HIST: going commercial
- To: "i*@egroups.com"
- Subject: HIST: going commercial
- From: J* B*
- Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 22:58:19 -0400
In my rap on finding a bunch of historics and considering their use as
the basis of a commerical operation, I heartily agree with all of Anner
Whitehead's comments, and should have made it clearer that I grow many
historics, including perhaps the best collection of Goos & Koenemann
varieties in the country, a complete US Dykes bed, and as complete a
collection of British, French and Australian Dykes as I can assemble,
plus most of the major species varieties, and many early hybirds
introduced in both the US and Europe, and I love it.
My business is to date entirely based upon garden visits and I've had
the historics right down front for the past two years with some success,
but this year I will be digging and dividing them and moving them
elsewhere, and turning the prime locations over to popular priced modern
stuff, primarily from the 1980s and 1990s. Seeing my entire gardens is
an uphill walk all the way from the parking area, and it just makes more
sense to put the money makers where people can see them.
But, I am the first to raise named varieties in this area, so I readily
admit that my audience may not have the sophistication to appreciate
colors they may already have at home, and 99.9% of them do buy by
color...now. That will change.
In any event I did not advocate putting all the historics in the compost
heap:
<<Your old irises will probably mostly wind up on the compost heap. I'd
keep
not over a half dozen plants of each variety, and then if you buy other
historics of similar description you may get lucky and eventually have
an
identifiable named variety blooming at the same time.>>
The way many historics grow and prosper (and part of standing the test
of time is that most are resistant to most of the ills that befall
irises), 6 per variety is plenty. They'll be dozens per each in just one
year.
There has been a lot of discussion of late of natural hybridizing
causing vigorous plants of one type to eventually take over a bed, and
since historics tend to have a strong desire to reproduce, they shoot
more bee pods than most other varieties put together, so my guess is
that a large amount of the old stuff in most beds is really these
natural hybrids rather than what was originally planted there, and these
plants will be in such profusion that after selection, there is probably
little choice but to compost them or take them to the flea market, or
make a real sweet deal to one of the flea market vendors.
My historic project is to create new G&K varities by crossing with
others of the same era, and this year I used Alcazar as the basis for
most of my crosses, some of which took. Only another year to see if I
have reinvented someone else's wheel, or come a step closer to finally
putting the 1939 G&K catalog on the market.
Guten gluck!
James Brooks
Jonesborough, TN
comeback@usit.net
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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