Visit Plant Trials - Tips to Become Smart Plant Shopper

Plant trials UK, are programs that measure how a specific new plant variety perform in different parts. Certainly, to find a best new species from thousands of plants can be challenging. Instead of employing trial and error technique, use tips to become smart plant shopper. Plants are an investment and needs you to be careful, but ensure to enjoy the shopping process.

Shop locally

Local growers are helpful sources for obtaining information on raising best plants that survive in local climatic conditions.

Shop before weekend

Basically, nurseries get their truck deliveries from the wholesale growers on Thursday or Friday to prepare for weekend rush, so shop specially on these days to get best choice.

Move around

First wander around the nursery and look at the kind of plants available. Then take a cart and select but read the plant tags because they include vital information like necessary spacing, and maturity size. Plant needs vary, so the local nursery will provide tips on how to care for that plant in the local climate.

Select plants with buds rather than blooms

A plant in full bloom looks very attractive, but the one with more buds will provide more colour, after it is planted in the home garden. Moreover, plants with buds will experience less transplant shock than the full bloom ones.

Examine plants

Check the plants cautiously for signs of disease, pests or weakness. If the spread and height is not mentioned on the plant tag then ask the grower about its mature size. You do not want to be taken by surprise to see a little shrub grownup into a monster.

Check the plant roots

Plant’s roots allow, you to get an idea of its health and age. Gently pull the plant from the pot to inspect its roots. They have to be evenly distributed all through the soil. If they are coiled thickly at the bottom or poking out from drainage holes then the plant has been in this pot for a long time and is pot bound. It means the roots will have difficulty in growing, when transplanted in the garden soil.

Give them freedom

As soon as, you return home with the new purchase, promptly unpack the plants. Put them in shade and if necessary give them water. If they cannot be planted, right away then make sure to keep them moist in a sheltered spot. If the night is cool then place tender plants in warm garage or cellar.

Steps And Methods To Prevent Diseases During Breeding Process

Plant breeding can be defined as a genetic improvement of plants to create desired charac-teristics that are well suited for human needs and provides better yield. Many times produc-tion is severely affected by diseases such as fungi, viruses and bacteria. The plant breeding is used to develop crops with resistance to these pathogens.

Let us learn more about various steps which are required for breeding purpose:

• Domestication: This is the initial process of growing plants and managing them un-der human care. This step is aimed to increase the food production.

• Germplasm Collection: Germplasm is a collection of all the genes present in certain crops such as wild species, old varieties and cultivated new improved varieties. This process of collection from different sources is an important step. Genes collected from various sources will be stored at a very low temperature.

• Selection and Evaluation of Parents: Evaluation of germplasm is to identify plants with the desired combination of new characters. The process of picking up seeds of the plants with desired traits for the multiplications purpose is known as the selec-tion of parents.

• Hybridization of Selected Parents: One of the most common methods of creating genetic variations among the different varieties is called cross-hybridization. In this process, two or more of the plants with desired traits are brought together. This pro-cess takes a lot of time as there are different procedures involved such as selection, selfing, emasculation, bagging, and tagging.

• Testing and Release of New Cultivars: The newly selected hybrids are further eval-uated for the yield and other disease resistance traits. The evaluation is done in the research field where they record the performance, irrigation under ideal conditions.

Post evaluation testing is performed in the fields for almost three growing seasons at different climatic zones in the country. On successful completion of the test, crops are compared and seeds for the new variety is multiplied and distributed among the farmers.

There are two types of breeding methods - conventional and mutation breeding. In Conven-tional breeding techniques like selection and hybridization are often constrained due to the availability of limited amount of genes for disease resistance. In contrast, induced mutation often leads to desirable characters, which can be multiplied further or used for future breeding.

Plants Buying Guide - Tips To Select The Good Quality Plants At Nurseries

Do you have a beautiful garden to be proud of? Do you plan out annual bedding and go shopping to the nursery for different perennials and seedlings for the new season? If yes, then you know well that buying new flowering plants for your area is a thrilling and exciting experience. When you visit a nursery make sure you take your time and look out for the plants well enough before getting them to your house to avoid future disappointment.

Here are few important points to consider while choosing best plants at Nursery.

• Shop Often

Some of the nurseries get only a couple of big shipments of new seedlings and plants for the sea-son rush. They hold on to the remaining plants for rest of the summer season and keep watering them.

