FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant 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...

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...

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.

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.