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Flower FarmingSmall Business Owner

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

by torriemeidell
written by torriemeidell

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 something I wanted to do long-term, so I was hesitant to drop (even more) money on it.

In the future, I might make a more advanced paid course that gets into the nitty gritty details of small-scale growing and business marketing, but for now, I’m offering this five-part blog series as a free resource to help you to know what all goes into flower farming so you can decide if it’s a good fit for you and so you can go in with both eyes wide open.

Note: There are affiliate links to the books mentioned below.

Why Flower Farming?

There has been a huge increase in the number of flower farms over the past few years. While the “slow food” movement has been around for a couple of decades and has been largely responsible for the surge in farmer’s markets, farm-to-table restaurants, and the like, “slow flowers” was a little bit behind. While some few flower farmers have been doing it for decades, most have just been flower farming for a handful of years or fewer.

Maybe your interest in the idea of flower farming started with Erin Benzakein of Floret (as it started for so many of us) — thanks to her presence on social media, her information-packed blog, and her recent series on the Magnolia Network, the idea of local flower farms has gained a lot of traction in recent years. Or maybe your interest started when you met someone who already started a small backyard flower farm, or maybe it was social media that clued you in.

However it started, I’m going to hazard a guess that at least some of the following are probably true if you’re interested in flower farming:

1 – You already have a love of growing things in general, or you’ve been drawn to the idea of gardening/homesteading for a long time.

2 – You long for a slower pace of life, or at least a simpler version of it.

3 – You not only seek out beauty, but seem to have a need to be surrounded by it.

4 – You have a seed-buying/plant-buying/bulb-buying problem, and you need to find a way to help pay for your obsession.

You’ll notice that none of the above had anything to do with making a ton of money or becoming rich. Now, I’m not saying it’s not possible with flower farming, but this is no get-rich-quick scheme. With a smart business strategy and enough land, you can definitely turn it into a full-time business…eventually. However, very few flower farmers can start out that way, and many are still working other jobs even after farming for a few years.

I say all this upfront because farming is a volatile profession. There is so much you can’t control, and a whole season’s worth of crops can be wiped out in a single storm, or with a bad pest infestation. Because of the up and down nature of flower farming, you absolutely must be in it for more than the money, or you’re not going to last. Instagram and pictures off of Floret’s website might make it seem like it’s all rosy sunsets and fields upon fields of perfect blooms, but that is simply not the reality most of the time.

Flower farming is hard work, and because you’re working with a seasonal, perishable product, it is extremely hard to take breaks, especially during certain pivotal times of your season. That means you’ll be up sowing seeds even when you’re suffering from a horrendous sinus infection, or that you’ll still be up at 6 a.m. to harvest and arrange even though you were up all night with a sick kid. You have to know that there WILL be sacrifices, and lots of them.

But because I imagine you’re still interested, let’s keep going.

Site Selection

Before you dive into a business plan, you need to do an intense survey of the available land you have for planting. Now, this usually consists of your own backyard, but I’ve seen plenty of people get creative — do you have a neighbor with a large weedy patch they’re not using? Is there an empty lot close by that you could contact the owners to see if you could use it for planting? Do you have a relative or friend who lives close by who would let you use some of their land for your crops? (And I will also note: Once your farm starts to gain traction, you will almost certainly get more and more offers. My first year growing, I had someone offer me their half acre backyard, in addition to my next door neighbor not only offering me space in her raised beds, but also offering to start seeds and grow things for me. Once people know what you’re doing, they’ll often start coming out of the woodwork to offer you space and help.)

Your site doesn’t necessarily need to already have dirt (you can always do raised beds or a version of a no till method) or especially good soil (you can always amend it), but it DOES need to have a good amount of sunlight (ideally at least 6-8 hours a day), and it does need to be easily accessible to you and to a water source.

A few other key questions you need to answer:

Time

While your enthusiasm and big dreams might make you want to rip up every scrap of grass and cultivate every square inch you possibly can, you need to ask yourself how much time you can realistically devote to flower farming, especially in your first year. While in subsequent years, some of the labor will be taken off your shoulders because you will have frontloaded it by planting perennial crops, already having established beds, etc., that first year is such a doozy that you want to make sure you don’t try to take on too much.

My first year, I grew on less than 1,000 square feet, and I was working full-time hours during certain times of my season even with that small of a space (and that was with the help of my husband on most evenings and weekends!). During spring, I easily put in over 40 hours every week to get everything prepped and sown and planted, and then when harvesting started picking up a lot again around August, I probably put in about 30 hours a week. Certain times of the year were slower, like June and July, but I would say that most weeks, I put in a minimum of 20 hours. (Granted, I also have three small children so I’m constantly getting interrupted, which definitely adds to my time; if you don’t have small children underfoot, you can probably get things done faster than I could.)

Keep in mind that it’s not just the farming itself that takes time; your business strategy and marketing plan, your social media upkeep, and your harvesting, arranging, and selling all take significant chunks of time, too. In fact, I’d say that after the spring, the growing is by far the easiest part.

Money

It is beyond tempting to look at pictures of an established flower farm and want to get there RIGHT AWAY. It is beyond tempting to want to buy all the seeds, purchase all the plants, and put in massive bulb orders right from the get go.

Trust me, I know.

And I spent PLENTY of money that I didn’t need to spend in my first year on stuff that I didn’t really need (which you can read all about in the blog post I did on all my first year expenses).

But the BEST thing you can do for yourself is to not go into debt to start your flower farm. Let me repeat: DO NOT GO INTO DEBT TO START YOUR FLOWER FARM.

Does that mean you will have to forego buying certain plants or seeds or whatnot? YES. Does that mean you might have a more limited variety of what you’re growing? YES. Does that mean you might have to hustle a lot more rather than invest in high-cost time savers like fancy irrigation, flower plugs, and the latest in seed sowing equipment? YES.

But in the end, your real goals your first year should be three-fold: 1) Learn if you actually enjoy doing this, and if it is something you want to do long-term, 2) Learn how to actually grow things effectively, and 3) Learn how to make money doing it. The fact is, no matter how beautiful your flowers are, they will not sell themselves, and if you invest $20K into your farm only to discover that you only sell $1K your first year, you’re going to have a problem. Learn how to grow, and learn how to sell, and THEN worry about sizing up and going big with things like high tunnels, high value crops, and a lot of acreage.

Customer Base

Starting any new business venture requires doing a lot of research, and flower farming is no exception. Before you begin, you need to research what flower farms are already in your area and what they’re selling and whom they’re selling to; you need to research what outlets you might have available to you to sell your flowers (aka, farmer’s markets, grocery stores, florists, etc.), and you need to look up the number of people who live in your area, the average income, if tourism is a big part of the local economy, etc.

I live in rural Utah in one of the poorest counties in the whole state. The fact is, most people in my area can’t afford to buy expensive flowers, which was a very important consideration I had to take into account when developing my business model. I’ve discovered through trial and error that whenever I take my flowers two hours north of me every time I go to visit family up there, my stuff sells much more easily because people up in that area tend to have more disposable income.

I also live in an area where last year, upon starting my farm, I had zero competition. Literally no one else was doing what I was doing. I do have a little bit more competition now, but it’s still pretty minimal, especially as our offerings are pretty different from each other. These are all factors that I had to really think about when coming up with my business model, my price points, and my target customer.

Business Plan

Once you have a really solid idea of all the considerations above, you’re ready to start formulating your business plan. The thing with flowers is that there are a LOT of different directions you can go.

Just to name a few, you can:

  • Focus on being a farmer florist and provide custom bouquets and flowers for weddings, funerals, events, etc.
  • Sell your flowers at a farmer’s market.
  • Offer a bouquet subscription program.
  • Post pop up sales on social media.
  • Do a “bouquet bar” where people come and assemble their own bouquets and pay by the stem
  • Do u-picks at your farm
  • Offer education courses, such as bouquet- or wreath-making nights
  • Open your farm to photographers for a fee
  • Offer seedlings for sale in the spring, dahlia tubers in the early summer, etc.
  • Sell your stems to a local florist
  • Sell your flowers to a wholesaler
  • Create products from dried flowers to sell

Seriously, there are a LOT of options.

However, I highly recommend narrowing down your focus to just a few, not only because if you don’t, you’ll get overwhelmed and hurtle yourself towards burnout, but also because your business plan will entirely determine WHAT you plant as well as HOW MUCH of it you plant.

For example, my main business model is to offer a CSA bouquet subscription, do pop up sales on social media when I start to have a lot of excess, and then sell weekly at the local farmer’s markets for about 5 weeks at the end of the summer. I also do a few small custom orders as they come in, usually at the rate of one or two a week.

For me, it makes a lot of sense to have a lot of variety in my planting since I’m offering bouquet subscriptions and want my customers to have different combos available every week, so I can get away with planting some color mixes and also planting smaller amounts of a lot of different kinds of things.

My first year, I THOUGHT I wanted to sell to florists as a main part of my business strategy. What I didn’t understand was that florists were generally going to want a LOT of the exact SAME thing, which I definitely couldn’t provide them. That first year, I had a florist reach out who wanted 30 Benary’s Giant orange zinnias. While I probably had 30 BG zinnias in different colors, I definitely didn’t have 30 all of one color. The same florist tried again another time with certain white flowers she wanted. While I did have some white flowers, I literally only had a stem or two of each, which just couldn’t work for the funeral she was putting together.

If you’re planning to provide flowers for wedding work, you’ll plant very different colors and flowers than you would if you were mainly doing farmer’s markets. If you’re doing bouquet subscriptions that will last without interruption for the duration of your growing season, you’re going to have different things to consider than if you’re just going to focus on a few main crops that only come up at certain times in the year (like peonies in the spring and dahlias or potted mums in the fall).

This is honestly a huge topic, and it’s one I could go on for many blog posts about. However, what I’ll do instead is direct you to a few books and resources you can check out.

Now, although I own quite a lot of flower farming and flower arranging books, I’ve noticed that not many of them focus that heavily on the business strategizing side of things. The most solid section on business strategy I’ve found thus far is in Lynn Bycqynski’s classic must-own book, The Flower Farmer. While the volume is on the older side for a flower farming book (first published in 1997 and republished in 2008), there is a positive wealth of information in it, and she goes much more into depth about the business side of things than pretty much any other book I can think of.

