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…

Having never done anything remotely like flower farming in my life before, I knew I was in for a steep learning curve. Despite perhaps hundreds of hours of research and planning, I still killed trays upon trays of seedlings (mostly after transplanting), had poor yields and/or stem lengths from several crops, and had stressful weeks (and weeks) of not enough flowers. On the other hand, I also had some surprising successes — we sold out of our CSA bouquet subscriptions after just a couple days, I sold out of everything I had for the first several weeks when I finally…