17. Gloxinias—Good Money-Makers

When it comes to growing for profit, gloxinias (sinningias) have two real advantages: They are among the showiest of flowering pot plants and they also make excellent "specializing" material. The heaviest flowering of these gesneriads occurs during the warm months, but staggered plantings will produce some flowers the year round, so plants are almost always sala­ble. Colors range from purest white through blues and purples to the brightest red. There are selfs, bicolors, margined vari­eties, and some with speckles and dots. There are older vari­eties with narrow tubular throats and modern hybrids with large wide faces and nodding "slippers" large and small.

Is the Gloxinia Business for You?

Many amateur and professional growers have found gloxinias profitable. Some specialize in seeds, some in tubers. Others carry the plants through the season, selling thousands at Easter and on Mother's Day. Huge plants, grown for these special occasions, retail for about $10.00 apiece.

Gloxinias also attract collectors. If you sell by mail, you can interest them through a little two- or three-dollar ad in a spe­cialized publication, such as The Gloxinian or The African

Violet Magazine. Keep up with things through the American Gloxinia Society, and its magazine. Membership is $2.50 per year. Address: Edith McDonald, Secretary, 310 East 71st St., New York 21, New York.

From My Greenhouse

When I first began selling, I vended small potted gloxinias, in bud only, in 3-inch pots to local plant counters. Today I sell only species tubers and those from my crosses between species and large-flowered hybrids, most of them directly to a commer­cial seed house which also orders gloxinia seed. The species seem most popular, followed closely by the hybrid slippers

64. Other than African violets and gloxinias, the episcias are probably the "most wanted" of the gesneriad clan. They are the leading cash register-ringers in many a successful under-glass business. Profits from sales of Episcia dianthiflora, for example, have paid off the initial cost of my greenhouse.  (Photograph by Author)

65. Streptocarpus, the Cape primrose, is handsome in leaf and flower. Interesting variations in floral shades and markings assure a wide appeal. (Courtesy, Antonelli Bros.)

You will find that standard varieties are always in demand. The older ones were hybridized in Europe and today commer­cial dealers here still obtain many of these varieties from foreign sources. Since European growers have low labor costs, they are able to sell below most American dealers.

You pay the wholesaler $7.50 to $35.00 per hundred tubers, depending on the tuber size. You can retail small ones for about 30 cents each; the giants will bring 75 cents to $1.25 each, depending on the market.

For Collectors

The newer hybrid forms appeal most to collectors. Flowers are wide-throated, open-faced, in a great array of colors. Al­though no yellow gloxinia has been developed, there are a num­ber with yellow throats, and there is plenty of variety with which to stock your greenhouse. I know of only a few firms selling doubles, so if you discover any among your seedlings, it would pay you to reproduce them.

Popular with collectors are the species. These have down­ward-facing, slipper-type flowers and pouchlike corollas. Sinnin-gia speciosa, the blue slipper and its varieties, have fair sized slipper-type flowers in blue, purple, white, and rose, and plain green leaves. S. macrophylla, commonly called Brazilian glox­inia, has olive-green leaves red beneath and nodding purple flowers; reginais similar; S. eumorpha displays dangling white bells among shiny green leaves. Baby of them all is S. pusilla with leaves scarcely an inch long and tiny quarter-inch blue-purple flowers. The largest of the species, S. tubiflora, has pointed silvery-green leaves and fragrant white flowers resem­bling nicotiana.

66. Achimenes is another favorite gesneriad. The "catkins" visible in both leaf axils of this rooted cutting are rhizomes, valuable for propagation. (Photograph by Taylor; courtesy, National Horticultural Magazine)

67. This photo of Smithiantha rhizomes shows why gesneriads are out­standing crops for the budget-wise grower. Each rhizome  (background) can be divided into innumerable scales  (foreground), and every scale acts as a seed to produce a new plant.  (Courtesy, Horticulture)

Schedule for Tubers

If you are starting with tubers, plant them in February for June to July flowers and give a daytime temperature of 70 to 80 degrees with the usual 10-degree drop at night. Start tubers in any light soil, peatmoss, sphagnum moss, or vermiculite. As soon as they show growth, move to 4-inch pots. For maximum flowering, they require subsequent shifts to 5- or 6-inchers, depending on size of tuber.

