Increasing Gerbera flower size, quality and quantity

Hey Everyone,  Its been long since the last post and there are a couple of issues  that i wanted to write about and this post is about one aspect that really manages the flower size quality and the quantity.

Like i mentioned earlier this one variety ..dark pink arrived late in the farm and was not along with the regular schedule of all other saplings. But becoz of  the wedding season there was a huge demand for the flowers and i started to harvest these flowers just after like 8-9 weeks after plantation and that has really effected the plants ..   No one was bothered about the flower size and quality as it was wedding season and each flower fetched as much as  8rs  and so until the season was over i have harvested flowers from these .. but i slowly started seeing the stress on the plants and there has been decrease in the flower quality in the strength wise and also with the length .. i was just not happy and another important thing  is that  the plants were not able to hold to soil while trying to pluck the flower and resulting in  plant uprooting or  loosening .. So, i planned to hold the flower development for another 5-6 weeks and   stress on the growth of the plant.  Removed all the buds  and cleaned up all  the dried up leaves and  raked up soil once and adjusted the plants and waited for them to grow ...  6 weeks  and   woooooww ... i just was soo happy to see the  happy plants  all  ready and  tight  to give a depression to other plants .. look at the last pic ..  see the flower bloom  it was  gushing like river !!     

End of the day lessons learnt --  Do not start  harvesting until the plant  is  firm and has atleast 16 leaves.

Dark Pink Gerbera-- One of the fav of the all buyers now !!

weak plants and dying leaves ... 5 weeks earlier .. with  weaker buds and smaller flower diametre

All the buds removed and drenched with growth stimulant

After  5 weeks of dormant growing ..  increased  Gerbera flower size , stem length and quantity

Senility of leaves-- Clean and green

Past few weeks i was  worried about one thing in the  farm, the older leaves started  drying off .. initially i thought it was leaf scorching  or may be it was some sort of disease i didn't know,  but apart from dying leaves, all the the  younger leaves which were coming up were healthy and fine and showed absolutely no issues.  That's when i learnt that its normal senility of leaves and that its  normal for a plant to shed the old leaves by drying up. But what is important is that  you should get rid of that old and dead leaves so as to avoid fungal  growth and bacterial infection. Make sure to pull off all the dead and rotten leaves and along with that pull off the leaves that are half dried and are pluckable. This will give the plant and the soil more breathing space. And more over cleaning  all these leaves will make the  farm look healthy and green.

Boy !! that was one tideous job to attend to each and every  plants and  check for the drying up leaves pull them out and clean up the plant.  It took loads of extra workers and couple of days to finish the 1st round of cleaning process ... and i got almost a tractor load  of dump i guess..  i have made arrangements to make use of this farm waste and convert it into compost and reuse in the farm. Vermicomposting is  totally new thing to me and i will have to experiment and learn the  trick of doing it

A dump of the dead and aged leaves of Gerbera Farm while clean up session.

Latest Pics from the farm

Wedding season is in full flow and so is my farm in its full bloom now ..Here are some of the latest pics..!!

Proud to be a Farmer !!

After struggling for 6 long months for this  Gerbera project from the intiation.. i am finally selling my produce and seeing  money !!  Damn.. it feels so good to see  some real good money  flowing into  your pocket each and every single day. All you have to do is  reap the harvest send it to market and boom!!!!
November December January and February are Supposed to be good season for flowers  especially Gerberas and i have entered the market in the right season. With an average daily income of about 15 thousands i have to say i  have hit the milestone i wanted to touch.

Finally i feel so proud to be a farmer !!  Now thats  what i call earning...

I chose to send the flowers to the local market only and i sell about 2000-2500 Gerberas  each day for now and  expected  production per day  is  about 3000-3500  which i might  touch in another couple of weeks. Here are  the latest  photos from  the farm and the production  packing and  dispatch !!

All the six colors of  blooming Gerberas in the  farm

Red  Gerberas- savannah  variety has almost 90cm- 1 metre stem.

A full view from the centre of  the farm.

Each  carton can hold about 350  gerberas in 35 bunches

Freshest Gerberas ever !!

All packs  ready for dispatch to the market.

Fogging is very important in regulating the  humidy and temparature in a Gerbera farm

The Carnation Unit.

Though i wanted to start both Carnation and Gerbera poly houses at the same time, i was little held back to start  two new things at a time. so now that Gerberas got months older, i have finally finished working on the Carnation greenhouse.  Its a 1200Sq.mt farm and  is located right next to the previous one.
The levelling, soil filling and foundation poles work was all done priorly along with  gerbera unit, the work started and  finished pretty soon. It took about a week to finish the poly house structure and another 2 weeks for filling  vermicompost, cocopeat and rotovating  the soil so that everything mixes up well. Ya, i forgot to mention cocopeat was not a part of my plan in gerberas but in carnations i wanted to add up cocopeat coz i have read that it gives soil a good holding capacity which might be helpful for carnations growth.

Carnations farming is  labourious and thats the reason why there are very few carnations unit around. The most important work being installation of supporting the poles and support mesh and then  working on the plants later on with these meshes obstructing ur reach to the plants for daily work. Even the GI wire mesh is a pain if the size is not  fixed properly u end up having  multiple puntures on ur legs while walking between the beds.
After mixing up of soil bed preparation took about two days and the drip irrigation and fogging system took about another two days. Then the first layer of mesh was installed on the bed. Altogether five such layers will have to be placed so that the stems come up strong and straight.

Since we had a bad experience with the fumigant in gerberas we didnt take any chance and got the best one that was recommeded by KF BIOPLANTS. We used silver colloidal hydrogen peroxide for the disinfection of the soil and  the next day we have planned for the plantation.

we got about 33000 carnation saplings and  we did the plantation in two phases- day one and day two . we did not wanted to hurry like  we did during the gerbera plantation. Altogether we have 6 varieties now.except for the variety named cool all others thrived well.  cool saplings were weak and had lots of mortality in the first week itself.

Site location of the polyhouse for carnation unit.

All materials dumped and the workers busy with segregating the things.

All the foundation poles installed and soil was also  dumped and rotovated  even before these materials came up

It took about a week for them to finish this polyhouse- quick and neat.

A truck load of cocopeat was ordered and here its being unload and transferred into the carnations unit.

cocopeat uniformly spread over the soil

workers dumping the cocopeat and spreading them .

uniformly layered cocopeat and vermicompost and was ready to be mixed up with soil .

After rotovating with a tractor ..we did a second round of mix up with a power tiller ..

Beds ready for plantation in the carnations polyhouse

silver colliodal Hydrogen peroxide being used as a disinfecting agent  for fumagation

Soil disinfection by wetting the beds with  a rose can filled with H2O2.

The first layer of mesh for the support of carnations stems

all set for the plantation of carnations the next day

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Me  trying to resize a mesh which  was alittle more than the length of the bed

Day one after the plantation some carnation varieties were strong as rock and others were so weak.

Healthy Carnation saplings

Tender and fragile carnation saplings- freshly planted and waiting to start a life

An overview of the carnations beds after the full plantation was done

some of the weak  varieties which started troubling from day three onwards

Day three- except for one variety named cool ( the ones that u see here) all other saplings looked happy

Blooms Blooms Blooms !!

I have been waiting to  pictures like these for the past 2 months  ... finally  everything  seems to  look well and  flowering has started  almost  half of the  farm is  blooming now..  look wonderful. Finally , i am at peace  each day when i am  entering the farm.

one more day and i will start sending the flowers to the market . Here are some of the pics of the farm  with all the colors  that started  blooming.  :)     I  am  lovin' it !!!  Parapappa paa