Flowers vary from bright red to red-and-yellow, rich maroon, a real “shocking” pink, and cream with a blue margin. Foliage may be green, green margined with red, brown interlaced with green or vice versa. Culture is the same as for achimenes.

The variety most commonly grown is K. eriantha. This can be a tall plant which needs staking, or it can be handled as a trailer. Smaller-flowered K. amabilis has as pleasing flowers as can be found on any pot plant. Of the brightest pink, they have maroon dots on the throat. Single flowers are long-lived, often remaining on the plant 3 or 4 weeks. The pale green leaves are threaded with rich brown. This one would be an instant hit in any plant counter or at any florist shop. K. Lindeniana has brown-and-green leaves and cream-and-blue flowers. This too is of easy culture and unusual enough to be a most profitable item. Cecilia is another charming variety.

Hybridizing possibilities are good, as there is a wide range of colors, foliage forms, and heights.

While most kohlerias set seed rather easily, their pollen supply is short especially on K. amabilis and K. Lindeniana. Select a sunny day for pollination, obtaining pollen from a newly opened or 1-day-old flower, and place it on the stigma of a flower that has been open about a week. Seeds ripen in some 6 weeks. While a number of growers include Kohleria seed with mixed gesneriad seed, I know of no one offering seed from the special varieties. Labeled specifically, such seeds would certainly prove good sellers.

Rechsteineria

Here is a pot plant with an excellent future?it will pay you to make its acquaintance. Some specialty houses still list but one rechsteineria, and that under the name of Gesneria cardi-nalis, macrantha, or umbellata. (Taxonomists now include Gesneria and Corytholoma with Rechsteineria.) I have six species of these plants. By ordering seed from several specialty houses, you can obtain a good collection for your own sales list.

This tuberous-rooted gesneriad from Brazil has unusually varied flower forms, but the color range is not great, from pale pink through salmon and yellow to vivid red. The plants are of easiest culture, some varieties blooming several times a year. Of even greater “dollar importance” to me is the fact that these plants will interbreed with some of the sinningias to produce glamorous bigeneric hybrids.

Tubers of rechsteinerias are firm; those of R. cardinalis resembling a sweet potato, the others being more like gloxinia tubers; R. cardinalis has heart-shaped, emerald green, hairy leaves and brilliant red flowers of unusual form.

Rechsteineria cyclophylla bears an umbel of bright red 5-petaled flowers. It flowers several times a year, sometimes sending up flower scapes with no leaves. My older specimen plants are never given much rest, while those intended for sale are dried off shortly after they finish flowering.

A 2-year-old tuber can be depended upon to produce hundreds of flowers at blooming time, and the flowers, having good substance, make exciting and unusual corsages.

The helmetlike flowers of R. Warszewiczi have lovely salmon-to-lemon coloring, and plants grow to 2 feet. Most of us who hybridize gloxinias would like to work this luscious near-cantaloupe hue into a gloxinia strain. Tubers are the easiest of all gesneriad tubers to store. They can be left in the pots, watered slightly, or left dry; or they can be removed and stored in sand or vermiculite.

A variety of the red-flowered R. purpurea grows in a fascinating way. The glossy, sharply serrated leaves develop in whorls of three, then six. Topping the 18-inch plant are two umbels of rose-splashed tubular flowers, usually about 150 of them at a time. My seed sales from this variety are excellent. But I haven’t exploited the plant since I want to use it in my own hybridization. I know of no seed or bulb house selling these tubers, but that is no drawback since it is easily grown from seed.

Rechsteineria leucotricha or Brazilian edelweiss, has leaves covered with downy silver hair, and light red flowers. The tubers are round and of light orange color in their young state, but as they age they become darker and somewhat gnarled. This species, like R. cyclophylla, will send up flower scapes in advance of the heavy foliage?often without benefit of pot or potting soil. It is easily grown from seed but a bit difficult from cuttings. One firm sells mature plants for as much as $20.00 apiece.

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Look through the garden magazines and newspaper garden sections for names of large seed houses; write these concerns and offer your seeds for sale. Small houses may like to buy them by the thousand; larger dealers take them in ounce or fraction-ounce quantities. In retailing the seeds, a fair price for mixed collections of seeds from various types of plants is $1.00 per 200 seeds. For specials such as seeds from double pinks or all whites you can easily get about $1.00 per 100.

Prices to seed houses will vary with the size of the company. If a house will take only a few hundred, you will have to sell them at about half the price you get retail. When you sell by the ounce, you will be able to realize $300.00 to $350.00 per ounce for average seed mixtures. For mixtures from the newest varieties including doubles, pinks, whites, and those of unusual foliage, you can command up to $750.00 per ounce.

