Grade 8 Floriculture

Floriculture:
The cultivation and management of flower plant.

Importance of Flower:
1. Flowers are key components in carrying out various religious, social and cultural activities.
2. They create a clean, fresh and wonderful environment.
3. They can be used to decorate building, temple, etc.
4. They can be used for production of cosmetic items like perfume, soap etc.
5. They have medicinal benefits.

Flower Garden:
It is a place, where variety of ornamental plants, flowers, medicinal plants, herbs, vegetables, fruits, etc are grown.
Key aspects associated with flower garden construction:
1. Selection of Area.
2. Preparation of Garden
3. Seed and Seedling Selection
4. Use of manure
5. Proper care of flower plant
6. Flower seed production and storage.

1. Selection of area:
Various aspects of selection of area.
i. Soil: Soil should not be too much acidic, sandy and should absorb the water properly.
ii. Adequate sunlight
iii. Source of water
iv. Market

2. Preparation of Garden:
i. Land should be measured.
ii. Land should be divided into different parts for different flowers.
iii. Land should be surrounded by wire or wall.
iv. It should be facilitated by proper irrigation.
v. The land is now ready for planting flowers.

3.  Seed and seedling selection:
Flower are generally grown through two methods:
1. sowing of seed
2. plantation of sapling/transplant

Consideration for selecting seed:
1. Disease and insect free
2. Clear and pure
3. Seed with similar nature and colour.
4. Appropriate moistness.
5. Big, uniform in size

Consideration for selecting the flower sapling:
1. Disease free
2. Healthy and dark green colour leaves.
3. Dense root system
4. Proper balance between shoot and root mass.
5. Low susceptibility to disease or insect attack.

4. Use of manure:
i. Organic manure: The manure prepared by decaying of dead animals or plants.
ii. Inorganic (Chemical) Manure: The manure prepared in factories through a chemical process.

5. Proper care of flower plant: It is extremely important to take proper care so that flowers could blooms properly and have a long life cycle. Timely irrigation, removal pf weeding,etc are essential in proper caring.

6. Flower seed production and storage:
Besides producing the flowers and selling them, floriculture is also done to produce flower plant seed.
1. Seed Harvesting: It is the process of gathering mature seed from flower plants.
2. Seed Processing: It is the process of crushing and blowing the dibris gently from seed.
3. Seed Drying: It can be done through two methods: Drying in sunlight and Oven drying method.
4. Seed Storage: It is the process of storing seed using cotton, paper, polythene etc. One shoould properly label the packages seed with following information:
1. Scientific and local flower name
2. Date of packaging and expiring.
3. Direction of use.   

Flower plant propagation
There are two common methods of flower plant propagation:
1. Grafting
2. Cutting

1. Grafting:  It is a process where tissues from one flower plant is inserted into another flower plant so that these two set of tissue combine and give rise to a new flower plant.
The stem piece used is called scion while the stem of plant with roots is called rootstock.

2. Cutting: It is a process where a piece of leaves/stem/root from mother plant is cut off and put into moist soil so that a new flower plant start developing.

Decoration items from flower:
One of the major utility that makes flower so important is its use as decorative items. It is integral component for decorating temple, house, vehicle etc likewise, it is also used in preparation of garland and bouquet which are very important in Nepalese society for various religious, cultural and social festivals purposes. Tihar is incomplete without garlands where bouquet is known as symbol of best wishes.