There are smaller chapters about selling and business strategy in Georgie Newbery’s The Flower Farmer’s Year, but it’s not nearly as extensive. I’ve also got my eye on buying Pepper Harrow’s new release, Small Farms, Big Dreams, which I imagine will have a decent amount of info on business strategy, but I haven’t purchased it yet myself so I can’t vouch for it (though I do love their content on YouTube).

Honestly, some of the best information I’ve gotten on business strategy has actually come from following my favorite flower farmers on YouTube, which you can find a list of in my Flower Farming Resources Round-Up.

Now, what questions do you have for me?

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Flower FarmingGardeningWhat's Blooming Monthly

What Flowers Are Blooming in Utah in June?

by torriemeidell
written by torriemeidell

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 focal flowers that I count on to make bouquets, and then I’ll add a few supporting flowers and fillers/foliage to the list so you get a good idea of your options if you’re trying to start a cut flower farm in Utah.

For some background, we’re located in a high altitude town in Central Utah. Although we’re technically a Zone 6a, our growing season is actually extremely short when compared to most of Utah, especially along the Wasatch Front and then down in Southern Utah. For the past couple years, we’ve had frosts in mid-June and our season usually ends in late September. If you live in one of those areas in Utah with a significantly longer season (such as Salt Lake or St. George), your blooms are typically about 2-4 weeks ahead of ours.

Note: There are affiliate links below to products and books mentioned.

red and yellow ranunculus, bridal veil spirea, wild buttercups

June Focal Flowers

As flower farmers, we always have to have many, many backups in case certain crops fail in order to guarantee that we’ll still have flowers to fulfill our CSA bouquet subscriptions. In the list below, all the flowers are dependent on weather. If the spring goes by in a flash and the heat waves come early, the ranunculus crop goes dormant. If it’s a cooler, more mild spring, then the Asiatic lilies probably won’t start blooming until July. Therefore, because you can’t control the weather, we plant some of everything so that we (hopefully) won’t have any period within the month without focal flowers.

Ranunculus

While ranunculus is notoriously tricky to grow (and really grows best in Utah when overwintered in a high tunnel), it’s a high value crop that can go for up to 8 weeks in mid to late spring, which can be especially valuable in years when your tulip crop fails or blooms super early. Ideally, you’ll presprout ranunculus and plant it in a high tunnel in November, which means you can expect blooms the following April or so until the heat starts to pick up sometime in June. You can also plant it out in March with minimal to no protection, but your stems will likely be significantly shorter and the bloom time only 3-4 weeks or so.

Irises

I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of bearded irises as a gardener, but I quite like them as cut flowers in an arrangement simply because they’re so dramatic, plus they bloom at a time when few other things are available. In my experience, the Dutch irises tend to bloom first (ours did in May), and the bearded irises show up after, starting in late May and going into early June. The latest to bloom are the Siberian iris, which showed up around mid-June for us.

Poppies

Poppies don’t make great cut flowers just because they’re generally so short-lived in a vase, but there are exceptions. Icelandic poppies have a decent vase life if you can get them to grow for you, and Oriental poppies can last 5-6 days in a vase if you make sure to cut them right at cracking stage and sear the ends in boiling water or with an open flame immediately upon cutting (also note that they do shed pollen like mad near the end). Poppy pods, on the other hand, make a great statement in arrangements.

Peonies

Like tulips, peonies come in early, mid- and late-season varieties depending on the cultivar. Around here, the earliest varieties tend to start coming on in late May and the latest varieties can go almost all the way until the end of June. The hardest part about peonies is that you often have to wait a few years upon planting them bare root to get any kind of usable blooms off of them, but once they’re established and happy, they will produce masses of blooms for decades.

Roses

Roses are generally a pretty reliable June bloomer, especially if the bush is established. While roses will never win a vase life contest, most people are generally smitten enough with garden roses that you can still get away with using them as a focal flower, even if they do only last a handful of days in your bouquet.

Sunflowers

You’ll notice that pretty much everything up to this point (with the exception of some poppies and the ranunculus) are plants that are perennial. Therefore, if you want to consistently have blooms available in June, you pretty much need to plan on establishing several perennials. However, if you’re just starting out and don’t have established perennials yet (or weren’t able to plant bulbs back in the fall), you can get an early crop of sunflowers by starting them indoors in early April and planting them out 2-3 weeks later, which is about a month before our last frost date. They definitely won’t be as tall and perfect as sunflowers planted under hotter conditions, but sunflowers SAVE ME every single June from about the third week on.

Asiatic Lilies

In years when the spring tends to be a flash in the pan and the heat comes on quick, I’ll usually have the first of my perennialized Asiatic lilies blooming by the very end of June. Those will continue on through July, with the Oriental lilies taking over around August or so.

double daisies, snapdragons, feverfew, bellflowers, larkspur, saponaria, stock

June Supporting Flowers

While many of June’s focal flowers rely on perennials and bulbs, there are actually quite a lot of supporting flowers you can start in the same growing season, or that you can start the previous summer and overwinter. For how to do this, you simply MUST read the book Cool Flowers by Lisa Mason Ziegler. I think it’s a must-own book (since I’m constantly referring to it), but it clearly and thoroughly explains everything you need to know about the group of plants known as hardy annuals, which will absolutely save you come June since they’re basically the only thing blooming that early next to bulbs and perennials.

Alliums

Alliums are an extremely diverse group of hundreds of different kinds of bulbs that all tend to bloom in late spring or early summer. While I love the gigantic globe alliums that look like fireworks in my garden, I prefer the daintier varieties for cutting like azureum, drumstick, and the cultivars that look more like tiny sprays of flowers rather than spheres.

Star of Bethlehem

I was told this wouldn’t overwinter successfully in my zone, but I tried some anyway, and much to my delight — they did! I tried the classy, goes-with-everything white Arabicum, and I’m crossing my fingers that they’ll keep coming back year after year.

Bachelor’s Buttons

I can direct sow this out in the very beginning of March and reliably have blooms by mid-June. While bachelor’s buttons can be tricky to use as cut flowers just because of the growth habit of the plant, I’ve found that if you can pinch the central stem when it’s just 4-5″ high down to the lowest set of true leaves that it will then produce long, very usable and easy to harvest stems. You can still use it if you don’t pinch, but rather than having several long, single blooms to harvest, you’ll just be cutting a small bush basically. I love the pops of color that bachelor’s buttons bring to both the landscape and to bouquets.

Snapdragons

If you either overwinter your snapdragon plants or start them very early (like February) inside and then transplant them out by mid-April, you’ll generally always have blooms by mid to late June. Snapdragons are probably my favorite cut flower ever, just because they never seem to fail me, and I love their vast diversity of colors and bloom shapes.

Bells of Ireland

These can be tricky to 1) germinate and 2) get to a long enough stem length, but if you pop them in the freezer for a week or so before direct sowing them in early March, you’ll usually solve both problems. The lime green bells bring a freshness to whatever they’re paired with, and since many people have never seen them, they provide a great talking point as well.

Nigella (Love in a Mist)

Once you have nigella, you’ll likely always have it just because it’s such a prolific self-seeder, but I personally love that about it. (Free flowers!) The best and most usable nigella will come from seedlings that sprout up around September and that overwinter for you, which is what happened for us this year. By June, we had masses of the gorgeous, tall blue and white flowers that I cut on endlessly for weeks.

Stock

Stock is a tricky crop to grow in Utah just because of our volatile springs, but I’ve had the most success with growing the Iron variety (which tends to tolerate heat better), and planting successions of it every two weeks starting in late January and going into late April. My first successions I plant out in our high tunnel, and everything from mid-April on goes out into our raised beds under shade cloth.

Larkspur

For some reason, larkspur is super tricky for me to get to germinate (even when I freeze the seeds), but when I have been able to get some to germinate — and especially to overwinter — I absolutely love using it in arrangements. I find that it’s a more usable spike than delphiniums and foxgloves (which also bloom in June), and I also love that it’s more of a cut and come again kind of flower.

Daisies

Almost everyone loves a cheerful daisy, and they are just about the easiest perennial ever to grow. Also, bonus — they have an insanely good vase life.

Bellflowers

Bellflowers are a biennial, which means you need to sow them the summer before you want them to bloom. But I think they’re absolutely worth the extra bit of trouble! If you cut them just as the first couple of bells are opening, the vase life is often over a week, and I love the bubbly texture they bring to an arrangement.

Saponaria

This is a new filler flower to me this year, and I have absolutely loved it! I direct sowed a bunch in March and April, and I had quite a few of the long, dainty, bouncing flowers ready for me by June. This has a look very similar to Covent Garden annual baby’s breath, but for me, it’s far easier to grow and get a decent stem length on.

bearded irises, allium bulgaricum, spirea, cress, wild buttercups

June Foliage/Fillers

Spirea

Spirea is one of the most valuable shrubs we have on our property because in the spring, its frothy white flowers spill romantically out of every wrapped bouquet I put it in, and then later on, its pretty foliage acts as a nice greenery in the late summer.

Cress

Cress is super quick from seed to harvest — about 60 days is all. If you sometimes struggle with getting your cress to bloom and produce seed pods on long enough stems, try overwintering it (as we do) — your stems will be much more usable. I loved the pennycress I tried last year so much that this year I’m trying two more varieties: a dragon cress from Floret, and Persian Cress from Johnny’s Seeds.

Mint

Mint might be a bully for the home gardener, but WOW, do I love it as a flower farmer for that exact reason! Nothing fills up a bed so fast, and it is one of my absolute favorite fillers and foliages to use in my bouquets for as long as I have it. In fact, I loved my mint patch so much (and was cutting off it so regularly) that I’m now trying to establish two NEW large mint patches.

Raspberry foliage

While our raspberry foliage isn’t the most ideal because it does have thorns, I still welcome using it every June just because it’s so reliable and it provides a great base for any arrangement or bouquet. If you are planning to use raspberry bushes for cut flower bouquets, please do yourself a favor and make sure you plant a thornless variety!

Feverfew

Near the end of June, one of my absolute fillers of all time — feverfew — takes the spotlight. Just a couple stems of feverfew completely fill out almost any arrangement, and the dainty, daisy-like sprays of flowers are so cheerful and loved by everyone. It does have an herbal fragrance that takes some getting used to, but it is SO worth growing, and growing a lot of.

