you factor in the money you've spent on maintenance from when they germinated to when they were sent off to the customer... soil, water, various supplies, etc.

I'm not sure you'd be getting a great return on your time and money. Just something to mull over.

nesler wrote:If you decide to sell the seedlings by the pot, I would definitely be interested.

Sounds like there are definitely some interested people. That's great to know. I will probably make some offerings like this in the future then!

nesler wrote:I'm not sure you'd be getting a great return on your time and money. Just something to mull over.

I'm not trying to get rich by selling plants and my statement about their value once they're raised to adulthood was a bit optimistic, but my motivation for keeping them really isn't in their value. These are actually the first seedlings I've ever grown and to be honest, I just want to see them reach adulthood.

With regards to the return on investment, there really isn't any investment in terms of money to keep growing them. It's really only the space in my greenhouse. I collect rain water for watering them, so that's free. Of course, there's a bit of cost for the soil, but that's pretty minimal and I'll probably only repot them once, maybe twice, before they are adults. However, as you say, there is a bit of a time investment, but I actually LOVE spending time watering and repotting. It's a great contrast to my typical day sitting in front of a computer doing work (I'm a web programmer). And in reality, caring for them is really not that time consuming at all. I'd say for the entire 20 pots in that tray, I spend less than 30 minutes a week caring for them (that doesn't include the time I spend staring at them in pure joy and taking photos of them). Repotting does take a lot of time for plants that small, but again, I enjoy that time and the truth is, I really only have to do that once every 2 years (I haven't repotted them yet, but plan on doing so next spring when they'll be 1.5 years old).

In any case, I hope to open a store up someday and it's good to know that there is a market for a pot full of seedlings! I'll plan on offering that in the store.

Matt wrote:In any case, I hope to open a store up someday and it's good to know that there is a market for a pot full of seedlings! I'll plan on offering that in the store.

Sweet!

I understand that desire you have to follow their development - hence my keenness to get a set of seedlings or seeds before the growing season is over. Perhaps you should just thin things out a bit. Then you can study your plants at more of an individual level.