Advanced Cert in Applied Management -Wholesale Nursery

COURSE STRUCTURE

This subject involves eight lessons as follows:

1. Nursery Site Organisation: Buying an established nursery or establishing a new site, site planning, estimating space requirements.
2. Management: Government and commercial nurseries, partnerships, companies, sole proprietorships, developing a management structure, labour relations and seasonal staff, work programs and production timing.
3. Nutrition and Pest Management: Field crops, container plants, principles of fertiliser use and plant nutrition.
4. Growing Media: Soils and soil-free mixes, rockwool, sterilisation, techniques.
5. Irrigation: Methods and equipment, estimation of water requirements and use of liquid fertilisers through irrigation.
6. Modifying Plant Growth: Modification techniques, flower forcing and quality control.
7. Marketing Strategies: Exploiting existing markets, developing new markets, advertising, product presentation, pricing, plant recycling.
8. Selection of Nursery Crops: Developing a stock list, operational flow charts, market surveys.

2. PROPAGATION I

COURSE STRUCTURE

The course is divided into ten lessons as follows:

1. Introduction to Propagation – asexual and sexual propagation, plant life cycles, nursery production systems
2. Seed Propagation
3. Potting Media
4. Vegetative Propagation I - cuttings
5. Vegetative Propagation II – care of stock plants; layering, division and other techniques
6. Vegetative Propagation III – budding and grafting, tissue culture
7. Propagation Structures and Materials – greenhouses, propagating equipment
8. Risk Management – nursery hygiene, risk assessment and management
9. Nursery Management I – plant modification techniques, management policies
10. Nursery Management II – nursery standards, cost efficiencies, site planning and development

COURSE AIMS

3. CUTTING PROPAGATION

COURSE STRUCTURE

The course is divided into eight lessons as follows:

1. Introduction. The principles of propagating plants by cuttings.:Importance of cuttings, Phenotype vs genotype, why choose cutting propagation, where to get cuttings from, basic cutting technique.
2. Stem cuttings. Ease with which tissue forms roots, types of stem cuttings (softwood, hardwood, semi hardwood, herbaceous, tip, heel, nodal, cane etc), treatments (eg. basal heat, mist, tent, etc), testing rooting, etc.
3. Non-stem cuttings. Leaf cuttings, root cuttings (natural suckering with or without division, Induced suckering, In situ whole root cuttings; ex situ detached root cuttings), bulb cuttings, scaling and twin scaling, sectioning, basal cuttage.
4. Materials and equipment. Selection and maintenance of stock plants; disinfecting cutting material;
5. Growing media. Propagation media; biological, chemical and physical characteristics of propagation and potting media, Testing for toxins, air filled porosity, potting up cuttings, soil-less mixes, rockwool, etc.
6. Factors affecting rooting. Juvenility, Cutting Treatments (hormones & their application, anti transparents, acid/base treatments, disinfectants etc), Callusing, Mycorrhizae, Carbon Dioxide enrichment, etc.
7. Setting up a propagation area. Creating and managing an appropriate cutting environment in terms of: Water; Disease; Temperature; Light and Air Quality. Greenhouses and other structures, watering methods (mist, fog, capillary etc), heating, etc.
8. Management of cutting crops. Estimating cost of production; Keeping records, etc.

COURSE AIMS

• To familiarise the student with the principles of propagating plants by cuttings
• To develop an understanding of how to propagate plants from stem cuttings
• To develop an understanding of how to propagate plants from non-stem cuttings
• To develop an understanding of the materials and equipment used for propagating plants from stems
• To understand the principles of growing media in relation to cutting propagation
• To understand how and why cuttings form roots. To learn how to manipulate the formation of roots on cuttings
• To understand the principles for establishing successful plant propagation areas
• To understand the principles of nursery crop scheduling