Alfalfa

Finally, I have to include alfalfa on my list, even though I’ve never planted any. Often, despite my best planning and intentions, I still have to go foraging a bit in June to have enough filler and greenery to work with, and alfalfa is almost always what comes to the rescue. It lasts a surprisingly long time in the vase, and the purple flowers (which range from light tones to a super deep violet) are a nice bonus. Whenever I see a weedy patch of alfalfa start up somewhere in my yard, I always let it be in June in order to use it for greenery!

And there you have it! My favorite varieties of cutting material for June. Drop a comment below to add your own favorites to the list, and, as always, don’t hesitate to ask me any questions you might have!

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sunflower bouquet
Flower Farming

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

by torriemeidell
written by torriemeidell

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 that year’s crop.

Types of CSA Bouquet Subscriptions

There are a few different strategies for offering CSA bouquet subscriptions.

  1. You can offer an all-season subscription, which means your customer will get a bouquet or arrangement usually weekly or every other week throughout the entirety of your season.
  2. You can offer a seasonal subscription, which means you might offer 5 bouquets in spring, 6 in summer, and 5 in fall for example. Customers can choose to purchase all three “seasons,” or they can pick and choose which season’s bouquets they want. Often, seasonal bouquets will be available on a weekly basis rather than every other week.
  3. You can offer monthly subscriptions, which is for just one bouquet per month throughout the season. On our farm, we call this the “mini all-season pass,” and it’s definitely one of our most popular options.
  4. Finally, you can do a kind of “punch pass” option, where people pay for a set number of bouquets (say, 4 or 6 or 8), and then they can choose which weeks that they “opt in” and receive one, depending on what flowers are in bloom.

Why Offer a CSA Subscription?

While offering CSA subscriptions comes with drawbacks (which we’ll cover in a minute), there are some enormous benefits to having a CSA subscription as part of your flower farm’s business model.

The first and probably biggest benefit is that it helps you to essentially “pre-sell” your flowers. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THIS. While it might seem when you’re first getting into flower farming that it will be insanely easy to sell your product just because it’s so beautiful, it’s not always as easy as you might think. There is nothing more discouraging than to spend hours harvesting and making up arrangements and bouquets, post them all to sell on social media (or go to your local farmer’s market), and then sell none, or just a small fraction of what you have available. And even if you ARE lucky enough to find buyers for them all (or most of them), you still have to set up pick up times, possibly drive all over to make deliveries, or do the opposite and stay put at your house for hours so people can come pick them up (many of whom will be late, I can almost guarantee it).

Selling CSA subscriptions basically eliminates a lot of that stress.

You know that the work you’re putting into bouquets has been compensated, and you know exactly who that arrangement will be going to. You can set up pickup and delivery times at your convenience at the beginning of the season, and you can streamline the process so you’re not having to be stuck at your house all day or glued to your phone waiting on correspondence.

The second benefit CSA subscriptions provide is that they give you a lot of your season’s cash flow right upfront. This makes it a lot easier to budget for those big springtime expansion expenses, or for you to set aside a big chunk to pay for your tulip order in the fall. I know for our farm, our income varies wildly from month to month, so getting a huge majority of our season’s income at the outset helps us to be able to budget more wisely for the whole year ahead.

Third, your CSA members will usually become your biggest fans because they are able to see your products over and over again, and they will often do the best job at spreading the word about your farm. I’ve even had several who regularly post pictures of all the arrangements they get from us to their social media, which is basically just free advertising every time they receive one.

Okay, So What are the Drawbacks?

Have I sold you on the idea of CSA subscriptions? Are you wanting to jump in immediately?

Not so fast.

While CSA subscriptions ARE my favorite way to make money on our flower farm, they come with some huge caveats.

First, you need to know you can provide flowers when you say you’ll have them.

This is the biggest thing, and the trickiest. If you’re offering a CSA subscription that goes from April to September (like we do), you need to have a concrete plan in place of exactly what flowers you’re going to have in bloom from April to September. The best way to do that is by having lots of data available at your fingertips from previous growing seasons. The second best way is to over-PLAN and over-PLANT so that you are basically trying to grow triple the amount you think you’ll actually need.

Second, you need to make sure you have backups for your first plan. Multiple backups.

In all my years of growing (both before as a home gardener and now as a flower farmer), I don’t think I’ve ever had a “normal” growing season. Every year comes with its hiccups, whether that’s hail that comes out and decimates half your blooms, a months-long drought and intense heat wave that kills everything but the toughest plants, or a pest infestation that comes in and destroys whole beds of flowers. Sometimes spring comes late, and your daffodils and tulips don’t come when expected. Sometimes you have frosts a whole month later than planned (or a month earlier).

The point is, you can plan and plant all you want, but you HAVE to have backups.

Firstly, you need to have backups on your own farm.

For example, I always plan for at least 3-4 focal flowers at any given time so that should I have multiple crop failures, at least one should come through for me.

Next, you need to have backups that are NOT on your own farm. This can take the form of generous family members, friends, or neighbors who are willing to let you cut their flowers (I always offer to pay, either in cash or in future flowers). It can also take the form of buying from other flower farmers in your area, or even from a wholesaler if you get really desperate.

Any way you look at it, you need to figure out what you’re going to do if your own stuff is either not ready in time, or if your crop didn’t come on at all.

Third, you need to figure out what you’ll do if catastrophe strikes and you’re unable to fulfill your side of the deal.

So, let’s say that you had a massive weather catastrophe wipe out 90% of your crop, or let’s say you invested in some bad compost, and it killed everything that you put in it.

What are you going to do if you know you will be entirely unable to fulfill your side of the bargain?

The answer will vary from flower farmer to flower farmer. Some say that the customer expects to take on some risk, and so they should know that flexibility is required. If it’s just a matter of perhaps delaying a bouquet for a week or two, I can maybe see that point, but in the end, you aren’t going to keep customers if you don’t deliver what you say you’re going to deliver. You need to decide ahead of the season if you’ll offer a full refund of any bouquets that were left undelivered, or if you’re going to try and source everything from outside places to make up the deficit.

Fourth, you need to price your subscriptions right so that you’re actually making money on them.

My first year offering subscriptions, I offered free delivery to almost everyone, with the exception of a few customers who lived a considerable distance away, whom I only charged a negligible fee per bouquet (we’re talking like $2.50 or $5 per bouquet for round trips that were more than an hour-long for me). While delivery might not be such a big deal if you’re delivering to someone who lives a few blocks away, or maybe to a pickup location you’ve coordinated at a local business, it can become a HUGE deal if you’re not factoring in your time and gas money if it’s starting to add up to more than a mile or two once or twice a week.

When I factored in all the time I spent making deliveries and all the gas money I shelled out (plus taking into account that I’d offered a bit of a discount on each individual bouquet with the more bouquets someone bought), there were some subscriptions I didn’t make any money on at all.

Although I lost some customers by charging for delivery the next year, I am now much more confident that I’m actually making money on my subscriptions, plus I literally gained back HOURS of my life every week.

How Do I Know If I’m Ready?

Let me share with you a story. MY story, to be precise.

Early in 2021, I decided to just jump in and go for my years-long dream of becoming a flower farmer. We finally had the land to do it, and because I am a die-hard researcher, I planned out every single detail down to the last square inch (or so I thought). Because I’d so carefully planned out my first season and had had some success growing cut flowers for myself before, I decided to just offer a CSA subscription my first year. It seemed like the easiest way to make money, and it also would be nice to have that chunk of money in the beginning when we were putting in so much new infrastructure.

Much to my surprise, I sold out of the limited number of subscriptions I was offering in about 24 hours thanks to a well-designed Facebook ad and supportive neighbors who jumped on right away. (This is totally crazy to me still, since we were literally untested, unproved, and virtually unknown in our new town. I could never thank those people enough who were willing to take such a big chance on our new farm!)

I did at least do some things right that first year. I limited the number of subscriptions to what I felt was a very “do-able” number, which was about 10 or so. I also had (I thought) carefully planned out the timing of everything so that I would have blooms throughout the season.

What actually happened was that for the first month of my subscription (May), I had almost zero blooms in my own garden other than some perennials that had been planted by the people who lived here before. Those perennials, however, were not enough to make up the bouquets I’d promised. Enter miracle #1, which is that through a friend of a family member, we were able to source all the cutting material we would need (for free) from a yard about two hours north of us because the owner had been a florist herself and had recently passed away. Her yard was filled with cutting material she’d often used herself, and her family members were about to raze the yard to get it ready to sell anyway (since it had become overgrown), and they let us take whatever we wanted first. Without all that, we never could have met any of our May subscriptions.

Then June came. I didn’t realize that in the flower farming world, June can actually be an extremely tricky month to have flowers because you’re between the spring-flowering bulbs and before all the summer crops. While some of my hardy annuals and experimentally-sowed early sunflowers did come through for me, I was only able to provide one bouquet to each CSA member, rather than the two I had promised. While I did make up the bouquet later in the season when we had an abundance, it was still embarrassing to not be able to pull through and deliver when we said we were going to.

July was still surprisingly sparse, and then August and September provided such a crazy abundance of flowers, we were unable to sell them all. Thankfully, those later bouquets in the season were so huge and so filled with blooms that they hopefully helped erase some of the very small, more pathetic arrangements from June and early July from our subscribers’ memories.

Honestly, I look back now and think I had to have been crazy to offer a subscription my first year flower farming. There was so much I didn’t know, and even just having one whole year’s worth of hard flower farming data would have helped out enormously in the years to come.

However, I’m also not sorry I just jumped in.

Jumping in with both feet forced me to see very, very quickly where I’d allowed for gaps, and it also forced me to find backups for future years (which came in handy again this year, when I once again had about a two-week gap in my own focal flowers and needed to rely on other people). Just going for it made me get a lot of important mistakes out of the way quickly so that when it came time to plan for this year, I knew what to do.

And this year’s CSA subscriptions have been about 1,000% less stressful than last year’s because I’d learned from my mistakes. I planted a lot more perennial focal flowers. I invested in a high tunnel structure. I made contacts with neighbors who I knew had an abundance of certain focal flowers just in case. I charged a fair price for delivery.

