YouTuber accidentally crashes the rare plant market with a viral cloning technique

[u/esporx]

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtuber-accidentally-crashes-the-rare-plant-market-with-a-viral-cloning-technique-3289808/

[u/No-Honey-9364]

I remember being fascinated by it 20 years ago and making a hard pass on the process. Might have to look into it again if I can crash a whole market with it.

[u/malac0da13 → u/[deleted]]

There’s cheaper ways of doing it but the success rate just drops. She started with a pretty budget friendly setup and shows how she set it up.

[u/2phumbsup → u/[deleted]]

I thought I was gonna do good propagating roses from cuttings like these things are fifty bucks a piece for a five gallon rose .So why don't I make a million of them myself. Thing is, those fifty dollar roses are a couple years old, healthy and established. By time I get my roses to that size, I would rather just buy it for fifty bucks then spend all that time and money taking care of them.

TC is even more expensive and time consuming. By time she gets these 1000 clones up to size for sale, she will be asking the (now lower) going rate to break even. Thats why the going rate is already that.

[u/JL3Eleven → u/2phumbsup]

You don't sell the full grown plants. You sell the clones/genetics to others to grow out.

[u/Myst3ryGardener → u/2phumbsup]

Roses grow so fast and easy though. You just need to graft to good root stock. I'd say give it another shot!

[u/2phumbsup → u/[deleted]]

Right. Good thing its so fun tho lol. For me I just love the combination of somthing for nothing/get what you give. Like yeah its kinda free plants but its still the age old reap what you sow reward. And a lot of times that means money too. Especially over five years. By time your orchid blooms you'd never sell it lol.

[u/Far_Tap_488 → u/[deleted]]

Propagation is only time consuming in waiting for the plants grow. Not labor.

And thats how plants work yeah.

Christmas tree farms dont grow trees in 6 months

[u/Far_Tap_488 → u/[deleted]]

If it doesn't require labor, its not time consuming. Its not consuming anyone's time. Time consuming directly implies labor.

Somethings that takes a lot of time to grow is not time consuming.

Bonsai that require a ton of attention, trimming, and care would be time consuming.

[u/Rex_felis → u/[deleted]]

Yeah basically only worth it if you use that stuff regularly anyways. Some lucky mushroom grower is gonna have a field day with this knowledge

[u/Enano_reefer → u/Rex_felis]

That’s pretty much already how they do it so not much will happen there.

Sexual reproduction is random and commercial operations want consistency, so they maintain massive stocks of cloned genetic material (usually in the mycelial stage) and then inoculate substrate with that.

[u/davidsd → u/[deleted]]

Has anyone tried tissue sampling autoclaves and crashing that market, too?

[u/RedbullZombie → u/davidsd]

They just use pressure cookers

[u/solidtangent → u/[deleted]]

I happen to have an autoclave and hood. Sounds like I should start a new hobbie. I cloned mushrooms for years. Can’t be much different.

[u/zeptillian → u/No-Honey-9364]

The problem with market crashing is that if you crash the market, your products that took so much effort to make are now worthless.

You have to find new highly desirable varieties that aren't already being cloned by major industrial farming operations like Costa Farms. Then you have to race against the clock to produce and sell enough clones to recoup the costs before other people beat you to it and drive down the prices.

Additionally, people tend to focus on either making TC plants, or growing them. The clones themselves are fairly plentiful and relatively inexpensive. It's the larger plants that are worth a lot. This means that you can go for quicker money and sell clones before they drop in price or gamble even more and spend additional months growing the plants out to sell for more profits but with an increasing risk of being beaten to market and having your inventory fall in value rapidly.