Add a few granules of silica gel (extremely absorbent material which you can obtain at the druggist’s) to keep packets of “shelled” seeds dry.

How to Pack and Ship

Rooted or un rooted leaves are easily shipped. First inquire from your state Department of Agriculture whether or not you must have inspection. Not many states require inspection for greenhouse-grown material provided it is for a domestic destination. A few states, where Japanese beetle is prevalent, do require it, and to ship into Canada it is necessary to have inspection in all states.

Before shipping the leaves, write the name of the variety on a slip of paper; fasten it to the top of the leaf with a metal tab clip. Wrap the end of the petiole in a square inch of moist cotton secured by a covering of aluminium foil. Place the tagged and cotton-wrapped leaf in cellophane or a small plastic bag. Protected this way, leaves arrive in prime condition.

Some growers still employ the old-fashioned method of shipping leaves with the petiole ends wrapped in sphagnum moss and the whole leaf then wrapped in newspaper. If the shipment is not too long on the road this is good enough; but if it is a case of several days’ transit during hot weather the leaf becomes so dry it will fail to root.

You Can Start Small

Most of the large African violet specialists made their first profits from a small greenhouse, going on to build more and perhaps larger houses. Where they are now, you also can be one day in the not-too-distant future if you decide to make a full-time business out of a greenhouse African violet operation.

A Few Success Stories

Mr. and Mrs. E. P. Dingman of East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, describe their prefab 13- by 20-foot greenhouse as “a hobby house which we can truthfully say operates profitably ?both financially and aesthetically.” After his retirement from the navy, they bought a greenhouse and a year later, added a potting shed, 13 by 14 feet; then fluorescent lights in under-bench areas, thereby doubling capacity.

As their stock increased, spurred by favorable word-of-mouth advertising, buyers began visiting them. In addition to African violets, gloxinias, and other gesneriads, the Dingmans now sell annuals and perennials profitably.

African Violets Increase a Small Inheritance

When the Claybornes of St. Petersburg, Virginia, came into a small inheritance, Mr. Clayborne bought used material and built a greenhouse for African violets some of which had captured ten ribbons at the Richmond Flower Show. “Stop at the African Violet Hobby House,” their sign invites. Since Mrs. Clayborne works as a nurse, she has limited time for sales just enough to meet expenses. Currently she is taking a florist course and has a standing sale of a few arrangements a week, proceeds from which go to the purchase of more African violet stock. It is the Claybornes’ aim to make their business profitable enough to support them upon their retirement.

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African Violets and Orchids

George Wissell of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has a 10- by 10-foot affair, built for approximately $350.00. He grows only African violets and orchids. The orchids hang from the roof to obtain more light and to help shade the African violets. Two double-shelved benches are at the sides of the house. Fluorescent lights under the first bench adequately light the plants growing on the lower bench, which is about 6 inches above the floor.

In such small quarters, Mr. Wissell does an excellent job of hybridizing and growing. All the plants, except those kept for hybridizing, are sold to local stores or hobbyists. This constant profit promotes his hybridization in a big way.

Meeting Home-Town Needs

In Houston, Texas, Grace Grissom sells African violets from her 15- by 48-foot attached-to-the-dwelling greenhouse. A suspended gas heater keeps the temperature up during the winter months, while an evaporative cooler holds it down during the scorching summer. She attends conventions to procure the newest violets, which she propagates. She is now adding a sales room for potting accessories, materials for flower arranging, and other gardening equipment.

Sales Through Mail & The Internet

A friend in New York rears her African violets in a prefabricated 10- by 12-foot lean-to and sells through the mail, eliminating the “bother” of having people running to her greenhouse. Much of her trade comes through membership in round-robins (correspondence groups of various plant societies). She advertises her specialties in such publications as The African Violet Magazine, The Gloxinian and The Begonian, with an ad once or twice a year in one of the larger gardening journals. Her hobby pays off well in both cash and fun.

David Spinks from Boston has used the internet to set up a thriving gardening business. He followed others by making his first sales on Ebay. He built up a very large customer base using Ebay, by giving good customer service and building up a good feedback score. David sells seeds and small plants in compost that can be packaged easily and posted.? He has now branched out and runs several websites that sell not only plants but also gardening supplies.

?African Violets from a Southern Greenhouse

In humid Louisiana, a hobbyist sells African violets from a 24- by 30-foot free-standing greenhouse erected by local builders. By keeping a heavy shading on the glass and several layers of cheesecloth inside the house, he is able to keep the house cool enough in summer. He raises thousands of violets and, while he sells some locally, his main business is wholesale.

If you want to make African violets your specialty, it will pay you to join The African Violet Society of America, Inc., P. O. Box 1326, Knoxville, Tennessee. This Society issues a well-illustrated magazine, and there are a number of other advantages to membership.

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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.

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.

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