# Starting a nursery



## scubadude1188 (Apr 12, 2008)

I've thought about getting into the nursery business and wanted to know if anybody had any suggestions on how to get started and also just some insight on what it's like to run a nursery.


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## gumneck (Apr 15, 2008)

Just curious..

What do you have say in your backyard for nursery type stock that you have in pots or trays going at present?


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## scubadude1188 (Apr 15, 2008)

I don't have anything growing now. I want to find out more about starting a nursery before I actually decide to start it or not.


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## gumneck (Apr 15, 2008)

That's cool. 

Sort of my point. So you can know what to expect in a small scale, try doing some potted trees or nursery trays of plants in your backyard. See what it takes to raise them and you'll get a feel for the needs down the road.

I for instance, have about two hundred trees and vines in various stages of development at any given time of the year. So, I'll have watering needs, spraying (fungicides/insecticides), weeds, and watering along with watering. I don't know what it would take to run a nursery but with what I do practice I realize it would be alot. That's not to say that its not worth doing because its what you get out of it internally as well as financially.


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## 046 (Apr 15, 2008)

why don't you go work for a nursery first... get up close and dirty... learn how it works and get paid.. you decide it's not for your or it's your life's work...



scubadude1188 said:


> I don't have anything growing now. I want to find out more about starting a nursery before I actually decide to start it or not.


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## chainsawaddict (Apr 16, 2008)

It sure takes a lot of time. I have some family members that tried to run one on the side during the season. They just werent able to devote enough time and had to pay people to work it. They ended up losing $$$ on the deal.


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## Journier (May 15, 2008)

im thinking about doing this as well. Starting a nursery.

starting small first, i ordered 100 swamp white oaks (2-3 ft bare root)

and 100 colorado blue spruce (2-3 ft bare root)

if i get a good enough survival rate this year, i think ill order 400 more tree's of different variety's next year, and 800 the next. etc etc. 

gotta find a suitable spot to grow the blue spruce though, alot of the area im planting is very wet / holds 1-2 inches of water for a day after a good rain.

Im thinking about building up furrows with mulch and planting them in that, so they are above the very wet/flooding ground and get good drainage, since thats what they like.

I need to get some kind of drip irrigation setup though, since i dont think its very smart to be keep going to the back of the property and hand watering 200 tree's every week. Be burning all my time doing just that.


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## windthrown (May 15, 2008)

TreeCo said:


> Be prepared to work for minimum wage.......and below! You can make it up like most nursery people do by working 100 hour weeks.
> 
> Do you have a pesticide license? You will need one.
> 
> Be prepared for lots of red tape and I don't mean the kind used to mark trees.



I would love to get minimum wages for my nursery work. It does not even come close to that. Nor the vineyard, which is probably less than a dollar an hour.

Pesticide application licensing is highly variable by state. In CA I needed a Schedule Q for spraying as a landscaper and buying herbicides and pesticides was difficult. In OR, there is no license requirement for owner/applicators or landscapers that are not in the pesticide application biz, and getting the sprays is easy. You need a license to have a nursery in OR though. Anything with sales over $400 a year I think it is. Another tax in my view. Though there is no sales tax in OR. Other than that there is no red tape here. Actually I have had great help from OSU (university) and even the USDA, as well as the ODF (OR dept. of forestry).

My biggest problems here with the nursery biz is wildlife and the sheep. Deer are a huge problem, and I had to erect 8 foot fences around the nursery, berry vines and vineyard areas. They even eat tomatoes, and potatoes, which are supposed to be poisonous. If the sheep get out (and they do now and then) they go right for the roses and berries and bamboos. Birds are a problem in the vineyards, and with the blueberries. Voles are a constant problem withthe bamboos; they eat the shoots and rhizomes. Frost is also an issue, as is snow, and heat waves and wind (or hurricanes of late), and bugs, and nematodes, and mildew, and weeds, and a lot of other stuff. You are at the mercy of the weather and nature. And you do not gets days off. No. Have to water, prune, spray, propagate, or meet someone to sell plants to, or deliver plants to someone. Lots of people call and make an appointment and then never show up, or come by and then want to chisel you down in price. 

And in the end? You have to compete with Home Depot and Lowes on prices. To get around that limitation, I have found that you have to grow what they do not sell. Or what others locally do not sell on Craigslist. I have found that once I advertize on Craigslist, there are 5 other people posting the same ad the next week. They come out of the woodwork, thinking that there is a hot market. You will also have to decide if you want to go retail or wholesale. They have completely different business models. 

