• Flower Farming - Small Business Owner

    How to Start a Small Flower Farm [Part V]: Avoiding Burnout + Managing Expectations

    November 2, 2022 - By 

    This post is part five in our five-part series all about how to start your own small-scale flower farm. Make sure you check out the other posts in the series first so you’re caught up to speed: Part One: Business Plan + Site Selection Part Two: What to Grow + Planning Your Year Part Three: Marketing + Building a Customer Base Part Four: Harvesting + Arranging I would wager a bet that most people who get into flower farming are dreamers. We love to envision the fields of blooms and crates of wrapped bouquets for the market, and we love…

  • Flower Farming - Small Business Owner

    How to Start a Small Flower Farm [Part IV]: Harvesting + Arranging

    October 27, 2022 - By 

    This post is part four in our five-part series all about how to start your own small-scale flower farm. Make sure you check out the other posts in the series first so that you’re caught up to speed: Part One: Business Plan + Site Selection Part Two: What to Grow + Planning Your Year Part Three: Marketing + Building a Customer Base So you’ve finally managed to grow some flowers, and you’re ready to actually start selling them. Where to start? Just as in most things with flower farming, the learning curve will seem steep at first. You might very…

  • Flower Farming - Small Business Owner

    How to Start a Small Flower Farm [Part III]: Marketing + Building a Customer Base

    September 17, 2022 - By 

    This post is part three of a five-part series detailing how to start a small-scale flower farm. You can find part one HERE (all about general business plan and site selection) and part two HERE (which is all about what to actually plant). Note: There are affiliate links to books and products mentioned. The Importance of Marketing You might think, as so many of us in the flower farming world did when we first started out, that your end product is so beautiful that it will practically sell itself. Unique, locally-grown flowers? Who WOULDN’T want that?! Unfortunately, it’s not that…

  • Flower Farming - Gardening - Small Business Owner

    How to Start a Small Flower Farm [Part II]: Choosing Seeds + Planning Your Year

    September 5, 2022 - By 

    This is part two of a five-part series all about how to start a small flower farm. If you haven’t already, make sure you check out part one about formulating a business plan and choosing your planting sites first, which you can find HERE. Note: There are affiliate links to the books and products mentioned in the series. Deciding What to Plant So you’ve selected your farm site, decided roughly how many square feet to plant, and decided on a business strategy. Now comes the fun part — deciding what to plant! Now, it is imperative that you have a…

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    Flower Farming - Small Business Owner

    How to Start a Small Flower Farm [Part I]: Business Plan + Site Selection

    August 16, 2022 - By 

    In early 2021 when I was starting my small-scale flower farm, I noticed that it was not terribly easy to find free resources to help me get going. Sure, there were a few I found right away (many of which I mention in this post), but I wanted someone who had been there before who could walk me through the process and who could tell me about what to expect from this new venture. I did find several paid courses that offered the kind of information I was looking for, but I wasn’t even positive that flower farming would be…

  • Flower Farming - Gardening - What's Blooming Monthly

    What Flowers Are Blooming in Utah in June?

    July 17, 2022 - By 

    In milder parts of the world like the UK, the month of June is one of the most abundant when it comes to what’s flowering and what you can harvest in a cut flower garden or farm. In Utah, however, June is a notoriously tricky time for flower farmers and home gardeners alike, simply because you’re past the spring blooming bulbs like tulips, but your summer flowers just aren’t there yet. While there are obviously additional flowers than these that can bloom in June, I’m restricting my list exclusively to flowers that are good for cutting. I’ll start with the…

  • sunflower bouquet
    Flower Farming

    How Soon Should Your Flower Farm Offer a CSA Bouquet Subscription?

    July 16, 2022 - By 

    One of the most popular ways of making money from flower farming is by offering a CSA bouquet subscription. CSA stands for community-supported agriculture, and all it means is that your customer pays you upfront at the beginning of the season for a “cut” of your crop (in this case, flowers). The upfront payment provides some much-needed cash flow in the spring (when expenses are often the steepest), and while the consumer does take on some amount of risk, they also become invested in the profitability and well-being of the farm since they literally have basically become an investor in…

  • failed tulip crop
    Failures + Lessons Learned - Flower Farming

    Dealing with Crop Loss + Failure as a New Flower Farmer

    May 26, 2022 - By 

    So you spent a lot of money on seeds or bulbs/tubers/corms, planted them in the ground, and waited (im)patiently for them to produce beautiful, lush blooms on tall stems that you could then sell by the armful. But then… They never sprouted. They got hit by a heat wave and withered. You forgot to water and the plants all flopped over and turned yellow. The buds formed, but never bloomed. Everything was too short to use. Congratulations! You have successfully experienced your first (or second, or third) bout of crop failure as a new flower farmer! Trust me, I’ve been…

  • Finances - Flower Farming

    How to Start a Small Backyard Flower Farm (from scratch!) for around $200

    March 9, 2022 - By 

    Flower farms are popping up everywhere, and if you’ve thought about jumping in but are limited on space and money, this post is for you. The fact is, you don’t need a traditional “farm” with lots of acreage to grow cut flowers to sell. In fact, you can grow quite a lot of cut flowers on just 400 square feet or so. The trick is to use tighter spacing than what is recommended on the seed packets and to favor things that are productive, long-lasting, and as quick from seed to harvest as possible. If you want to try out…

  • Flower Farming

    Favorite Resources for New Flower Farmers

    February 15, 2022 - By 

    When I first decided to really go for my dream to start a backyard flower farm, the process was seriously daunting. There was so much to learn and although my knowledge of cut flowers was growing, it was still pretty bare bones. As I worked hard to get my farm up and running those first few months, I had to spend my time divided pretty equally between three pursuits: 1) actually growing the flowers and doing farm-related chores, 2) doing the behind-the-scenes work on the business such as social media posts, spreadsheets for taxes, etc., and 3) researching like crazy…