Looks like I
complete ruined the plants doesn't it? Notice how green the leaves
are that are left? That because the top of the plants were shading
the lower leaves. As soon as these leaves get a little sun they'll
color right up. But by pruning these Japanese Red Maple seedlings
like I do, it forces them to set more new branches down low, and in just a
year you have a fuller, more compact, more desirable plant like these:
Notice how much
fuller these trees are? I trimmed my Japanese Red Maple seedlings
and planted them outside in October, which is when I took the photos at
the top of the page. The photos that you are now looking at were
taken the following June.
Growing nice plants
is like building a house. You have to work on the foundation first.
If you don't give your plants a nice foundation to grow on, they will
never grow to their full potential. This kind of drastic pruning is
hard to do, but once you see the results you fully understand why it is
necessary.
Had I not pruned
these plants they would have put all of that new grow on at the top of the
plant, which would have made for a very poorly shaped plant. I am
ruthless when it comes to pruning, but I always have the nicest plants in
the end.
I plant my Japanese
Red Maple seedlings in beds like the one shown below. I prune them
before I plant them, then I prune them again once they have put on 12" to
15" of new growth. I just take my hedge shears and whop the tops off
to make them fill out even more. After that second pruning they will
fill out very nicely. At that point I can take them out of the bed
and sell them right away, or I can pot them up and sell them later for
even more money.
42" Japanese Red
Maples easily sell for $50.00 to $75.00 if they are nice and full and have
deep red color. It's not unusual to see them in garden centers with
price tags of $125.00 or more!
That's why I don't
hesitate to buy Japanese Red Maple seedlings for $1.35 each. I'm not
set up to grow plants from seed, and I don't want to be. All most
all of the shrubs I grow I grow from cuttings, and using my system you can
easily do that without a greenhouse. It's just so much easier, and
you don't have a lot of money invested to get started.
And because I don't
have a greenhouse, my nursery requires almost zero amount of attention
during the winter months. I had a greenhouse and I took it down!
Buying seedlings
from another grower reduces my growing time by at least one year or two.
However, I am always
encouraging those who own my Backyard Growing System to consider becoming
a supplier of Japanese Red Maple seedlings. The demand always seems
to out weigh the supply. And with the internet you could easily sell
them in smaller quantities for $4.00 or more instead of the $1.35 that I
am currently paying.
If I had 5,000
Japanese Red Maple seedlings right now I could easily sell every single
one of them for at least $1.35 each! Many of them I could sell for
$4.00 or $5.00 each.
In the Wholesale
Source Directory that comes with
My System I have included several wholesale seed suppliers
that will sell you seeds for all kinds of trees and shrubs, including
Japanese Red Maples, and you can buy them in quantity, paying only the
wholesale price.
The photo below is
interesting, and will give you an idea of how nicely these Japanese Red
Maple Seedlings can develop.
The small plants in
the foreground are the Japanese Red Maple seedlings that I planted right
after pruning them. Notice the tree in the background in the
landscaping? The one with the pink letters next to it. That
tree is now about 8' tall and came from a batch of seedlings just like the
ones you see in this photo.
I had a bunch of
Japanese Red Maples that I had grown and I was selling them for $45.00
each and they were selling like crazy. So I grabbed two and planted
them in my landscape before they were all gone.
This is another shot
of that same bed. In the foreground are 300 Japanese Red Maple
seedlings. Can you believe how little area you need to grow 300
beautiful little trees?
Of course if you
want to grow them larger you'd have to pot them up or plant them in a
larger bed. But if you leave them just as you see them here for two
years you will have 300 nice little trees that people will jump at the
chance to buy.
Once of my customers
who purchased my
Backyard Nursery System sells the plants that he grows at a
flea market in West Virginia and he can't keep Japanese Red Maple
seedlings in stock. As quick as he brings them in they buy every
single one that he has! He even buys larger Japanese Red Maples from
a wholesale nursery, marks them up to twice what he paid for them, and
they buy those too! Sometimes it seems the demand is insatiable.
The bed you see in
the above photo is about 5 feet wide by 70 feet long, and you can produce
thousands of plants in a bed that size. And you don't even have to
raise the bed as I did here. If you have good soil you can just
plant right in the soil you have. The only reason I raised this bed
was because I had a really nice pile of compost and potting soil that I
knew my plants would grow like crazy in.
Another one of my
customers who has my
Backyard Nursery System rooted
6,500 cuttings of assorted plants and sold every one of them as soon as
they rooted for 67¢ each, and she could have sold more but ran out of
cuttings.
I'll do the math for
you. 6,500 rooted cuttings times 67¢ is $4,355.00!
As I am creating
this web page she is happily rooting more cuttings to sell this year.
Just yesterday she told me that she has found a local nursery that will
allow her to take cuttings from their plants in the field as long as she
pays them back by giving them some of the cuttings she roots!
Whether or not you
are just growing for fun, or growing for profit, this is a great way to
spend your time and get close to nature!
Click here to learn more about the fun and exciting
Backyard Nursery Business.
We sold over $25,000. worth of our
little plants right from our driveway in a
matter of about six weeks!
Click here to see one of our plant sales.