Soil Mixture, Disinfectant, and Fertilizer

Gloxinias grow best in porous soil. I use equal parts of leafmold or peatmoss and sandy soil with a 6-inch pot of processed cow or sheep manure for each bushel. Before planting, soak tubers in a 1-200 solution of Carco-X or other fungicide. Apply the same solution to the potting soil of tubers, cuttings, seedlings or seed, and wait about two days before planting. Subsequent applications direct to moistened soil in the pots of growing gloxinias will keep them free of common troubles.

68. Rechsteineria cardinalis, with emerald green, soft leaves and flashy red flowers, appeals equally to novice house plant gardeners and gesneriad connoisseurs.   (Photograph by Author)

Start fertilizing as soon as you see flower buds, and continue at biweekly intervals until the plant reaches its peak of bloom. Use a fertilizer which contains the minor or trace elements (boron, manganese, etc.). If these are not present in the brand you are using, switch to another, or buy packaged trace ele­ments and apply them in conjunction with the major-element fertilizer.

Light and Water

Plenty of light is essential but avoid direct sunshine which burns leaves and wilts flowers. On the shaded top deck in the greenhouse, where I grow most of my gloxinias, they receive on a summer day about 2000 foot-candles of light at 12:30 p.m. Plants raised in poor light tend to grow too tall and are slow to bud.

Gloxinias grown under constant water level, that is, where the soil is always kept moist, bud much faster than those wa­tered only when the soil obviously needs it.

Health Program and Storing

Thrips, red spider, cyclamen mite, and crown rot, are the worst annoyances. Good culture is the best preventative, but any of the "medicines" prescribed for other exotic house plants will work on gloxinias. If you are loath to use poisonous sprays and powders, try Carco-X on gloxinias and other tuberous-rooted plants. This tar derivative practically exterminates all the usual pests and is a marvelous fungicide as well.

69. Rechsteineria purpurea, sometimes called the double-decker plant, is sure to strike the fancy of customers who want "something different." (Photograph by Author)

After plants finish flowering, gradually withhold water to dry off the tubers. I like to lay the pots on their sides while tubers are being dried off and, when they are dry, store them so in a 50-degree room. Or tubers can be removed from pots and stored in plastic sacks of vermiculite.

Advantages of Seed

Gloxinias can be propagated from seed, leaf or plant cuttings, or tuber divisions. You get the best return for your money as well as the best-formed tubers when you grow from seed. Spe­cies come true to form from seed; varieties do not, and you get a wide range of colors from a packet of seeds.

The seeds are very fine. Sown in February and grown under optimum conditions, they produce flowers by late May or June; those given only general care will not flower until August or September. Sow the seeds on light soil or in vermiculite or milled sphagnum and peatmoss. Sprinkle on top of the mois­tened medium, press down lightly, but do not cover with soil. Put glass over them and set in a warm house. If seeds are rea­sonably fresh, germination takes place in 7 to 10 days. As seed­lings grow, plant them 2 inches apart in a flat of light soil or the soil recommended for tubers. When leaves touch, shift into 3-inch pots. Another shift—to 5-inchers—is advisable be­fore blooming time. Liquid fertilizer applied at 2-week intervals will bring on a good quantity of flower buds.

Gloxinias from, Leaf Cuttings

Should you want more of some named hybrids, propagate by leaf cuttings. Cut the petiole about an inch long and insert it in any sterilized growing medium. Roots form in 4 to 6 weeks. Sometimes the old leaf dies after forming a new tuber, or it may send up a new plant or two before bowing out.

70. This array of geranium leaves is merely representative of the clan's fascinatingly wide range of foliage forms  and colors,  not to mention fragrances.   Fancy-leaved  geraniums  sell well at any  season,  for they are often purchased just for their foliage. (Photograph by Roche)

if new plants show, cut off and pot up in 4-inch pots and give the same culture as for potted tubers. Otherwise, keep the tubers in the flat, giving them an occasional watering, until they sprout; then move to 4-inch pots

71. Handsome, long-lasting flower heads, easily produced in the green­house,   are   the   major   attraction   of   Martha   Washington.    (Courtesy, Wilson Bros.)

Your Own Hybrids

Producing your own hybrids can be profitable. Your first step will be to take pollen from one flower and place it on the stigma of another. The best time is when the blossom has been expanded at least 3 days. The pollinated flower will drop off, and you will notice the formation of a half-sphere—this is the seed capsule, within the calyx. Seeds ripen in 6 to 8 weeks when the capsule splits. Clip the capsule to keep the seeds from fall­ing onto the soil. Remove and store in a cool dry place. Vitality of seeds diminishes with age.

There are endless possibilities in gloxinia hybridization. Most of the species will cross successfully with hybrid forms. And since the species have a richness and flexibility of foliage that is lacking in modern forms, they should be good material for you to use in your hybridizing program.

