Dhillon Gladiolus: Success Via Floriculture

I am Sarbjit Singh Dhillon of Village Burj Dhilwan, District Mansa in Punjab. In my family, I have my wife, my mother and father, my daughter and my son. I have followed my father’s footstep into farming. We have 18 acres of land and we started with horticulture in 2011. Before that we used to plant rice and other seasonal crops.

I got the inspiration for horticulture from Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana and purchased seeds for PAU itself. Now I prepare the seeds for flowers myself and even sell them in the market. We grow the crops in open fields and the cost per acre of land comes out to be Rs. 60,000. We grow Gladiolus in 10 acres of land. Seeds are sown in the month of august for this flower and it takes 90 days to mature. It further takes 60 days to prepare the seeds. One can earn up to 150000 profit per acre in 6 months by cultivation of this flower. As a side business I also do bee keeping at small scale and have 15 boxes for keeping the bees.

My message to all my farmer brothers is to use the water judiciously. Day by day, the ground water table is decreasing and in couple of years we may have water crisis. All the farmers should make efforts to save the water and use modern irrigation techniques. One such technique is drip irrigation which is very beneficial for crops and uses less water as well. Also if the farmers can prepare their own seeds, they can make more profits.