As they said on Firesign Theater, "Its a jungle out there Tarzan"


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## Journier (May 31, 2008)

Journier said:


> im thinking about doing this as well. Starting a nursery.
> 
> starting small first, i ordered 100 swamp white oaks (2-3 ft bare root)
> 
> and 100 colorado blue spruce (2-3 ft bare root)



Well got everything set and planted last week.

my Swamp Whites all leafed out and look great. The Blue Spruces i received were a bit dry on arrival and I dont think they are doing so good. Ive lost 5 Spruces so far , no worries the nursery i got them from said theyd cover any that dont make it because of improper shipment.

The rest look about fine for now. Just worrying about rabbits and deer's later this year and early next :/


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## Ax-man (May 31, 2008)

I wish you guys just starting all the best of luck on your venture.

I have been following this thread to see what the responses would be.

I come from a nursery background. A family owned operation. We were never big in the business as far as nurseries go. My step father who started this always had a second source of income and never really had to rely on the nursery for a steady income. We sold mostly retail and dabbled in wholesale with other growers and the local landscapers. 

When my step father decided it was time to " retire " . I got a chance to run a nursery but being a family type business there was always friction and lots of it. I was working basically for nothing considering all the hours I put in. It was like working a second full time job but not getting paid. My net at the end of the year after paying all the bills was pitiful. The hired help made more than I did. On top of all this my marriage was suffering because I was hardly ever at home and my tree service business started sliding downhill. I was losing at both ends and it started to really show after three years of trying to make a go of two full time business's. That is when I decided to sideline the nursery and downsize it and get back on track in the tree service business.

Windthrown and TreeCo basically sum it up in a nutshell the way it really is because my experience was the same. Chiesling customers thinking you should sell under what the box stores are charging. Deer have been and ongoing problem for the last 15 years. The deer have wrecked many fine specimen trees with their rubbing during the rut. Then when we get snowcover and they can't browse, they feed on lthe nusery stock. The last three years have been the worst. The deer have literally destroyed what was left of the saleable nursery stock we had left. The only thing they don't seem to eat or browse on are Spruce, Doug fir, Hemlock. Literally thousands of dollars of stock unsalable and then you have to figure in the dollars spent in purchasing , planting , fertilizing, trimming, weeding, spraying ect ect. It is just one big waste of money and time. Then you have to grub and burn the leftovers. 

Windthrow mentioned Lowe's, one of many discounters. What he said is very true, you have to sell what they don't have or bigger sizes of plant species they don't have. You can't win standing toe to toe with the big boys. They sell plant material at retail prices that I couldn't buy at wholesale through the bigger growers we bought from to supplment our stock. 

They play a rough game but I am just going to mention this. If you look closely they really don't carry much plant inventory. I think the plants are just there as a loss leader and could care less if they made a dime on plants as that stuff is very perishable and needs constant watering being in pots in the direct sun. Next to the plants you will see mountains of mulch, deco stone and rocks and pavers, concrete figurines and other stuff to trash up the yard for arborists to work around, in other words hard goods. This is where the discounters make their money, not on the plants. 

You guys get the idea, again good luck. If you enjoy hard work and being outside and have a love for plants and have no desire to get rich then the nursery business can be rewarding despite the hassles of running and maintaining one.

There is a book on the market called " Beginning in the Nursery Business ". I think that is the title. It is a nice paperback to read gives insight to those just starting of different types of nurseries and pitfalls of the nursery business. The book has been out for a long time and has been updated many times but is worth reading. It is not expensive.

LARRY


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## jthutch (Jun 12, 2008)

Just a comment on the box stores, the mulch is what they lose money on. They price up $0.01 per bag. you break a bag and you have to sell 100 bags to make up the difference. Anyway, I have worked for nurseries and have run my own retail/landscape design business. All very small scale. But finding a niche is the key. If you can grow Golden Rain Tree I think you would have a good year because you can not find them wholesale anywhere around here and they sell out as soon as they hit the market. I was going to start a small production of them myself in a year or so when I find the time.


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## windthrown (Jun 13, 2008)

I have had a slow nursery year this year due to the weather and high gas prices. Its been cold and rainey this spring, so sales are down. I did sell out of some types of cane berries, only becasue they do not sell them at any of the nurseries around here. Still long on trees though. I also sold a large lot of wine grapes, as the local place that grafted them closed their nursery. I have done OK on bamboo as well, but mainly on the rare types that no one else sells around here. And the deer do not eat bamboo, so I can keep it out of the fenced-in plant pens. 

Maybe 1/3 of the people that say they were coming out have showed up this year. So I am starting to pare things down. No point in rooting and watering a bunch of plants that no one wants.


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