In the end, you’re probably not ever going to feel completely ready — there will always be unknown variables and things that come up that will cause you to be flexible. However, I *would* probably still recommend that you do at least have one full year’s worth of growing data under your belt (in which you’ve taken copious notes of exactly what was blooming when and how much) so that you can address those gaps BEFORE the next growing season begins.

Did that address all your questions? Anything else you’d like to know? Drop a comment below and let me know how I can help you!

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failed tulip crop
Failures + Lessons LearnedFlower Farming

Dealing with Crop Loss + Failure as a New Flower Farmer

by torriemeidell
written by torriemeidell

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 there. My first year, I wasn’t great at knowing how to grow strong seedlings (I didn’t know that the secret was fertilizing weekly with this), but I WAS good at planting everything out when I was “supposed” to. So I transplanted out hundreds of hardy annuals in the recommended window (6-8 weeks before my last frost), and…almost everything died. Some died from frost, some died from me watering too soon after a morning frost, some died from bad compost…

It was awful.

Later in my first season, I transplanted out all of my celosia and cosmos into an area that had formerly been a cow corral that I was trying to transition over to garden beds. I’d amended the soil and watered like crazy, but I still lost 95% of my seedlings because the soil was just too salty.

Then last November, I planted about 1,000 tulip bulbs into the ground. I figured it would be pretty hard to mess up tulips, right?

Wrong.

I only had about 100 usable stems, and the rest didn’t come up, were too short, or withered on the stalk.

The first two failures I mentioned I could keep on the down-low, since I was brand new and didn’t have any customers waiting on those particular things. However, I’d been hyping up my tulips for weeks (months, really) so that when I (surely) had an abundance of tulips during a 3-week window in the spring, I’d have people interested in buying them. Therefore, I felt obligated to let people know of our crop failure via our social media channels so they wouldn’t be waiting on a crop that would never come in.

Although everyone was gracious and sympathetic and supportive, I still felt stupid. Embarrassed. Discouraged.

It seemed like everywhere I looked, people were posting pictures of their gorgeous tulips, and mine were completely shriveled in my back plot.

I’d lost the hundreds of dollars I’d spent on the bulbs. I’d lost the potential sales of people excited to buy tulip bunches in the spring. I had to scramble to find substitutes for the bouquet subscriptions I’d already sold, where I was really counting on the tulips as my main focal flowers.

Crop loss is hard; I won’t sugarcoat that.

But here are a few things that have helped me to be able to weather it a bit better when it does happen (because I’m sure these will not be the last experiences I have with it).

1. Announce the crop failure to your customers if necessary.

You don’t have to announce your crop failures in every case (such as if you’re just starting out and don’t have much of a customer base waiting on certain flower crops), but if you’ve advertised that you would have something by a particular date or a specific crop that you are no longer going to have, you need to let your customers know. For me, I did posts on my flower farm’s social media pages explaining what had happened and what it would mean.

Even though this is a hard step, it is also a great chance for you to see that most people are, in fact, very supportive and sympathetic, which can offer a boost when you’re coming off a disappointing loss. And as for social media, I feel like sharing the failures makes you seem a lot more relatable and authentic, which most people will resonate with.

2. Take everything posted on social media with a grain of salt.

For the week or so after we made our announcement on social media, I seemed to be flooded with tulip pictures wherever I looked, from the quintessential armfuls-of-blooms pictures on Instagram to the videos my favorite flower farmers were posting to their YouTube channels. It seemed like everyone but me had had massive success with their tulips, which just made me feel more stupid.

However, when I made the announcement to our social media, I had multiple flower farmers in my state comment that they had suffered major crop failures too with their tulips, which made me feel significantly less bad/stupid since I wasn’t the only one, and since the problem seemed to be more weather-related than I had originally thought. Not many of them were posting anything about it to their social media accounts, so because I was only seeing beautiful pictures of flowers everywhere, I was convinced my crop failure just had to be down to my own error. But, when I had the courage to just come out and say what had happened, I actually got not only the feeling of comfort and support because other people were also experiencing it, but also a lot of clarity about what might have actually caused it.

And even if the crop failure HAD totally been my fault?

Well, I’m quickly learning the more I talk to people who have been doing this a lot longer than I have that it’s pretty much par for the course in this line of work, so you just have to chalk it up to experience and try to not make the same mistake twice.

3. Do your best to figure out what went wrong.

Failure is an excellent teaching opportunity, even if it is an uncomfortable one. Failure can be one of the most motivating catalysts for looking for solutions and better methods, which have the potential to help ALL your future crops.

If I hadn’t been researching so heavily into why my tulips failed, I might not have unearthed some of the methods I plan to use next year (like the use of shade cloth), which will not just help tulips fare better in general, but which also tend to greatly help stem length. If I’d had adequate tulips this year, I would have likely been satisfied enough that I wouldn’t go looking for better practices and methods.

4. Always have backup plans in place.

Something I learned from last year’s June heat wave (and its subsequent wave of far-too-short stems) was that I always have to make sure I have a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, AND a plan D in flower farming, at least if I’m going to be offering CSA bouquet subscriptions that have to go out at certain times.

Because I’d learned that lesson last year, I’d tried my best to put in safety nets for this year, which included a wider variety of spring crops (including some I’d never originally intended to grow for cutting, like hyacinths), building a high tunnel where I can overwinter spring crops (like ranunculus and anemones), and forming good relationships with generous neighbors who are happy to let me use some of their blooms when my own aren’t producing as expected :). I had a neighbor offer me her tulips soon after I made the announcement that my own had all failed, and I also was able to get early-blooming irises from another neighbor for a later delivery of CSA bouquets since I didn’t have any tulips in my fridge during that period, as I’d originally planned.

Failures will pretty much always happen when you’re dealing with Mother Nature, so it’s definitely best practice to make sure you have plenty of backups.

5. Get out there and try again!

My oldest child just started playing softball for the first time this year. It was her very first time playing any sport, and she was understandably super nervous. She literally had never even watched a softball or baseball game before, so she had no concept of how everything was going to work.

My husband and I did our best to cram as much as we could in the few days of warning we had before her first practice and her first game (which translated to less than a week). Since her team is comprised of girls in three different grades (kindergarten through second), some of the girls had literally been playing for multiple seasons, especially if they’d started with t-ball.

We went to her first practice, and the team was practicing running the bases. On one of the rounds, my daughter’s foot didn’t touch the base, and another girl on the team exasperatedly yelled at her that her foot needed to actually touch all the bases.

My daughter’s always been sensitive and she was already feeling behind, especially as the first practice didn’t involve any explanation of the game as it was assumed most girls would already know. She left the field crying, feeling embarrassed and stupid.

I’d chosen to stay for the duration of the first practice since I could see that the coaches needed some extra adults around to help run some of the drills, so I was able to take her aside and talk to her for awhile. Even after giving her the most comforting pep talk in the world, my daughter still wasn’t sure she wanted to keep playing.

I managed to convince her to try batting and we’d see how she felt after, so she slowly made her way over to the plate. She missed the first several pitches, but then—TING! Her bat made contact, even if it was just a foul tip. With her excitement mounting over how close she’d gotten, she swung again, and hit the next one. After she got a few hits under her belt, the coach rotated her out to another drill, and she happily went back over to her team again and participated in everything for the duration of the practice.

When she came back to me after practice, her eyes were shining again with excitement, and she was elated with her burgeoning skills. When I noted to her that she seemed to have changed how she felt about the whole thing, she said, “Mom, when I was batting, I just thought: I’ve got this next one. I can do it…and that’s when I hit it! At first I was just feeling sad, but then when I got back out there and tried again and was able to do it, I didn’t feel sad anymore.”

We talked then about how the worst thing you can do after failing at something is to just give up, because then those feelings of embarrassment and sadness around the thing will just persist. The best thing you can do is get right back in and score yourself a victory so that you can regain your confidence that you can do hard things and learn and get better as you go.

All of this happened the same week as I’d had to announce our crop failure on social media. I’d been feeling sad and discouraged and a small part of me even wondered if it was worth going on with flower farming after this season.

As the words were leaving my mouth in my conversation with my daughter, I had one of those startling realizations of how what I was saying to her also applied to me. I realized that I just needed to pick myself up and keep on going until I got a win under my belt so that I wouldn’t keep wallowing in the shame of the failure.

It’s not like things automatically got easy after that realization, but I was at least able to push forward with confidence that I could try again next year and that one crop failure didn’t make ME a failure. I was able to get the replacements I needed to fulfill my CSA bouquet subscriptions, and I’ve now had several weeks of enough successes that I feel fully capable of going forward.

Crop loss is almost inevitable if you do agriculture for any length of time, so if you’re going to stay in this line of work, you’ll need to get some strategies in place for learning how to deal with it.

I hope that some of these suggestions and thoughts helped, and if this is something you’ve experienced before, I’d love it if you dropped a comment below and shared your insights!

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FinancesFlower Farming

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

by torriemeidell
written by torriemeidell
bed of benary's giant zinnias in our small scale backyard flower farm

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 on a micro scale to see if it’s for you but don’t want to put in a huge investment upfront, I’ve come up with a from-scratch plan that will only run you just over $200, which should get you the plants you need to see if this is right for you. If you’re not interested in selling your flowers but want to grow a cut flower garden for your own use, this plan is good for that, too.

Note: There are affiliate links to products mentioned below, which means I may get a small commission on any purchases made at no extra cost to you. As always, I only recommend products that I’ve used and loved myself, or that I would feel comfortable buying myself and trying.

stock seedlings

The Equipment

If you’re going to get into cut flower farming or gardening, you have to get comfortable starting your own seedlings. Period. Most nurseries do not carry the special tall varieties you need for cut flowers, so you’ll need to buy your own seeds and grow them yourself.

Luckily, it’s not nearly as difficult as you might think. All you need is a heat mat, seed trays, grow lights, and some good quality seed starting mix to get going. Oh, and you have to remember to actually water the things.

Not all seeds need to be started indoors first — some actually prefer to be direct seeded outside from the get-go, and I’ll note below in the “seeds” section which is which.