Should some of your hybrids impress you and your customers as really choice, you may want to work on the strain. Do it by self-pollinating the plants or by pollinating the hybrids with one of the parents, depending on which trait you wish to en­courage and enlarge upon.

One of my most beautiful slipper strains resulted from a cross between a wide-faced white-and-purple gloxinia and a pink form of Sinningia species. From this cross came a range of huge, ruffled, pink-flushed, white slipper gloxinias. As I lacked room to grow them on, I sold some of the tubers to a florist who was eager to propagate them.

Another beautiful batch of gloxinias came from a cross I made between a pink slipper and S. macrophylla. Flowers were in shades of blue, lavender, and deep purple; foliage was intermediate between the two parents—light olive-green, soft rose underneath. A commercial grower tested these seeds for me, as I lacked space for a fair trial. He declared that he had never had so beautiful a group of slipper types as had come from these seeds. To preserve the seed strain, I grew a few and I supply one commercial house with about fifty tubers of these a year. I receive 40 cents apiece for these. I also include some of the seeds in my gesneriad mixture.

72. Fads come and go, but the scented-leaf geraniums, such as Camphor Rose, seem never out of favor. (Courtesy, Wilson Bros.)

Crosses to Try

Here are some other interesting crosses to try: Use the hand­some, white-veined, green-leaved S. regina, with nodding pur­ple flowers, as the seed parent; for the pollen parent, any of the wide-faced newer hybrids. Try a cross between tiny S. pusilla and white-flowered S. eumorpha.

Use the pink slipper as one parent, a large white-margined pink hybrid as the other. Or work for all-pink hybrids by using the pink slipper and a deep rose self from the large-faced hy­brids. If you favor dotted types, try a pink slipper and a pink-dotted tigrina.

Commercial seed houses pay up to $400.00 an ounce for gloxinia seed. To command so good a price, your seed must be of top quality; in a wide range of colors; specialty seeds from unique crosses, or species seed. To interest firms in your mer­chandise, take 35 mm. slides of your gloxinias while they are flowering, include a slide with each inquiry, and do not expect it to be returned. These firms are too busy to attend to the remailing.

If you grow but a few thousand seeds you may want to sell them as I do: hybrid slipper seeds to individuals for $1.00 per hundred; to wholesale firms for $2.50 per thousand.

SOME PROFITABLE VENTURES

Clarence Johnston of Osseo, Minnesota, starts tubers in his home in February, moving them in May to an unheated pit greenhouse where they are ready for market by August. One department store buys his entire output. Since he grows his plants without heat, he can figure on more than usual profits.

Maude Cogswell of Hamburg, New York, who sells mainly by mail, believes that you can make even the smallest green­house a paying proposition. She grows plants in a mixture of Michigan peat, Bacto Sand, and chicken grits, and gives weekly feedings of a complete soluble fertilizer. One huge bench is filled with sphagnum moss, and gloxinias there get liquid ferti­lizing twice a week. She has found the horticultural formulas containing Gibrel (the growth-boosting gibberellic acid) such as Mira-Cell and others, most helpful in rooting plants and starting expensive and hard-to-germinate seeds. Bamboo porch screens, costing $4.00 each, shade the attached, lean-to green­house and reduce temperature by some 10 degrees. In winter, heavy transparent plastic on the windows inside the house cuts heating costs. Cost of upkeep on the steel and brick structure amounts to little more than an annual coat of paint.

In Bethel, Vermont, a retired banker and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. F. J. Sargent, decided to enroll in a florist course. While studying, they set up a 3-bench prefab house, with a shed at­tached for a gift shop. Now they are full-fledged florists, grow­ing "a little of everything" in 10 greenhouse sections with one devoted to gloxinias which are sold in all stages, dormant tubers, seedlings, and flowering gift plants. This last is most profitable, since the Sargents live on the road to the hospital. For their big days, Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day, and Thanksgiving, they buy extra plants in quantity from a whole­sale florist. Their workroom is in the basement of their home, where they have installed a large walk-in refrigerator.

Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Day of Springfield, Illinois, purchased, for $200.00, a model 14- by 16-foot greenhouse erected by a lumber company, and moved it to their city lot and filled it with gloxinias and African violets. To show off his plants, Mr. Day took some to his office where the office people snapped them up and also asked to visit his greenhouse, which meant more sales. The Days soon expect to make their project self-supporting and then, at retirement, expand their business into a full-time money-maker.

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