If All Goes Well, Fuchsias Will Be The Focus This Year

  

     If all goes well, then this just might be the year that I am able to finally get all of my fuchsia stock growing well enough to make and grow cuttings from all of them.  For the last ten years, all I've been able to do is pretty much just try to keep them alive while I worked jobs and grew lavender to raise funds for the fuchsias. 

    Selling lavender has proved to be a huge waste of time now that all e-commerce sites have become all about what thousands are searching for and one of a kind or unusual items few people know about are lost completely.  I have had to waste far too much time trying to get my lavender wands noticed.  So much time that in the end, I don't make any money on it.  In fact I lose money after all of the fees, shipping, advertising, etc.

    I do love growing lavender and using it to make all sorts of things.  But practically everyone with a lavender bush or two sells lavender sachets.  Which is why I have always made a practice of just giving them away along with every invoice.  

    So from now on, I will make a few lavender wands in the summer, as it is something I hope to continue to be able to do way past my retirement when that day comes.  I have always hoped my lavender wands would be established enough by then that I could depend on them for a bit of extra income by then.

    The focus this year must be growing blooming perennials such as fuchsias.  I do love fuchsias and it has always been my hope to preserve as many of the upright heirloom hybrids as possible.  

    Meanwhile, I do hope that the lavender will sell itself somehow and redeem itself by paying off the funds invested in that effort and maybe even help fund growing the fuchsias.

    The fuchsia shown above is 'Annabel' and is in full bloom right now in mid-January of 2021.  She is benefiting from the radiant heat of one of the windows here and I can see her from my desk.  Along with about 15 other varieties I have put on a shelf high enough to be even with the window.

    And of course this also means I get to watch the hummingbirds up close while I am working on my computer!  Even a Ruby Crowned Kinglet has come by to look under each leaf for insects.

    All of the streptocarpus are doing well too and I hope to begin making cuttings of the ones I chose to keep as stock plants.

The Greenhouse Is Here!

I cannot tell you how happy I am to finally have a real greenhouse again after all of these years trying to make cuttings without one!  Upright fuchsias are pretty hardy and I was able to make thousands of cuttings in the past without a greenhouse because I used a breathable sheer cover for them. 

But out here in the oak woods, it is an entirely different game and I've been struggling every since I moved the nursery here 8 years ago, to try and do anything at all beyond just keeping my stock plants alive and protected from all of the wildlife.  The deer adore fuchsias....

So do the gophers and worst of all, the rats.  Not little pet store rats.  Great big wood rats that destroy everything looking for edible seeds and shoots.  And gophers will chew right through the bottoms of thick black plastic pots to get at the roots of the fuchsias.  Squirrels looking for a safe place to bury their acorns, dig in all of the pots, dislodging vital name tags... 

The first year, it was my dream to have a huge display garden of all 350 varieties planted along a long slope.  So I spent a huge amount of time clearing that slope, digging 350 holes big enough to put 5 gallon sized fuchsias into, and then planted all of my stock plants here.  Only to have them all freeze that winter in a freakishly cold winter snap here by the ocean.  And when they tried to come back up from their base stems, the deer mowed them down.  This meant building a deer proof enclosure, and digging all of them back up, re-potting them, and moving them into the enclosure.

During this time there was no material to make cuttings with, so I had no inventory to offer.  And no income.  Without the ability to be here and monitor all the different needs of small batches different varieties of cuttings in person, while I worked other jobs and went back to college, it was basically impossible to create a new inventory.

With great expectations this winter, I started out by sowing over 20 varieties of flower seed in order to raise funds and be able to start making fuchsia cuttings again.  But as soon as I moved them outdoors to the grow shelves, the bumper crop of rats (everyone in this entire county is screaming about the rat population explosion this year) immediately broke into everything and dug everything up in their search for anything edible.

That just about did me in.

But I can't give up! 
I opened an Amazon Handmade shop ( Amazon.com/handmade/Pedricks  ) to sell the lavender items I've been making from the field of lavender I planted to replace the field of fuchsias. 
The Etsy shop is still up as well, but fewer people even know Etsy exists (Etsy.com/shop/Pedricks)
And I will be adding another 100 lavender bushes to it as soon as they are big enough.  It is my hope that sales of lavender will continue to fund my efforts to get the plant nursery restarted.  With a focus on the hardy upright fuchsias I fell in love with way back in my days at the once famous Antonelli Brothers Begonias Gardens where I had an acre of greenhouses growing ferns.

With this little greenhouse, who knows?  I just might finally be able to sow some fern spore again as well!

Thank-you to everyone who helped me get this little greenhouse!  A second one, twice it's size, has a space reserved for it down below if all goes well this spring and summer.

Of course it is raining cats and dogs right now.  But as soon as the greenhouse is put together, I will post more photos here!