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This telephone call to my wife came from a customer of our side-line hobby-greenhouse and gardening business. Which, incidentally, seems to be one of those simple things that has been overlooked as a profitable hobby. It started at our home in Armonk, New York, from nothing but a gardening hobby, a desire to make extra money in spare time, and a glass-enclosed box outside the cellar window for a hotbed. It has grown into an established wholesale business with greenhouse, cold frames, station wagon, registered trade name, and steady customers.

It is not speculative but it is profitable and very interesting. Gardening treasure hunters seek the pot of gold by trying to create new named varieties or by going in for exotic flowers, much as livestock people may try chinchillas or fancy pheasants. These are hazardous ways to lay away a little something for winter. The steady income lies in products that everyone knows, and can afford. The perfect combination is a product that has a touch of luxury but can be sold cheaply. That is the basis of this operation—"cut rate luxuries in volume."

"WE BEGAN by retailing geraniums and ivy, but the first customers wanted African violets or philodendron. So we tried to have something of everything and to have it in bloom when someone wanted it. As a spare time activity without a roadside stand the volume of sale was not worth the effort. Then we grew an assortment of cacti and succulents to sell to florists for dish gardens, but again the volume was too small and the competition from southern growers keen. Nor could we compete with specialists on the big flower holiday items like poinsettias and Easter lilies.

Finally we saw what now seems so evident. We would raise plants the commercial growers did not raise, and sell them where they did not sell—inexpensive house plants to satisfy the impulse buying of housewives at five and ten's, supermarkets, and roadside stands. Plants such as coleus and tuberous begonias which need frequent watering, or are too fragile, and cannot be shipped in from afar. Such plants are in consequent short supply and enjoy a steady local demand. Dealers are hungry for color on their counters. They want a near-by source of supply for frequent deliveries and constant fresh stock. So this demand for a succession of different items, in quantities too small to be attractive to the big flower producer, is ample to keep me busy.

I virtually have no competition. The head plant buyer of a national syndicate asked me if I could not possibly supply their stores in neighboring towns. I would love to. It would be a little gold mine. But in the time at my disposal it is not profitable for me to deliver beyond a limited radius. However, every town from coast to coast which can support the usual chain stores can support one or more "home growers." To help people in these towns to get started I have, therefore, compiled my notes and records into a compact workingman's manual entitled "Grow Extra Dollars-at Home." This shows the average man exactly what to do.

ALL YOU need for your "home growing" business is:

1. Plot of ground,
2. A propagating bed,
3. A cold frame,
4. A motor car.

Having the ground and auto, an investment of about $100 in equipment and supplies, plus six to ten hours a week in spare time, starts you in business.

A plot of ground the size of the ordinary backyard vegetable patch is sufficient. The propagating bed is a glass covered box with about four inches of moist sand in the bottom, and heat underneath. It is cheaper to operate when in a greenhouse, but can be a section of your cold frame outdoors. Heat is supplied indoors by a thermostatically controlled electric cable, and outdoors by either the cable or horse manure. It is used to start seeds and bulbs, and to root cuttings. It costs new, with the heating unit, about $40.

The cold frame is a bottomless box made of 2-inch stock lumber, set in the garden, and covered with standard 3-by-6-foot cold frame sash. The new material cost of a five-sash frame, which is large enough to start with, is about $60. It will hold thirty-five flats of seedlings which sell for $2 each, so your first crop more than pays for this piece of equipment. You then use it to carry along potted plants where they can be conveniently shaded by a slat shade in hot weather, and protected by the glass sash on cool autumn nights.

The family auto is usually adequate to deliver your produce to market. Most cars will hold from eight to ten flats of seedlings or potted plants, which bring from $2 to $4.50 a flat.

A home greenhouse is wonderful to have as a hobby. It earns a good return and it will naturally follow that you will eventually have one. My wife and I had wanted one for years but it was a luxury we could not afford until we saw that it could produce an income. It has proved to be a good investment. She has much pleasure with her section of tropical flowers, and it has greatly increased my production by extending the growing period around the year. By and large the greenhouse becomes secondary when the cold frame and open garden take over in spring, but in autumn it's the greenhouse that becomes the center of operations. So the number of hours worked each week remains fairly constant but with a greenhouse I am in production more weeks in the year.

You can have a greenhouse by building your own of new or used materials, or by buying a prefabricated sectional unit. Using new materials it would probably take all your spare time for a spring and summer to build. I bought an abandoned greenhouse paying an estimated 5 cents a foot for the pipe framing, 2 cents a foot for the wooden sash bars, and 5 cents a pane for the glass. I had to be a pipe-fitter, glazier, electrician, carpenter, and painter. I had to get the tools of those crafts and learn how to use them. It took all my spare time for two years. If I had it to do over again I would get a ready-made unit and be in production that much sooner. Quantity production has reduced or eliminated the difference in cost between the homemade job and the precision-built greenhouse.