Here’s what you need for your set-up:

  • Seedling trays, humidity domes, bottom trays ($20.99 for five 40-cell seedling kits)
    • You can get complicated and shop for all sorts of different sizes and types of seed-starting kits, but for general purposes, I’ve found that this particular size is good for most things (as long as you don’t keep the plants in there *too* long), and I like that it comes with a bottom tray and a humidity dome for each seed tray. The bottom tray is so that water won’t get everywhere when you water the seedlings (and so that you can pour the water directly into the bottom tray for seeds to soak up from the bottom, if you so choose), and the humidity dome is just to leave on until the seeds germinate, then you can take it off. All in all, this particular kit comes with five 40-cell trays, for a total of 200 cells.
  • Grow lights ($59.98 for two 4 ft. shop lights)
    • You can spend all sorts of money on fancy grow lights, but shop lights work just fine, even with the original bulbs in them. I bought 8 of these particular grow lights this year, and they’ve been working just as well as the more expensive Feit LED lights I purchased last year, but they cost a lot less.
  • Seed starting mix ($14.31 for one 8-quart package)
    • You want a mix that’s formulated especially for starting seeds, and if you’re going to go for the pre-made mix route, you want one that has some kind of “food” or fertilizer included in it so that the plants will be able to grow on after germinating. I haven’t personally tried this exact kind (because I make my own seed starting mix), but looking at its excellent ratings, I would be comfortable buying this myself since I prefer the organic fertilizer route rather than the synthetic fertilizer route.
  • Heat mat ($15.99 for one heat mat)
    • Heat mats are mostly to help seedlings germinate, and you usually remove the seedlings from the heat mat once they’ve sprouted. However, heat mats can also be good for certain plants that are particularly heat-loving, like zinnias and basil, in order for them to grow even better for you inside.

Total for Equipment: $111.27

seed starting setup for our microscale flower farm

The Seeds

Now for the fun part, right? Below I’ve included the best seeds for mixing and matching bouquets, and you’ll notice that I’ve also included a lot of seeds for “filler” or “greenery” — that’s because you ideally want to grow about 50% foliage and filler to 50% focal flowers. Many people (myself included) tend to ignore the greenery and filler their first year growing. However, those pieces are absolutely necessary for bulking out bouquets and adding textural interest, and your bouquets will just look strange without it.

My very first year growing a cut flower garden (before I got into farming and selling), I pretty much just grew whatever flowers looked most pretty to me. As a result, when I went to put everything together, it just didn’t look right, and I had to go forage greenery from the trees and shrubs on my property. Ideally for a mixed bouquet, you want about a third focal flowers (usually bigger flowers, often with a round shape), a third supporting flowers (which includes “spikes” and “froth”), and a third greenery.

All seeds listed below are from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. While Johnny’s isn’t the most inexpensive source, I have personally found that it’s definitely one of the most reliable and the highest quality. (And here’s a tip: if you add items to your cart, add your name to their email list, and then wait a day or two, they’ll pretty much almost always email you a coupon for either free shipping or for a certain dollar or percentage amount off your order.) At the beginning of my flower farming journey, I bought seeds from a variety of sources, but I now buy almost exclusively from Johnny’s.

Here are the absolute must-grows to include in your first cut flower garden, all of which are relatively easy for beginners:

  • snapdragons (Potomac Custom Mix, $4.98 for 50 seeds)
    • Snapdragons were the flower that first made me fall in love with cut flowers. While you might be used to a bedding snapdragon, the ones grown for cutting are in a league of their own, complete with different shapes and forms than you’ll find in a typical nursery snapdragon. While I love all kinds of cutting snapdragons, the Potomac series is the tallest and produces some of the strongest stems. This is a true cut-and-come again flower that will usually produce blooms for you from late spring/early summer all the way through to the first frost and even beyond (as it’s pretty cold-tolerant). Snapdragons are a great “spike” flower to add to arrangements in the early season. This is one that you basically have to start inside under grow lights to have much success.
  • zinnias (Queen Mix, $5.40 for 50 seeds)
    • Zinnias are the workhorse of any cut flower farm–the more you cut them, the more flowers they pump out for you. They make a great focal flower, and this particular variety has an unusual, vintage-like coloring that makes it especially desirable. The unique coloring also means that it makes a good “bridge” flower to tie together various colors in an arrangement. You can either direct sow zinnias outside after your lost frost, or you can start it inside a few weeks early to get a jump on the season.
  • zinnias (Benary’s Giant Mix, $4.98 for 50 seeds)
    • These zinnias are truly huge and usually fully double, which makes them a fantastic focal flower. Last year I grew several different varieties of zinnias, but after growing the Benary’s and Queen series, I don’t think I need to grow much else (though the Oklahomas are good too—just smaller). While plants will keep producing throughout the entire growing season, they do tend to slow down a bit near the end, so to keep the blooms coming fully, it’s good do a second succession about a month after you put your first seeds in the ground.
  • sunflowers (ProCut Orange, $10.80 for 250 seeds)
    • This is definitely the priciest group of seeds in this list, but for sure worth it. Everyone loves sunflowers, and they make a fantastic focal flower. This particular series (the ProCut series) is pollenless and has an extremely fast seed-to-harvest time, sometimes blooming in as few as 50 days. However, this series is also a single-stem sunflower variety, which means that each seed will only produce one flower. This does mean that you need to plan on sowing sunflowers about every other week the entire growing season in order to ensure you have a continuous supply. Sunflowers do great when direct sown (as long as you don’t have too much pressure from mice or other animals), but you can also start them inside and transplant them out after two weeks to get a head start.
  • sunflowers (ProCut White Lite, $8.75 for 100 seeds)
    • Here’s another pick from the ProCut series, and one that is fabulous for your late spring/early summer arrangements. I recommend doing a couple successions of this for the first month of your growing season, then doing the ProCut orange for the later part of the season. Once again, this is a single stem bloom.
  • sunflowers (Soraya, $5.20 for 50 seeds)
    • Since you can never have too many sunflowers, I included some branching sunflowers on this list as well, which means that you won’t have to succession plant these as much (maybe just do one big planting at the beginning of the growing season, and one more a month after that). A branching sunflower will produce more blooms the more you cut it, but they do take longer to go from seed to harvest than the single-stem varieties. This particular kind bears minimal pollen, and I particularly like it because the blooms are upright facing.
  • rudbeckia (Triloba, $4.90 for 100 seeds)
    • Rudbeckia triloba is a cheery filler that produces multiple daisy-like blooms on a single stem, which can help fill out an arrangement quickly. Rudbeckia is also a workhorse that will pump out crazy amounts of flowers the more you cut it, and it’s also frost-tolerant, so you can plant it out about 4-6 weeks before your last expected frost. You do need to start this one inside and transplant it out, but it’s usually very quick to germinate and grows quickly. The rudbeckia triloba variety is also perennial, so once you plant it, you’ll have it for a long time to come.
  • rudbeckia (Cherokee Sunset, $5.15 for 100 seeds)
    • Cherokee Sunset is a variety mix of rudbeckia hirta, which is the annual form of rudbeckia (more commonly known as black-eyed susan). This mix doesn’t look anything like your typical yellow-and-brown rudbeckia, however — this mix produces totally different flowers from each seed, most of which are fully or semi-double, and which range in colors from orange to yellow to red to brown. This particular variety also works great as a focal flower, as the blooms can get huge — anywhere from 3-5″ across. If you plant this outside early enough, you can get blooms from June to frost.
  • basil (Cinnamon, $4.90 for 200 seeds)
    • Basil is one of the best and most prolific fillers around, especially if you pinch it (aka, cut off the top above a set of leaves) when it gets between 6-9″ high. This is one you can start inside or direct sow outside, but you do need to wait until after your last frost to plant it. The smell of this basil is amazing, and its dark purple foliage and bracts once it bolts and flowers is particularly beautiful in later summer and fall arrangements. I recommend planting at least three successions of basil throughout your growing season, 3-4 weeks apart.
  • basil (Mrs. Burns Lemon, $4.10 for 200 seeds)
    • This basil has lime green foliage and a citrusy smell, and it mixes well with just about everything. Both this and the cinnamon basil are special ornamental varieties that have been bred to be tall, usually at least 18-24″.
  • statice (Johnny’s formula mix, $4.70 for 100 seeds)
    • You might be tempted to discount statice as boring or not worth your time (as I was), but once you grow it fresh, you’ll never go back. This is honestly one of the most prolific plants I have grown, with each one producing buckets of stems and multiple flushes over the course of the whole growing season. It’s also fairly frost tolerant, which means you can plant it out about a month or up to 6 weeks before your last frost. Statice makes a great filler, and I love that this mix comes in so many colors. This one needs to be started inside first.
  • cress (Persian, $4.90 for 200 seeds)
    • Every bouquet needs to have some kind of airy filler in it to really make it sparkle, and cress is a great option for that. It does need to be planted frequently as it’s also a one-and-done kind of plant, but you can direct sow it in the ground starting about 6 weeks before your last frost, and you’ll have a usable harvest in about 60 days. You can either use it for the tiny flowers, or you can wait a little longer for the cool decorative seed pods to come on.
  • frosted explosion grass ($5.15 for 100 seeds)
    • Here’s another one that adds that element of airy sparkle to an arrangement, and the texture on this is seriously incredible. This one will usually keep producing multiple stems from the same plant as long as you keep on top of harvesting. I would recommend starting it indoors, as the seedlings look identical to weed grass when they germinate. I honestly don’t know if this one is frost-tolerant, so best plant it out after the last frost just in case.
  • feverfew (Tetra White, $4.65 for 50 seeds)
    • While the smell of feverfew takes some getting used to, it is one of the best fillers around as it can bulk up a bouquet faster than just about anything else I can think of. It should be started indoors but can be transplanted out 6 weeks or so before your last frost date, and it will usually self-seed if a few blooms are left on the plants at the end of the season. If you’ve successfully overwintered your feverfew in the fall, you’ll often get two flushes from it the next year — one in late spring around June and into July, and the other later on, around September.
  • bells of Ireland ($6.90 for 1,000 seeds)
    • Some people have a hard time germinating bells of Ireland, but if you pop the seed packet in the freezer for a week before direct sowing in the ground, you shouldn’t have a problem, especially if you keep the soil moist until germination. These frost-tolerant plants have beautiful spikes of lime green bells that add a lushness to any arrangement they’re added to, and they will produce some usable side shoots for a later flush of blooms. These aren’t as productive as zinnias or rudbeckia, so you’ll need to succession sow a patch about every 3 weeks.
  • bachelor’s buttons (Choice Mix, $5.15 for 100 seeds)
    • Here’s another fun filler flower that can be started in the spring, about 6-8 weeks before your last frost date. Just direct sow them in the ground, and they’ll produce these lovely bursts of color for you in late spring. Bonus: Bachelor’s buttons are actually some of the very earliest flowers to bloom in the spring, so even though they’re a bit of a pain to harvest, they’re worth it for how early they come on. I recommend pinching them when they’re about 6-8″ high above a lower set of leaves so that they branch out and produce longer, easier-to-harvest stems.
  • amaranth (Hot Biscuits, $5.15 for 100 seeds)
    • Amaranth is my absolute favorite mid- to late summer filler (although pampas plume celosia would also be an excellent substitute). I prefer to start my amaranth inside and plant out after the last frost, but you can also direct sow it in the ground successfully. This one benefits from a hard pinch early on when the plant is around 9″ tall because it will produce multiple smaller spikes for you rather than just one gigantic plume. I’d recommend doing at least two successions, a month apart. The Hot Biscuits variety is a lovely shade of brown/caramel that mixes really well in autumn arrangements.
  • amaranth (Red Spike, $5.15 for 100 seeds)
    • I had a hard time deciding between this and a green variety of amaranth, but this one won out because it’s just so dramatic in late summer and autumn (and I figure we had other green fillers aplenty). You can either use just the foliage, or you can wait until the plant produces plumes.
  • cosmos (Double Click Mix, $5.15 for 25 seeds)
    • Finally, a cut garden plan wouldn’t be complete without cosmos. Admittedly, the flowers are just so-so for me because they don’t have a great vase life (just 5 days or so), but I actually LOVE using the greenery of the cosmos for filler. This can be either direct sowed or started inside, and it’s as cut-and-come-again as they get. In fact, this plant becomes almost TOO prolific, so make sure you plant it somewhere with plenty of room.

