Not every greenhouse operation is a huge commercial affair. There are plenty of them around the state operated by farmers or people with farm interests who have built the greenhouse growing and sales business into a significant part of their profit. This is their time! Plants are blooming, the weather is warming up and people are buying.

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One farmer/greenhouse owner said recently that the real profit comes after Mother's Day. Usually up through those sales, it's paying back expenses. While there's profit to be made, it's a labor-intensive business that requires skill and constant care, more months of the year than you might think.

Grow and bloom: Plant sales are in full swing at Garden Park near Loogootee.

Garden Park is a greenhouse business operated by Jeremy Park and his wife, Miriam, part of the Amish community near Loogootee on U.S. 231 in Daviess County. What started out as a business for Miriam has blossomed into an operation that spread over three greenhouses and also includes a retail store.

You can buy anything from a wide variety of flowering plants and blooming flowering baskets to sweet potato vines and onion starts.

Park says it's about like milking cows if you devote yourself to doing the greenhouse business properly. In the spring, watering needs to be done at least daily, and when watering by hand, can be a long process. Knowing when and what to water and when not to water is part of the secret, he says.

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While the greenhouse sales may seem like a February through May venture, Park says it starts long before February. They actually planned this year's growing schedule and ordered seeds and plants as early as last October. If flowers aren't seeded by January, at least some varieties, it's too late, he says.

While it may be an enticing sideline business, know what you're getting into and with the time requirements are before you start, most greenhouse managers say.