PLANNING PRODUCTION, or timing the traffic through your equipment, is important. Early in the game I started seeds for thirty different annual flowers. I could not possibly transplant all the seedlings, nor was there space for all the flats I did transplant. When it came time to sell, some plants were too big and others too small. Worse still, some would not sell regardless. I miscalculated the growing period of a crop of Soleil d'Or and paperwhite narcissus and it came into bloom between Christmas and New Year's when nobody had an extra dime to spend. I had to get them out of the way and showered them on our friends and neighbors. Crops should be grown under a time and space schedule to keep the equipment busy without overloading, to bring them in at the right time, and to have one crop starting while the second is coming along and the third is being sold. Keep a record of the date planted, the number of flats from a package of seed, when saleable, and the number sold. Then next year you will know how much seed, and bulbs, to buy and when to start them.

What you should grow is determined by your local growing conditions, public demand, and buying power. Plants that are popular in Westchester County, New York, may not sell at all in your locality. But it is not a difficult question. A plant with a flower or highly colored foliage is almost certain to sell. Try a few test runs. Some may not sell, others may not be profitable, and on those that do meet requirements you almost inevitably will adjust the planting date, the size pot, or something. Then next season you can grow them heavily with confidence. Proceed on the premise that you will sell all you can raise. You should have a trial run of a couple of new items each season.

Soil, too, is important but not a problem. Just mix ordinary garden topsoil with horse manure, peat moss, or humus to give it a nice humusy texture. Then test it for alkalinity, and nutrient deficiencies, with an inexpensive Sudbury soil test kit obtainable in most garden supply stores.

YOUR LOCAL commercial greenhouseman and you are complementary, not competitive. You neither raise the same crops nor sell to the same people. On the contrary, if he has a retail outlet he will buy from you as he cannot raise everything. He is a good man to know. He can teach you a lot about growing, and I have not found one yet who is not ready and willing to talk.

Profitable operations hinge on the realization that you are selling time and space; the plant is just the vehicle. Whatever you grow takes so much time and so much space. You have a limited amount of each and want to make the most of it. There are about ten square yards of bench space in a 9-by-15-foot greenhouse. You should operate this to produce $5 a yard a month. You can grow about seventy-five 3½-inch pots to the yard. Therefore, each pot must earn 6.5 cents a month. If it is saleable in three months you must get 19.5 cents for time and space, plus 3.5 cents for material cost. So sell it for an even quarter. With or without a greenhouse, this principle of pricing works out to something better than $2 an hour for your time.

Roadside stands are good outlets for you in the spring and may be developed for a fall house-plant business. Chain stores and supermarkets with horticultural departments are good the year around. Retail florists are generally interested primarily in cut flowers. About the best way to open a new account is to load your merchandise in your car and drive up as though you had been doing it all your life. You are a grower, not a high-pressure salesman, and you are dressed and talk the part. Just know your product. Your customer is very important to you. Be sure that he is making money handling your goods. Give him every possible break and it is simply good business for him to cooperate fully with you.

The business pays dividends on you, your equipment, and the time and energy you put behind it. It has not been reduced to a near science as has the chicken business for instance. It is an unexploited field in which imagination and initiative are well rewarded. And it is an excellent training ground for your teen-age children. Let them help you operate it and get this firsthand practical business training which they will not get in any school.

THIS SPARE time activity should meet with the approval of your employer, if you have one. Progressive personnel executives are encouraging the idea of a "profitable hobby now—your own business at 65." It is hard for them to tell an employee just what to do, and as the director of personnel of a major oil company wrote me, "Grow Extra Dollars—At Home" fills a very important need. They believe that the best adjusted people are those with an outside interest in contrast to their daily work. Top executives feel that a profitable, healthy, and interesting hobby is not only good for the employee, it is good for the company.

It makes a better employee. As his own boss he is in intimate contact with the problems of production, marketing, and customer relations. He sees the over-all picture and he develops a broader, more sympathetic understanding of management.

It makes a more confident employee. It is an outlet for self-expression. He must make his own decisions and, right or wrong, there is no passing the buck.

It makes a more contented employee. The money he earns on the side is just a fraction of his salary, but it is extra money and he has fun making it. And it is that extra dollar which provides little luxuries for a happier home life.

And the light exercise in the fresh air and sunshine makes a healthier employee.

It is not felt that this will adversely affect his regular work, as a man with the ambition and energy to start a sideline business is not a shirker. So rather than disapprove of your hobby your company will probably be glad to give you a write-up in their house organ.

Whether you plan a simple or an elaborate layout you can feel that you are making a capital investment which will earn extra dollars in otherwise unproductive hours. You can either:

1. Make it pay part or all of the expenses of your gardening hobby, with or without a greenhouse, or