Total for Seeds: $106.06

Grand Total: $217.33

Now, this list clearly doesn’t include the cost of soil amendments, compost, or other things you might need if you don’t already have established garden beds. However, it DOES give you a curated list that, if followed, will have you producing bunches and bunches of bouquets from early summer all the way through to your first frost.

mixed bouquets for the farmer's market from our backyard flower farm

And there you have it! Everything you need to start your very own micro-scale flower farm in your backyard for around $200. If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to comment below!

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Flower Farming

Favorite Resources for New Flower Farmers

by torriemeidell
written by torriemeidell

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 so that I could act like I knew what I was doing.

RELATED: Lessons Learned From My First Year of Flower Farming

Below are the sources that have proved invaluable to me (especially in that first year of growing), and they are still things I refer to often, sometimes daily. (And by all means, if you know of more that I haven’t included here, please comment below and tell me about it!)

I’ve purposely tried to only include the absolute most helpful resources that I use regularly, so know that these are places that I’ve gone to again and again when I have a question or need help!

Note: There are affiliate links to products and books mentioned below.

Blogs and Websites

  • Floret
    • So this one is probably a tad bit obvious, but you gotta start with the best! As with many newer flower farmers, I can credit a lot of my dream of actually making flower farming into a reality to Erin Benzakein from Floret Flower Farm. I found Erin’s blog while I was just starting into the concept of growing a cut flower garden for myself, and I have regularly read and used her resources for years. She not only has a ton of information-packed blog posts on just about every subject with cut flower farming as you can imagine, but she also regularly offers freebies like mini video courses to email subscribers. If you’re brand new to her site and to flower farming, I recommend starting with her Growing Resources Round-Up page.
  • Sierra Flower Farm
    • Sierra Flower Farm is located in Nevada, which is a similar growing region to mine, but that’s not the only reason I like it — in addition to just general information on crop planning, how to grow certain flowers, etc., she (Jessica) also includes quite a few articles on the business side of flower farming, such as the pros and cons of going through different sales outlets and how to target your ideal customer. I recommend you start with one of my favorite posts of hers, Starting a Flower Farm on a Shoestring Budget.
  • Johnny’s Seeds website
    • If you think it’s odd that I’m including a seed company’s website on here, you clearly haven’t been to Johnny’s Seeds website. Seriously, this company is incredible, and they’re one of the #1 preferred seed companies in the flower farming world for a reason. Not only are their products excellent, but they also include such detailed descriptions of how to sow, grow, and harvest everything that I am regularly checking their site at least a few times a week to check some quick fact or other on something I’m growing. They also run several different experimental trials each year and publish their findings, which you can access through their Grower’s Library.

YouTube

Oh YouTube, if Floret Farm is the reason I started dreaming of a backyard flower farm actually being a thing, you were the reason I quickly became obsessed with the idea. The flower farmers below have all been enormously inspiring to me, and I owe a lot of the quick tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the past year to them. (Confession: I also regularly watch replays of their old videos while I seed sow or do other farm-related things just to feel like I’m in good company with people who understand what it’s like.)

Books

I plan to do a whole huge post devoted just to all the books I love on flower farming and floral design, but for this post, I’m just going to narrow it down to my top three must-own books, which I refer to pretty much almost every week:

  • Cut Flower Garden by Erin Benzakein
    • Hands down, this is the #1 book I’d recommend that every flower farmer or cut flower grower owns. Period. It is so packed full of information on all the basics plus a plethora of easy seeds to get started with, and the photos are just swoon-worthy. If I’m growing or harvesting something and need a refresher on some fact or other, this is almost always the first book I reference, unless the plant is a hardy annual (see next book).
  • Cool Flowers by Lisa Mason Ziegler
    • For years, I completely misunderstood the entire class of flowers and plants known as hardy annuals. And because of that, I’d had very little success with most of them. Reading this book changed EVERYTHING about how I thought of this group of flowers, and it is one I wish I would have read years and years ago. This is an absolute must-own.
  • A Year in Flowers by Erin Benzakein
    • Now, I don’t consider this a must-own for the floral design aspect of it (although that has come in handy for me, too). I consider it in my top 3 because of the appendix. This book has the most in-depth and incredible appendix on cut flowers rounded up in one place that I know of, and it gives you a brief synopsis of hundreds of different plants and flowers, including their vase life and any harvest and growing tips that are must-knows. If I need to know the vase life or quick info on something, I check here first (and almost always find what I’m looking for).

Miscellaneous

  • Local cut flower group or association
    • With the growing movement of local, “slow” flowers gaining serious momentum, there are tons of different associations and such you can join for a small fee. The one I’ve joined is the Utah Cut Flower Farm Association, which is a local grower’s collective that provides a ton of valuable resources in its basic membership (and even more for its premium membership). The biggest boon for me is that it allowed me to join the exclusive Facebook group of the association, where members can post questions, share information and resources, and do Facebook Live chats. It’s so valuable to be able to contact other growers in your same climate and market and to help each other out. The FB group alone is worth the fee! In addition to that, there are other perks, such as member webinars, group meet-ups, and your business info going into their public directory so people can find you more easily. Plus, this last year I actually was able to get a grower’s grant through the association to help offset the cost of the high tunnel we’re putting in this year! It’s definitely worth doing a Google search to see what local (and national) associations speak to you.
  • University extensions
    • Another great resource to look into is what your local universities are doing in the world of cut flowers and agriculture. Here in Utah, Utah State University has a TON of resources for cut flower growers, including free access to their annual small farms conference (which you can participate in virtually if you can’t make it in person and also watch replays) and online PDFs of some of the results of their recent research. For example, USU has been doing a multi-year experiment on growing ranunculus and anemones here in Utah, and they published a lot of their findings HERE. I also follow several of their researchers on Instagram so that I can get the latest info they’re publishing on their work.

If you have any questions or other resources you know of, make sure to drop a comment below!!

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Failures + Lessons LearnedFlower Farming

Lessons Learned From My First Year Flower Farming

by torriemeidell
written by torriemeidell

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 opened up bouquet offerings to the public, and I even had a couple custom orders in the season. I also successfully grew more from seed than I ever had before in my life, including several new varieties I’d never personally grown before.

As I prepare to officially start my 2022 growing season (I’ll be sowing my first seeds inside this week!), I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes twice.

Here are just ten of the things I’m hoping to do differently this year based on last year’s experience:

Plan for the June gap

This is definitely the one that’s been top of my mind ever since last June, when I just didn’t have enough flowers to fulfill subscriptions as planned during the month. While each CSA member still got one bouquet during the month, they were supposed to get two, and the one they did get was definitely the smallest bouquet of the season. I did make up for it later by making sure everyone got 3 bouquets in August and making sure all of those bouquets were fuller and bigger, but I still felt bad I didn’t come through during June.

During that excruciating month of waiting, I did a lot of informal research — I drove (or walked) up and down several streets all over the county and took note of what people had blooming in their yards during that time so that I could buy some perennials that would help take some of the pressure off. Thanks to those trips, I decided to order some special David Austin roses to help cover the June focal flowers, and I also bought some double shasta daisy plants as well.

But the real trick was going to be overwintering some hardy annuals (which I hadn’t had the chance to do before because of when we moved here), as well as starting some things earlier in the season since I didn’t start any seeds until March 1st last year. The whole group of flowers known as hardy annuals is the crux of my plan for next year, and I’m hoping that my experiments with overwintering rudbeckia, larkspur, nigella, dara, and some others will be the ticket to making sure I don’t ever repeat the June dry spell again. I also planted some biennials last year (foxglove, sweet William, and campanula), which are well-known to be great at filling the gap between the last of the spring bulbs and the first of the warm season annuals, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that all my planning and overwintering will pay off in 2022.

Oh, and since we’re building a high tunnel this month, I’m also planning on using that so that we can grow ranunculus as another focal flower for June, PLUS I’m planting about 140 Asiatic lilies, at least some of which should bloom in June for sure.

Can you tell I’m REALLY making sure we don’t have a repeat of 2021 again?!

Take way more pictures

While I obviously had to take some pictures every week, such as for the weekly offerings we had available, and while I did try and at least take some general pictures of the farm and of my process a couple times a month, I really didn’t take that many pictures of everything last year. Additionally, I also realized that I don’t have a single picture of MYSELF with anything to do with the flower farm, other than a couple pictures on my phone of me at the farmer’s market!

