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Ramping up to open plant shop...seeking advice

Hyssmaye

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Hi /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

I'm building up stock for a plant shop on Chessy. I want to sell deco plants - plain and colored, labelled seeds, mutants and rare-colored plants. I'm trying to decide whether to offer 7-day unpollinated plants as well.

If you were selling unpollinated plants, would you stick to brights and more popular plants only? Or stratics-type "mother" sets maybe? What about "father" plants then?

For those of you who run shops, do you follow a set planting routine - so many of x type and x color per 10-day period?

Also, any other advice anyone has is very welcome. For those of you familiar with Chessy, I have been to Maritime Gardens (a lot) and just love it! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif
 
G

Guest

Guest
Hi Hyssmaye!

About unpollinated plants - this is my thoughts on them and not necesarily the norm lol. I would think that the person you're targetting with unpollinated plants would be the grower - and as such, he/she would want the ability to pick up any plant at any time, or at least that is the way I approach an unpollinated plant vendor, when I'm looking for a specific plant I need to self polly (or cross specifically). As such, I would think maybe a couple of vendors with one of each plant available.

Now about my planting schedule, I'll describe out in detail how I go about planting - but let me warn (everyone) - it's not for the weak of heart *GRINS* as you'd be tending 360+ plants at any given time. Also lots of space is required - I grow on 3 floors of an 18x18 devoted solely to growing plants. (a smaller house can do with stacking)

First though let me back up and explain my shop and when and what I choose to plant. My shop has 17 vendors, one for each plant type. On each vendor I put roughly 20-30 of the plain version of the plant. Also then I put 8 of each color, both dull and bright on each vendor. This means that I offer multiples of every plant available out there. When I am planting, I will try to at least once every 9 days plant a batch of plain campions, a batch of plain poppies, and a batch of plain snowdrops (in a staggered schedule which I'll get to in a few moments). These 3 plants sell out more consistantly than any other plant on my vendors so I am trying to always keep a backstock of them so that I can run out and fill the vendor back up as it's cleared. (I also should point out that my prices are relatively low and it's probably not uncommon that I am being bought out by resellers - however the trick is to keep your stock filled so that people who really do shop a lot *know* where the good prices are and the vendors are full). Other things I might plant would include colored plants I notice have all sold out and have no backstock of or other plain plant types which sell out less frequently. Finally, sometimes I just grow whatever I happen to have lying around the house at the time - to explain this further, you should know I'm a HUGE seed junkie. I love the things *especially* when they are not named and I have no idea what is gonig to pop up - it makes for a fun growing game. (and to further explain - as an example, in doing idocs a couple of weeks ago, I procurred roughly 500 or more seeds, at least half of which were un-named - I"m beyond happy with them *grins*)

Okay - so before I go any further with that, I need to explain my growing layout and pattern so that the rest makes sense. I've been doing this since February and I like the schedule very much - for some reason it seems easier than just planting whatever I have time for of a day or skipping days and then having a huge planting day, etc.

Everything is locked down in my house - I do no backpack growing - this allows for consistant growth times among all the plants.

I have divided my floor space up into 9 sections (with staffs for section marks - easier than actually building walls for such) - each floor has 3 sections and as I stated earlier, I have 3 floors that I am growing on. Each section is 5 plant bowls wide (laid out singley along the floor, nothing stacked) and can be as long as I wish it to be.

Each section is done on a rotating 9 day basis (which not too coincidently is the amount of time it takes a plant to go from being planted to being ready to put in deco mode - and I should also mention - when I grow plants, I *never* grow them for seeds - plants for seeds are special which I'll cover later on). Every day I plant 40 seeds and lock them down in a section (making a 5x8 bowl section). I chose 40 because that is the number of bowls you can get at most provisioners (20 per provisioner). Yes I could chose more, I could even choose less, but I find 40 managable.

Now with this setup, every section is a day further along than the last and it is constantly rotating. This also allows me to put out 40 deco plants a day. There are some other perks to this as well.

