Greenhouse Bedding Plants
Commercial greenhouses make most of their cash in the spring by selling plants. A bedding plant is simply an herb plant developed and offered for sale together with the goal that it’s employed in landscaping, gardening or container planting. Many types of plants have been considered bedding plants and are generally offered in groups of several plants. The young plants are just from this seedling stage and are ready to be planted from the garden.
Annuals
Annuals complete their life cycle in one growing season and require reseeding every year. Annual bedding plants provide the gardener a head start to the growing season, being ready to plant when the spring weather turns warm. This type of greenhouse-grown plant produces altering the look of the garden each year simple. One common annual bedding plant is the “Jewel of Africa” nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus “Jewel of Africa”), which produces stems 8 feet tall with old-fashioned blossoms in maroon, yellow, orange and cream colors. These bloom from summer through fall, attracting butterflies to the garden.
Perennials
Perennial bedding plants grow back in a winter dormant stage every year. Unlike annuals, perennials aren’t always grown from seeds. Hybrid perennial varieties are replicated by stem cuttings or root divisions. Perennials such as pinks and carnations are split every year into smaller plantsthat are planted by commercial greenhouse operations in trays for plants. Patented perennial varieties are usually accessible greenhouse bedding plants. One instance of the kind of bedding plant is the hardy begonia (Begonia grandis), which rises in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 6 through 9 and develops hanging clusters of flowers in midsummer until the end of fall. These begonias are bought in packs, giving the gardener lots of young plants to make a groundcover.
Herbs
Some herbs are extremely straightforward to develop from seeds and also will grow like weeds, while some are fussy and hard to germinate. Industrial greenhouse operations start many distinct types of herbs and offer them for sale in bedding packs. This makes creating an herb garden simple and fast. Herbs grown this way include lavender, thyme, oregano, rosemary and lemon verbena. Purple sage (Salvia officinalis “Purpurescens”) is also an aromatic culinary herb offered in bedding packs, together with purple-tinted green leaves and violet-blue flower spikes appearing in the summertime in USDA zones 6 through 9.
Vegetable Transplants
Vegetable bedding plants provide the gardener the choice of planting already-started plants to form an instant garden. Greenhouse-grown vegetable seedlings have the extra plus of being weeks ahead of other vegetables started in the garden through direct sowing. These types of greenhouse bedding plants include cucumbers, pumpkins, zucchini, eggplants and tomatoes. Even crops such as onions, legumes, corn and peas have been grown as bedding plants. These bedding plants come in handy if the vegetable seeds sown in the garden don’t germinate.