Good morning everyone, I am sorry for going off topic a bit but my wife and are tremendous fans of our garden, but live in Minnesota. We have been trying to figure out a way to keep our garden living through out the year. This season we are buying a greenhouse, and we are considering turning it into a business next season. Our question is this, would people be interested in a service where someone would come take out your garde in the fall, bring it and maintain it in a greenhouse through the winter, then return and re plant everything in the spring. Would this be a service you would be interested in at a certain price? Thank you, Andrew
Andrew, I don't mean to rain on your parade, but have you thought this through? If you had three cusomers with pretty big gardens, your greenhouse would be jam-packed. Then of course, everyone would want their garden back as soon as the growing season starts, which would mean long hard days for you. Then there is the question of stress on the plants. Digging up a fairly large plant and potting it entails a lot of root loss. If the plant doesn't make it through the winter, who replaces it, you or the customer? Also, there are quite a few plants that just don't like to be disturbed. Are you going to take part of the garden and mulch the rest, or try to take all of it? I think you might do better having a business that "winterizes" a garden with mulch, heeling in plants, and making straw cages for delicate plants. Then you could also charge to "de-winterize" in the springtime.
Something else to consider...you would have to be able to keep your environment disease free and that will be impossible when you have plants from several different gardens in the greenhouse. Many people don't know that a plant or their soil is infected until part or all of the garden start showing signs. Depending on the disease, one infected plant or pot of soil and you could find yourself with a greenhouse filled with dead or dying plants that you have to replace. I would think that avid gardeners in your area or other cold areas would already have somewhere to keep their less hardy plants for the winter so there might not be a lot of potential customers.