There are 2 sections that never need tending. Whatever section is on day 8 I don't have to tend (since the plant will go to deco the next day, if it as vibrant, it will almost never fall below healthy, and only extremely rarely (like 1 in 1000) fail to take a growth check even when it falls to wilted).

The other section is the one that was planted the day before but has not had it's first growth check yet.

A third section is the section being planted that day - which replaces the section with day 9 plants - it's a bit more work than no tending at all since you have to set the 40 plants to deco and pull them up then set down the newly watered and planted bowls in their place.

Two or three other sections (I forget which) are the dirt bowl which I prefer to have to target with my water pitcher (a discussion we had a while back about which is easier *lol* so I won't rehash it here).

Every other day I cross-pollinate 80 plants. This includes a batch of 40 that is on day 7 and a batch of 40 that is on day 8.

Okay, so that's basically my setup - there are a few other things to add in.

I keep a stock of 2 (trying to make it 3) of each plant self pollinated with all it's seeds on it. So I also have a special area set aside that I grow self-pollied plants in. When they turn 7 and I want them for self-pollination I move them to this special area and let them grow the whole way to being completely seeded. Obviously this area moves much slower lol - but sometimes there is only a few plants - sometimes there are a lot if I've pulled my seeds from my self pollied stores.

I also have a 'resource' section where I grow green thorn, orange petal, or red leaf plants - this section sometimes doesn't even exist and other times may have 40 or more plants in it - depending on my stores of the resources.

Finally, I squeeze in a section to grow mutated plant seeds (and momma plants growing mutated seeds).

It's all very crowded ROFL but IMO very well laid out as well.

As I said before, I will plant plain campions, plain poppies, and plain snowdrops pretty consistantly. I try to plant them at least once every 9-12 days and will plant 40 of one type at a time (so one of the sections might be entirely plain campions, etc)

For the colored plants I am low on on vendors - I usually will plant 8 or 16 of them. I try for 16 but if my vendors have been heavily bought out (happened last month) - I will go for 8 of each to try to get more plants done at a time. This allows for 5 plant colors/types to be grown in a single section.

When I'm planting just any seed I have - I just grab 40 and go /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

I do have to take breaks sometimes - planting that much can really wear one out - or like recently, I was very busy RL and so just packed up all the plants into bags and plopped each bag down in it's section.

And sometimes sales are slow and i can let gardening go for a few days and go do other stuff in game *lol* (heck, sometimes even when sales *aren't* slow I still go do other things)

I don't know if this is the most efficient way to grow plants, but I do know that it's really working for me - I've been very happy with it since I started doing this some months ago.

Hehe - this may have been wayyyyyyyyy more information than you wanted *lol* - but Sonoma is down right now so I have just been rambling on (not that I ever don't ramble otherwise hahaha)
 

Hyssmaye

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
THANKS so much for the fantastic info!! This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

Thanks!! /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif
 
R

Rhiannon of Luna

Guest
I want your house... /php-bin/shared/images/icons/laugh.gif

My shop in Luna is so small. When I bought it, I knew space would be a major problem, but I felt the trade off to being in Luna proper would be worth it. It is, but it would be SO nice to be able to grow like you do. When the expansion comes out, I plan to customize to look as much like a greenhouse as possible.

Nice job and thanks for sharing this! I am saving it just in case I ever get a large house and need ideas!
 
Y

Yontz

Guest
I'd love to see your house, any chance you could share your shard and cords??
Thanks /php-bin/shared/images/icons/flash.gif
 
G

Guest

Guest
hehe - it's actually set to private (the one I grow plants in) - I'll have to set it to public and get the coords - I'll post them tomorrow.

My plant shop (on Sonoma) is just east of Luna - just right on the other side of the cave with the energy field (but it's not the house I grow plants in - I realize that I didn't make that clear in my looong post lol!).
 
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