STUDY NURSERY OPERATIONS AND MANAGEMENT
Train to be a Manager, Owner or Supervisor in a Production Nursery or extend your nursery skills.
This course is for anyone who works in the wholesale or production nursery industry or would like to.
All aspects of wholesale nursery management and propagation are
covered in the stream units. The first half of the course concentrates
on Business operations and management, marketing, office practices.
This course develops an
understanding of plant propagation (seed and cuttings), nursery hygiene,
plant health, potting mixes and soils, production efficiencies,
marketing, management, and more. This is a 900 hour covering both
management and horticultural studies relating to running a wholesale
nursery.
There are 7 units plus a workplace project in this course.
These include the 4 core units common to all streams of the Advanced Certificate (C12CN001) and three specialist units of study relating to the operation and management of wholesale nurseries.
Lots of practical work involved.
Click on each of the modules (in red) below to view comprehensive unit outlines.
Modules
Note that each module in the Advanced Cert in Applied Management (Wholesale Nursery) is a short course in its own right, and may be studied separately.
What is Covered by the Stream Modules?
The stream studies are as follows:
WHOLESALE NURSERY MANAGEMENT
There are eight lessons as follows:
- Nursery Site Organisation: Buying an established nursery or establishing a new site, site planning, estimating space requirements.
- Management: Government and commercial nurseries, partnerships, companies, sole proprietorships, developing a management structure, labour relations and seasonal staff, work programs and production timing.
- Nutrition and Pest Management: Field crops, container plants, principles of fertiliser use and plant nutrition.
- Growing Media: Soils and soil-free mixes, rockwool, sterilisation, techniques.
- Irrigation: Methods and equipment, estimation of water requirements and use of liquid fertilisers through irrigation.
- Modifying Plant Growth: Modification techniques, flower forcing and quality control.
- Marketing Strategies: Exploiting existing markets, developing new markets, advertising, product presentation, pricing, plant recycling.
- Selection of Nursery Crops: Developing a stock list, operational flow charts, market surveys.
The modules aims are:
- Explain the significance of property, marketing and contracts to site selection.
- Estimate the cost of producing different plant varieties as specified marketable products.
- Develop a nutritional program for plants in a wholesale nursery.
- Explain the implementation of integrated pest management in a specified nursery situation.
- Explain different chemical methods of controlling plant appearance.
PROPAGATION I
This module has ten lessons as follows:
- Introduction to Propagation – asexual and sexual propagation, plant life cycles, nursery production systems
- Seed Propagation
- Potting Media
- Vegetative Propagation I - cuttings
- Vegetative Propagation II – care of stock plants; layering, division and other techniques
- Vegetative Propagation III – budding and grafting, tissue culture
- Propagation Structures and Materials – greenhouses, propagating equipment
- Risk Management – nursery hygiene, risk assessment and management
- Nursery Management I – plant modification techniques, management policies
- Nursery Management II – nursery standards, cost efficiencies, site planning and development
The modules aims are:
- Develop the ability to source information on plant propagation, through an awareness of industry terminology and information sources.
- Plan the propagation of different plant species from seeds, using different seed propagation methods.
- Plan the propagation of different types of plants from cuttings, using different cutting propagation methods.
- Plan the propagation of various types of plants using a range of propagation techniques, excluding cuttings and seed.
- Determine the necessary facilities, including materials and equipment, required for propagation of different types of plants.
- Determine a procedure to minimise plant losses during propagation.
- Determine the management practices of significance to the commercial viability of a propagation nursery.
- Design a propagation plan for the production of a plant.
CUTTING PROPAGATION
This module has eight lessons as follows:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Materials and Equipment. Selection and maintenance of stock plants; disinfecting cutting material; 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.
- Factors affecting Rooting. Juvenility, Cutting Treatments (hormones & their application, anti transparents, acid/base treatments, disinfectants etc), Callusing, Mycorrhizae, Carbon Dioxide enrichment, etc.
- 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.
- Management of Cutting Crops. Estimating cost of production; Keeping records, etc.
The modules aims are:
- To become familiar with the principles of propagating plants by cuttings
- To understand how to propagate plants from stem cuttings
- To understand how to propagate plants from non-stem cuttings
- To understand materials and equipment used for propagating plants from stems
- To understand principles of growing media relative to cutting propagation
- To understand how and why cuttings form roots.
- To explain manipulation of the formation of roots on cuttings
- To understand principles for establishing successful plant propagation areas
- To understand the principles of nursery crop scheduling
What is Covered by the Core Modules?
These four modules are designed to teach you how to manage a business so that it operates more effectively, and is productive and sustainable. Knowing how to grow plants is obviously very important for anyone managing a production nursery; but without an equal understanding of these management skills, it can be very easy to fail. Growing good plants is not the same as growing them for a planned cost, and selling them for a higher cost; hence making a healthy profit.
These four core modules are:
- Office Practices develops basic office skills covering use of equipment, communication systems (telephone, fax, etc) and office procedures such as filing, security, workplace organisations, etc.
- Business Operations cultivates your understanding of basic business operations and procedures (eg. types of businesses, financial management, business analysis, staffing, productivity, etc) and the skills to develop a 12 month business plan.
- Management develops knowledge of management structures, terminology, supervision, recruitment and workplace health and safety.
- Marketing Foundations develops a broad understanding of marketing and specific skills in writing advertisements, undertaking market research, developing an appropriate marketing plan and selling.
After You Graduate
Throughout this course, you will have engaged and interacted with people in the nursery industry, including tutors and others.
You will have begun to build your networking within the industry; and often our students will already be working in the nursery industry before they complete their studies. For some, you may have already become involved with the industry before you started studying.
On graduating; you will have more knowledge, skills and contacts than ever before. You will have opportunities to move forward in many different ways.
- You may seek start up your own wholesale nursery.
- You may find employment working in a large established production nursery -in public or commercial.
- Some will advance their prospects where they already work; others will move to work somewhere new.
- Some will continue with studies to an even higher level; and others will build on their studies through experience.
- Some will use their added knowledge and experience in other ways, for example: working in consultancy, marketing, education or media - providing services or products in support of the nursery industry.
WHAT SETS ACS APART?
Service – We put the student first. Tutors and administration can be contacted 5 days a week, 50 weeks of the year, by phone or email.
We provide Better Learning – We’ve been delivering distance education for over 3 decades, and we understand how people learn by home study.
Our methods are unique, developed through experience with a focus squarely on helping you learn.
Up to Date – We are continually revising and updating courses. We listen to our students feed-back and we always improve the course if a change is identified that will help significantly improve your learning.
More Choice – Graduates need a set of skills that will set them apart and give them an advantage over competition in the world after study. We have a wide variety of study choices, and give you lots of options to choose different paths throughout a course. Doing this has meant our graduates very successful.
No Short Cuts –You can’t take short cuts in learning, and that is why our courses are often longer than you will find elsewhere. You could choose to study a short course, quickly sit an exam (while the information is fresh) and pass, but if you want to really understand something and retain it, that takes time.
More than just Learning Facts – We understand that success in the workplace or business requires you to not only learn things, but also build networks, understand the commercial world, be able to solve problems, communicate with people, and have an attitude that will function in your chosen industry.
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