To get widest varieties of healthy and properly maintained plants, look for the garden centres that receive regular supplies of new plants. The new stock is well watered and fertilised by grower till the delivery date keeping them stress-free for the final settlement.

• Emphasis on Leaves not Flowers

When you are buying new plants, one with the blooms always will firstly catch your eyes attention. But, choose the plants with more leaves than blooms. The reason being, if you purchase plants with flowers, they will put energy into producing more blooms and seeds.

However, if you choose the plant with leaves, after planting there will be more emphasis on pro-ducing strong root system and healthy growth. This will result into production of abundant blooms for a longer period.

• Check The Leaf Colour

Always look for the healthy green leaves with no signs of yellow spots. The yellowing of leaves re-flected the stressed situation due to lack of water and fertilisers. The only exception would be if you are buying a plant which genetically has yellow leaves.

• Look Closer

When filling your cart, always look closer and compare the plants with same variety to see if you are choosing the one with healthy stems and green leaves. Avoid completely pale looking plants or the ones with the dark spots on stems because these can possible be symptoms of fungal and bac-terial disease.

• Clearance Section

If you plan to buy more plants, you can extend your budget and look for clearance section and end of season sale for good bargains. Still do not buy plants with signs of disease or stress.

Now you have basic tips for purchasing and buying healthy plants. Many nurseries are also listed and if you are a resident of UK, you can search for best plant nurseries UK and can scroll through their online catalogues. Put these tips to use and come back with a bag full of healthy looking plants.

Plant Nursery Marketing Plan Is Essential to Make Its Presence Known

Those who love growing plants and help people transform their barren land into beautiful landscape find managing or owing a nursery, a dream task. Nursery is also a kind of business, where marketing strategy is essential. You cannot depend on people to simply know that you are good grower, but have to make this art known.

Using proper marketing strategies, you can possibly succeed. Remember, growing plants correctly and maintaining them properly is the first step, but if people are not aware about it, they will not buy.

Plant nursery’s marketing plan

Product

The first step in creating your nursery’s marketing plan is to define the product line. For example, your nursery sells small 5 to 15 gallon sized trees, big trees in 24” to 36” boxes or exotic plants. Moreover, the nursery may offer landscape designing and maintenance services. The nursery may even sell garden tools, pots, containers, garden accessories and gardening books.

Customers

Define your market niche like whom you sell. The answer may be -

• retail plant nurseries, who are interested in wholesale purchase
• Landscapers
• Home gardeners, who are the DIY fans
• Home owners, who do not have time but desire well-maintained nice-looking landscape

The last group is your main market for design & installation services. For exotic plants, your target consumer may not be restricted to geographic location but can place an order online or through a phone.

Competition

Just like any other business, it is essential to be familiar with the weaknesses and strengths of your competitive nurseries. Find out the strength of your nursery and the reasons. For example, your competitor has low prices, but lack experienced nursery staff to help consumers select the right plants exactly.

Strategies

Message for plant marketing UK will be based on your strength and competitors weaknesses. The message will be delivered through website, SMM, advertising, attending trades & garden shows, flyers, and presenting demonstrations. In addition consider publicity program and distribute Press releases on topics related to plants care, maintenance and more.

Budget

Without resources, even the most successful marketing strategy will not have any effect. However, there is not special formula to determine an exact marketing budget.

Plant Breeding - New Technique Which Offers Many Benefits To Your Farm

Plants help world and environment in various ways. They provide oxygen and food that are two essential things for human survival. The maintenance and breeding of plants depend on various factors. The process of adapting the different genetic properties of different plants for the benefits of mankind is called plant breeding.

In this article we will discuss the advantage of plant breeding.

• New Varieties of Quality Crops: With the help of breeding method, people can pro-duce crops with better quantity. This method is very comfortable option for many farmers to achieve superior quality. This method allows production of plants within short period.

• Eliminate Disease: The ability to eliminate plant and animal diseases is considered as one of the biggest advantages of plant breeding. Pre-screening and identification of particular diseases allow farmers to keep them under control. With such methods, genetic diseases will soon be eliminated among animals and plants.

• Influence the productivity: It has great potential to influence the productivity of food in a positive way. It helps in improvement of grains quality and increases pro-tein quotient in crops. Plant breeding also opens up the window to grow plants on such lands which were earlier not suitable for farming.

• Sustainable food chain: It has been predicted that world population will hit the mark of 10 billion by the year 2050. It is important for government officials to plan for food chain system to allow production of sufficient amount of food source every year. This method will help to feed people more effectively and slowly eliminate hunger.