The reasons for the lack of pictures boil down to two things: 1) I was literally so busy the majority of the season that it was super hard to find time to just go and take pictures, and whenever I did have time, I was too tired to feel creative enough to want to do it, and 2) I was a bit embarrassed that our flower farm didn’t look as “showy” and pristine as many other flower farms seem to — we got overrun with weeds by August when things were looking their prettiest, and since I wasn’t the best at ripping old things out that were done blooming or when I hadn’t had success with certain transplants, there were several bare gaps in the beds. We also were fairly good at staying on top of harvesting everything as soon as it came on, so there weren’t very many points when we actually HAD a lot of visible flowers out in the farm.

However, I’ve quickly realized that taking a ton of pictures is something I need to prioritize. There are several reasons, but the biggest one is for marketing purposes — since the vast majority of our business takes place over social media, I really need to be working on building up a following there and also frequently posting pictures so that people are more invested in our process.

Don’t offer free delivery

For our CSA subscriptions, I offered free delivery on every bouquet to anyone within a 10-mile radius, mostly just because I was nervous that no one would want to buy a subscription otherwise, especially since we were totally an unknown business and this was our first year flower farming. For customers who lived a bit further out, I charged a (very small) delivery fee of between $2.50 and $5 a bouquet, even though some of them lived nearly half an hour away from me, which translated to an hour or more of driving time every time I had a delivery out in those areas.

All that driving really added up, and when you factor out how much time it took and how much we spent in gas, we definitely lost money on those CSA subscriptions.

In the year ahead, I will still offer CSA subscriptions, but the “base price” will be for pick-up only, and if a customer wants each one delivered, the fee will be quite a bit higher than what I charged last year.

The fact is, if I want this to be a viable business that will actually make us some money, I have to make sure that I’m not devaluing my time or not counting other expenses (such as gas) into the cost.

“Days to maturity” is not a guarantee

There were so many things I grew last year that I’d never grown before, and since I didn’t know how else to figure out when they’d be ready, I just went by the “days to maturity” on the packet. While this can be a valid indicator of when you can expect blooms, it definitely is not fail-proof.

What I didn’t realize is that “days to maturity” is usually only taking into consideration if the plants are grown under ideal circumstances, and they don’t always count the days that the seedling spends indoors under grow lights — sometimes days to maturity is calculated from transplant. At any rate, just because something spent 65 days under grow lights doesn’t mean that you can then subtract 65 days from the days to maturity–it just doesn’t work like that, at least not in my experience.

So basically, my new rule of thumb is that for anything I start inside and then transplant out, I can only subtract about half of the amount of time inside off of the days to maturity, and the rest will have to be counted from outside. If I get things sooner than expected, great. But this way, I’m also not freaking out when nothing is ready when expected, either.

Research (and maybe rethink) your target customer

My business plan for last year was 1) sell around 12-15 CSA subscriptions, and 2) sell most everything that was left to florists. If I still had things that were leftover or that the florists didn’t want, I’d then offer them to the public.

I quickly learned that how and what I planted last year was a TERRIBLE fit for florists. I mostly planted mixes of plants last year (rather than just single colors), and I also grew a very wide variety of different plants. While the variety was really nice to have when it came to making arrangements myself, it was not the way you grow for florists at all, who are usually looking for large quantities of the same thing in the same color.

In 2022, I’m not planning on doing too much with florists, but I do have a couple crops that I’m growing in bulk (such as ranunculus) that, if they are successful and produce a good yield, I should be able to have the quantities I’d need to offer to local florists. It’s totally experimental this year, but it will give me a good idea of whether or not that’s a sales outlet I’m still interested in or not.

Stay up on your successions (don’t skip!)

I planned to do weekly sunflower successions starting in March, but when the season went on and I got busier and busier, I started dropping the ball on more and more of the successions.

Now, the early sunflower successions were experimental, and many of the first successions didn’t work out. However, I was able to sow sunflowers inside in early April, transplant them out about 2 weeks later, and then have them produce a usable bloom on a long enough stem in June. If you remember the June fiasco above, this was VERY GOOD and totally SAVED me on several of the bouquets that month.

However, what was NOT good was that April was the time I was so busy with other seeds that I dropped the ball for something like 3 weeks in a row on the sunflower successions. That means that I could have actually had the focal flowers I needed in June, but I didn’t because I didn’t plant them.

I also didn’t do enough successions of some of my most important crops (like zinnias and basil), and the only reason I was able to have enough late in the season was because my next door neighbor actually asked me what she could still direct sow in early July, which she then planted and offered to let me use as much as I wanted.

For 2022, the plan is to do weekly or bi-weekly successions of anything that’s a one-and-done single-stem crop like sunflowers or stock or cress, and then do monthly successions of anything that’s cut and come again, such as zinnias, marigolds, celosia, and amaranth.

Offer multiple price points

We were kind of a one-trick pony last year and mostly just offered $20 hand-tied market bouquets. Sure, there were a couple times I did $15 mason jar bouquets, but that was basically the extent of what we tried.

Something I noticed when we ended up trying out selling at the farmer’s market was that many people were really interested in the flowers, but that $20 might have been too steep of a price point for some. Next year, the plan is to offer multiple price points from tiny $5 bundles to $30 deluxe bouquets, and see if that makes a difference in sales.

I don’t know if I’ll offer too many multiple price points with things I’m selling over social media, but for anything we’re selling in person at a stand, that’s definitely the new plan.

Print business cards

For some reason, I’d gotten the idea into my head that business cards were a thing of the past and that I didn’t need to worry about them — I should just refer people to our social media pages.

Uh, HUGE MISTAKE.

First, not everyone is going to pull out their phone and follow you on social media right there (in fact, very few people will), so if they don’t have a way to look you up later, they’ll likely forget.

Second, there are many, MANY people who live in our area who don’t use any form of social media at all, which means they have no way of contacting us if they want to make a purchase directly. I had several potential customers (often middle-aged men wanting to buy subscriptions or special bouquets for a spouse) who didn’t use social media at all, and who had no way of getting in touch with me because I didn’t have a way to easily give them our contact info.

Lesson learned.

I’m planning on ordering my business cards first thing in February.

Make sure the e-transfer goes through before your customer leaves

Not gonna lie, this one still kinda rankles.

Back in May, I tried a seedling sale just to see how it would do. (For the record, it actually wasn’t a bad way to make a little bit of money, but I also discovered that most customers struggle with keeping plugs–which are smaller than the plants sold at nurseries–alive, so many of the plants they bought died on them. Since I don’t want to be selling things to people that don’t perform up to expectation, I don’t plan on doing future seedling sales for the time being.) At the seedling sale, I had a customer who bought quite a few seedlings from me — over $30 worth. However, before I was able to confirm that the transfer went through, the customer had driven away.

I never did get the money from that sale.

The same thing almost happened again at the farmer’s market, but luckily my husband was standing by and reminded me to check that it came through before they went away. Sure enough, they’d forgotten to push the “confirm” button on their Venmo app, so it wouldn’t have gone through had we not caught it in time.

Plant more filler than you want to

Like any flower farmer or avid gardener, I get SO EXCITED when I’m planning out what we’re going to grow in the next season. I get all the seed catalogs, see all the pages of gorgeous flowers, and I want them all. Inevitably I buy too many seeds, and then I’m left wondering where to put everything.

And then, uh oh — I’ve forgotten to actually leave much room for filler. You know, the greenery and small flower bits that are there more to add bulk than anything else.

It is SO tempting to just rationalize that you’ll “figure it out” later or that if you put enough of the flowers from the list you’re more excited about into a bouquet, you won’t need as much filler.

But the fact is, there’s a reason why seasoned flower farmers tell you to plan for about 50% flowers and about 50% filler — it’s because YOU CAN’T FORGET ABOUT IT.

In late summer, I had TONS of flowers — more than I knew what to do with! But my bouquets still often looked lackluster, and it’s because by about late August, I ran out of my best fillers, so the bouquets just didn’t look as full and lush as they should have.

Filler such as basil, mint, raspberry greens, etc. really does make a huge difference in how good your flowers look. I remember one bouquet near the end of September, when I had the opposite problem of plenty of filler and hardly any flowers — it didn’t seem to matter as much that there were fewer blooms! The filler made it look so lush and full that I was able to make a gorgeous arrangement using relatively few flowers.

So in 2022, although it doesn’t generally get me as excited as the showier blooms, I’ve allotted a LOT of space to growing just filler. Here’s hoping that it will lead to even prettier bouquets this season!

I’d love to know if you learned anything from this list or if you have any questions! Please drop a comment below, and I’ll do my best to get back to you ASAP.

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Flower Farming

How Much Does It Cost to Start a (Small) Flower Farm?

by torriemeidell
written by torriemeidell
small backyard cut flower farm

In the past few years, flower farming has seen a distinct boom in the U.S. While there used to be relatively few sources you could go to if you were wanting to go into growing cut flowers for profit, there are now more than you could ever read / watch / follow in a lifetime. However, I have found relatively few sources that give actual hard and fast numbers for what it costs to START one (although occasionally you’ll get a ballpark figure–I’ve seen some saying as little as around $600 and some saying $20,000+). Obviously there will be variability with the figures depending on the size of your farm, if you decide to invest in some higher-cost infrastructure (aka, high tunnels or a greenhouse), where your farm is located, etc.

Related Post: How to Start a Microscale Flower Farm for around $200

Therefore, I can’t tell you exactly how much YOU would need to start a flower farm of your own, but I CAN tell you what it cost to start mine, which will hopefully give you a pretty good idea of the start-up costs in case you’re thinking of going into this on your own.

A few things to keep in mind:

1 – The figures below only indicate the SUPPLIES we bought—they don’t take into account the money spent on transportation, the MANY hours of labor, or the cost of watering the flowers using irrigation and culinary water sources.

2 – We started our farm this year (in 2021) in Central Utah. While we sourced many of our supplies from online sources (and therefore the prices would be similar across the nation), some of them will be based on what we found locally, such as all the filler for the raised beds that we bought from our local IFA.

