Last month Brian and I made a trip to Agristarts 3 in Eustis, Florida to see about getting some of our plants into tissue culture production and after meeting with the owner he actually wanted to take all three plants we were looking to get produced and introduce all three of them for us. Agristarts sells tissue culture plants to wholesale growers who then grow the plants in quart or gallon pots to sell to other nurseries and stores. My original hope was that they would do a custom run for us, but instead he liked them enough that he wants to sell them.
We had an early freeze in November and a thaw in late December so the plants had enough dormancy already. They will go into the lab this month, be multiplied in the lab over the summer, get put into liners in the fall, overwintered in the cooler in the winter, then if all goes well be brought out and sold in the spring of 2016. If the numbers aren't good enough they might continue to mutiply them in the lab through 2016 too, but the plants I sent all had mutiple eyes with tons of dormant eyes as well so they will have a really good start there.
Wish us luck that all goes well and we have a long and prosperous run on these. It is still a bit surreal to me that this is happening actually