• No Safety Concerns: If you compare plant breeding with genetically modified crops, you will understand the benefit of the natural evolution of crops. DNA sequences do not get tempered to make changes like genetic modification.

The main objective of plant breeding is to develop plants for the better adaptability to hu-man needs. In last 20-30 years, there had been a tremendous increase in the production of agricultural crops with the help of multiple breeder services available to farmers. Innova-tive and well-researched ideas lead to higher yielding crops with better agricultural traits like stress tolerance and disease tolerance.

Tips To Start and Maintain Container Garden

First step in creating container garden is to decide how much time you can invest in this project.

• Regular watering is needed along with upkeep process like pruning, pinching, training and re-potting. All these vary a lot from one plant to another.

• Choose containers, plants and locations in accordance to the time you are certain to give to the container garden.

• Many plants need sunny exposure, which increases watering schedule to keep plants hydrated.

• Perennials blossom for a short period like balloon flowers and lilies. Once their blossoms fade, they need to be moved to less conspicuous location.

• Any kind of garden plant can be grown in containers including vines, annuals, perennials, bulbs, groundcovers, trees and shrubs.

• You can find specific varieties that are especially suitable for container gardening listed on garden catalogues.

How to select indoor plant containers?

Vast array of plant containers ranging from wire baskets to classic lay flowerpots to items rescued from trash bins like leaky wagons or worn boots can be selected. The only thing every kind of plant container must include is drainage holes. These are necessary to eliminate excess water.

Treat container plants in the right way

Plant specialist Suffolk suggests that container garden have some special needs because they grow in small space and have less soil volume. Thus, the roots get limited amount of water and nutrients.

To allow the container plants to develop better, it is vital to employ high-quality potting soil, which allow the roots to grow vigorously. Appropriate fertilizer encourages healthy foliage along with abundant flowering. In addition, proper watering techniques will never leave the plants dry or drown them.

Benefits of container garden

• You can relocate plants to long distance easily but get them acclimatized in pot a few weeks, before relocation.

• Apartment and condominium has limited space on the terrace, where containers are the best option for gardening.

• With proper care shrubs and trees can survive in containers happily for years.

• Container gardens are small in size, so less demanding to care for.

• Just move the pot of calla lilies, caladiums, cannas, petunias and geraniums in a sheltered spot, during freezing temperatures.

Informative Guide Revealing The Truth Behind Basic Gardening Myths

Did you hear all the gardening advice shared by your professors during the graduate school? You have somewhere followed certain garden advices without checking the information at your end. While you maintain your home garden, just think about it, if you have been simply following certain techniques passed to you through years with no valid proofs.

Here are some of the known garden myths demystified by science:

• Small Trees Need To Be Staked:

Truth: The practice of staking a young tree can lead to hindrance in its growth. It reduces the expected plant development for future. This method was used by farmers to help trees attain good growth. Although staking can help sapling against the wind, it can weaken the plant. In 90’s botanists showed that trees that were allowed to sway along with the wind had thicker trunks than the ones staked.

• Sunlight through Water Will Burn The Leaves

Truth: People avoid watering their plants during the sun but it definitely doesn’t lead to sun-burn. The sun rays are not powerful enough to cause the burning of leaves. The best time to water your plants is early morning time because of low evaporation rate.

• Add Sand To Lighten The Clay

Truth: Clay soil is not suitable for the gardening purpose. When dry, it gets rock hard and takes long to warm up and very tough for cultivation purpose. The balanced soil contains ingredients like silt, clay, and sand. Adding sand to clay soil can create sump drawing water in and drowning the plant. Instead, you should make use of organic matter such as compost to improve nutrient quality.

• Drought Tolerant Plants Need No Water

Truth: Drought tolerant plants like sage, aloe vera, etc. can survive with average supply of water, but they are not drought tolerant during the first year. Regular watering and mulch-ing application is a good idea. Please remember that even the toughest of all plants will be benefiting from little soaking.

• If plant is under stress, they should be fed

Truth: Adding fertiliser to the plant with no nutrient deficiency can add to the stress. You should add fertilisers to the plants that grow in poor soil. Heat, salt, improper placement, faulty planting are the common reasons for stress in plants. If fed, these stressed plants use all the energy that should be instead used for growing roots or defending plants again in-sects and disease.

Gardening techniques are available wherever you look, but remember all is not right. Be open to changes and alternatives to something new.