Nursery : Detailed Information and Importance

  An Overview On Nursery Practices 

             

Lets talk about todays' hectic, rapidly growing and developing generation where entrepreneurs are on the line for creating their business grow both profitably and sustainably. New types of innovations and ideas of entrepreneurs are making different sorts of business grow worldwide. Likewise, on the same objectives connected, many business oriented persons are establishing a nursery ;especially agricultural graduates and farmers have more passion  for this as both hobby and employments; in recent days.

Generally, nursery is a place where plants are grown before they are transplanted in the main field. Their use is known for the budding or grafting along with the sale purposes. In nursery practices, plants are commonly cultivated from seeds or from cuttings and are well grown in pots or other temporary containers. The fate of nursery is dependent on the quality and truthfulness of mother plants. Nursery provides good returns in short period of time and is included in highly profitable enterprise. There are various parts or components of nursery for the mandatory construction of the nursery and such components are: mother plant. propagation block, plastic house or green house, net house, main building structure, packaging and marketing structure, etc.

We can find broad classification of nurseries and they are explained here. The first classification is according to the type of plants. Fruit Plant Nurseries, which  are essential for production of grafts as well as the mother plants of scions and rootstocks. Fruit crops are mainly propagated vegetatively and need special techniques for propagations as well as maintanence. Vegetable Nurseries, where all vegetables except few like potatoes; sweet potato; bulbous vegetables and some other are raised by seedlings. Ornamental Plant Nurseries, which are numerous ornamental and floricultural crops which are propagated vegetatively, such as gladiolus, rose,carnation,etc and there are also large group of ornamental plants, which are propagated by seeds and seedlings such as asters, marigolds, salvias,etc. Medicinal and Aromatic Plant Nurseries where plants are in the demand of the people involved in Ayurvedic medicines .And it is also important to conserve the fast depleting precious medicinal  and aromatic plants. Hi-Tech Nurseries , where there is a sudden increase in the demand for certain commercial crops such as Tissue cultured banana,gerbera and carnation,etc.These nurseries grow plants in greenhouse,building of glass or plastic tunnel,designed to protect young plants and provide favourable conditions for germination.Thus,they fulfill the demands .

There is also another classification of nursery according to the types of sales and such types are described here too. In Retail Nurseries, the places are small and sell seasonal,  annuals, ornamental trees and other landscaping plants for sale to the general public or companies that specialize in a particular type of plant. Wholesale Nurseries are also the nurseries that grow plants in bulk in purpose for selling to the large clients and such clients include florists, garden centers or departmental stores. Private Nurseries ,the nurseries grows plant exclusively for single client. The private nursery maybe owned by a client or it  may be under contract for use by the client. Mail Order: Privately owned,retail and wholesale businesses may be all involved in mail order business.As shipping technology improved,it became possible to ship dormant ornamental trees and bedding plants via mail.

There are some basic considerations for the proper establishment of nursery enterprise, which we all must know about. Selection of site is the first task to be done.The site should comprise the facilities of sufficient amount of irrigation; proper drainage, electricity, near access to market, infrastructure developments(road, communication,etc),soil type and fertility status, light intensity, temperature maintainence, air movement, etc. All these factors should be properly analyzed in site selection. Propagation Structures should be properly faciliated. While germinating either by seed or vegetative method, both require special care and attention.In the first unit for the germination of seedings, rooting of cuttings or tissue culture; green house|poly house ,hot beds are used. And in the second unit into which the young ,tender plants can be moved for hardening, preparing for transplanting; cold frames, polythene tunnels and lath house are used. Nursery bed preparation  and planting |sowing in pre nursery bed is a necessary step. While preparing nursery bed we must notice that the bed should be near to main garden to avoid damage of seedlings during transplanting. Nursery bed should be also protected from strong winds and should never be located on a slope to avoid erosion of seeds and nutrients ;it should face east-west direction .Container selection and media selection and preparation should be done accordingly. There are various kinds of container found such as earthen pots,plastic pots, fiber pots, polythene bags, flat trays, seed pan  and seed boxes, wooden containers,etc.We can use them according to suitabaility. The media usually consists of garden soil, well decomposed cattle manure, leaf mold, river sand and also charcoal in some cases. Soil mixture commonly used for propagation is garden soil, FYM and sand in the ratio of 2:1:1. And finally planting in the container is done.

 As per more information, there are some characteristics and types of nursery media. A good media should be highly decomposed, easily available, dense enough to hold seedling and cutting, moist and porous for good aeration and drainage, have consistent quality. They should be also free from nematodes and pathogens. Beside this, they should not have high salinity level and contain weed seed. There are various types of growing media and such media can be classified into inorganic and organic components. The inorganic components are: soil, sand and gravel, vermiculite, perlite, zeolite, polystyrene, etc and the organic components used in growing media are: peat, charcoal, vermi-compost, sphagnum moss, etc. There are several management practices we must do after regularly after potting plants such as : watering, fertilization, mulching, pinching, deheading, etc. 

I guess we have finally known after reading such a long blog, that nursery has a great importance. Propagation by vegetative methods such as cutting , grafting, budding,require special care and maintenance which can be easily provided in a nursery easily. Seasoning of seedling;Some seed do not respond to direct planting. So,they should be grown with care and maintenance with poly pot eg: papaya snapdragon,etc. Nursery is the best place to provide hardening to the seedling.It makes the efficient space utilization. We can achieve large economic benefits.