3 – We did not go into debt to start this farm. We largely used money from stimulus checks, our tax return, and income from the farm itself to fund this year’s expenses, so these start-up costs aren’t things we’re going to be paying off for years. If you go into debt to start a farm, you have to keep in mind the interest you’ll be paying over time as part of your cost.

4 – Our farm/home is located on just over a half acre of land, only a small portion of which we’re actually using for flower production this first year–around 1,100 square feet is all (though we’ve almost quadrupled the size of our flower farm for next year). As we wanted to make sure this was a viable business before investing *too* much, we decided not to build any structures (such as high tunnels or greenhouses) this first year, though we are planning on putting in an inexpensive version of a high tunnel next year. For this first year, we decided to have about two-thirds of our flowers directly in the ground and the other third in raised beds. While the raised beds are a significant portion of our start-up costs, they were worth the investment for me because I’ve had back issues for years, and raised beds are FAR easier to stay on top of than any planting done straight in the ground, plus you have complete control over the soil.

5 – If I were to go back and do it all again, I would pull back my spending in some areas and invest more of the money into time-saving infrastructure elements like drip irrigation tape and weed fabric. In future years, these will be top of the list! I also couldn’t have known this at the beginning, but we bought quite a few things that we didn’t really need — they were just things that had come recommended by others, but which didn’t really fit into our particular business plan at this time (such as many of the floral supplies and tools).

6 – For ease of calculation, I’ve rounded everything to the nearest dollar.

Note: There are affiliate links to products mentioned below, which means I may get a small commission on any purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you.

Seeds + Plants

This is the most obvious category of things you’d have to buy, so I’ll start with it first (plus it’s the one you get the most excited about!). In almost every case, it’s cheaper to buy seeds and start your flowers that way than to buy them as established plants or even as plugs (which are seedlings grown by other farmers/nurseries for you). This year, I bought almost all of my seeds from three main sources: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Floret Flower Farm, and Johnny Seeds.

To save myself on shipping costs, I should have planned out my year better and ordered everything all at once in one bulk order rather than splitting it into several different orders. Baker Creek does free shipping no matter the minimum, but Johnny’s requires a minimum order of $200 for free shipping, which meant that my shipping costs really added up because I didn’t just group them together. I also found that the more economical option for specialized varieties was often through Johnny’s, since you can order by the ounce there rather than just have to go with the preset amount that’s in each packet.

I was able to source some bulbs and plants locally through Walmart (which is the only big store around here) and from a couple different nurseries we visited in other counties throughout the growing season, and I bought a few other things online from Breck’s (lilies, roses, and hellebores) and Home Depot (peonies) for this first season.

Since flower farmers always have to plan ahead, I’m also including the cost of all the fall bulbs I bought for NEXT year, which I had to order mostly in May and June to be sure to get what I wanted. As those are all part of the costs of starting the farm this first year, I’m including them here. I made a large order of bulbs through Dutch Grown (500 tulips, 100 alliums, 100 daffodils) before I realized that I could qualify for better prices through a wholesaler, so I also bought bulbs from A.D.R. Bulbs once I qualified for their wholesaler program. From ADR, I ordered yet more tulips, alliums, and daffodils, and I also got ranunculus corms, leucojum, and hyacinths from them too. All in all, we purchased around 2,500 bulbs this year, which will all come up next spring.

I am not, however, counting the cost of my bulk seed order for next year (although I’ve already paid for them). If I could have planned better, I would have planted bulbs in the fall BEFORE we ever started the flower farm, so all of those would have been included in my first year’s costs of starting the farm, which is why I’m including the cost of the bulbs.

Although I bought way too many seeds this year to use them all (and will therefore be saving some for next season), I anticipate that seeds and plants are a recurring expense that I’ll have to plan for each year. (Let’s be honest though — this is one expense I’m happy to take on! Buying the seeds and plants and bulbs is the best part!)

$1,124 (seeds + plants) + $1,072 (fall-planted bulbs)

Total Amount Spent on Seeds, Plants + Bulbs: $2,196

Seed-Starting Supplies

Because we started so much of what we’re growing this year from seed, we definitely needed to improve upon the sad little seed set-up we had before, which was one small grow light and one seed starting tray. We started out by buying 6 of these highly-rated (and decently affordable) grow lights from Amazon, but it quickly became apparent that we’d need to at least double that, so we ended up with 12. We also figured out that it would be best to have a few heat mats to both speed up germination and to provide heat to the plants that preferred a warmer temperature, so we got four of these.

Update: I’ve since tried out these less expensive shop lights for our grow light setup, and they work just as well as the ones listed above, but at a fraction of the cost. I will only be going with these from now on, most likely.

We also needed various seed starting trays, domes, etc., and we tried several different types this year to see what we liked. We ordered ten of these 72-cell trays, which are a great size but that I wish would have come with the bottom tray for catching water and a humidity dome. These 40-cell half trays came with all three components and were a great size for most of our seeds to not just start in but to grow on a bit in as well, so we purchased quite a few of those. However, I learned from firsthand experience this year that some plants are simply too big for the 40-cell half trays (which are roughly equivalent in size to a typical 72-cell tray), so I ended up splurging a bit and getting a ten-pack of some larger 6-cell mini trays (which also included the dome and the bottom watering tray).

We ended up deciding to try a seedling sale this year as well, which meant that we needed to purchase a bunch of larger individual pots to size up the plants as they got bigger (and then to eventually sell the seedlings in). We ended up trying several different options, including two different sizes that were biodegradable and two that were not. All worked fine, though I will say that the biodegradable ones sure didn’t biodegrade as quickly as I would have liked, probably because we are farming in an extremely dry climate and I’m not sure my watering (as frequent as it was) was heavy enough most of the time to really aid the breakdown process.

Finally, we needed seed starter mix. While you can buy soilless seed starting mixes, we actually opted to make our own since it was the more economical option on as large of a scale as we were doing it. Basically, we just mixed together equal parts coco coir, perlite, and vermiculite, and that was it! (Though I will say that when I potted things up to a bigger size for the seedling sale, I increased the ratio of coco coir in the mix.)

Total Cost of Seed-Starting Supplies: $1,083

Soil, Mulch, Fertilizer

In past years, I’ve just tried to go for the cheapest option when it came to our soil, which meant getting loads of green waste compost from the local dump. Some years, this worked to our advantage. Other years, we got a bad batch that was still too “hot” for the plants, and it killed most everything we put in it.

Even though I would much rather spend my money on seeds and plants (because duh), I realize that the soil I’m putting those seeds and plants into is the single most important factor in my success, other than weather.

So even though I still tried to save costs where I could, I tried not to skimp too much and to “do it right,” or at least as right as I could. Going forward, I found a much less expensive source for high quality aged manure compost from a local goat and horse rancher, so I’ll be using that from now on.

I started first off with sending in a soil sample to get a soil analysis done on the biggest in-garden bed we’d be planting. Looking back, I should have sent off soil samples from ALL of our in-ground beds, but even just doing the one was very helpful. The bed had formerly been a cow corral and still had some manure that hadn’t broken down, which meant that the soil was far too salty for anything to thrive in without us doing some serious salt leeching through copious watering. Had I not sent in the soil sample, I would have just planted it to see what happened, and I would have lost every last thing. As it was, we still lost several things due to the soil still being high in salt even after leeching, but we also had some things that did okay.

While the former cow pasture didn’t need any amendments other than watering to get the salts out, I knew the other in-ground beds needed some good compost because I could tell they didn’t have much — if any — organic matter in them just by looking at them. We found a local landscaping company who sold loads of compost by the dump truck load, and we got two loads of two different kinds of compost and soil from them. The straight compost we put on top of all the existing in-ground beds and put a layer on top of all our raised beds we built at the beginning, and for the soil mix we ordered later, we used that on the new in-ground beds we tilled up and in the later raised beds we built. Looking back, we probably should have just ordered the soil mixture from the get-go and used it on all the raised beds instead of the strategy we used below, but hindsight is 20/20.

For the soil in our raised beds, we used what’s called the lasagna method in order to try and cut down on costs. Basically, that meant we just put cardboard and newspaper at the bottom, did a layer of alfalfa hay, then a layer of straw, and then a layer of soil, and then a layer of compost on top. The soil we bought by the bag at our local IFA, but looking back, I think it would have been much more cost effective to order more of the soil mixture from the landscaping company and use that for the beds. I might have still done a small layer of straw on the bottom, but I didn’t love the method — I don’t think we did our soil layer thick enough since the straw poked through in some areas after the season went on, and the whole soil level sunk a LOT by the end.

We’re choosing not to use any chemicals on our farm, so all our fertilizers are derived from natural sources. We used liquid fish emulsion on a weekly or semi-weekly basis for the first several weeks while the seedlings were getting established after transplanting; we used yucca extract on the beds that had a high salt content (like the former cow corral) in order to help leech out that salt and help the plants take up more water; and we used a marine cuisine dry fertilizer in some of the raised beds and in some of the seedlings we had to pot up to act as a slow release fertilizer.

Total Cost of Soil, Mulch + Fertilizer = $1,576

Raised Beds

In order to control the soil and to make weeding and upkeep easier, we decided to build 9 raised beds this first as part of the flower farm, which is where we grew the majority of what we ended up selling.

Our raised beds were 4′ x 10′, and 16″ high. We used pressure-treated lumber and wood deck screws.

Lumber prices were insane this year, so the cost on these was definitely higher than what we’d paid in the past for the same size bed.

Cost of Materials for Raised Beds: $1,663

Plant Support (Hoops, Frost Cloth, Netting)

While I didn’t use plant support as much as I SHOULD have, I did use it sometimes.

Eventually I’ll probably invest in more durable/expensive hoops and frost cloth, but for this year, I went the inexpensive route and tried out two sets of hoops (I liked these ones better), and this frost cloth (which is not durable at all — quite a few got large tears in them). I used this netting, but I didn’t love it — it tangled super easily and was kind of a pain to get situated, but maybe all netting is like that.

I’ll admit that I netted very few of my crops, though I really should have netted more. Most things generally didn’t get tall enough for me this year to worry too much about supporting them (especially considering that we had almost zero rainstorms the whole season), but I do wish I would have netted my scabiosa, as it got way too tall and wiry to support itself and flopped over in one massive heap in late summer.

Cost of Plant Supports: $154

Garden + Harvest Tools

While we had a decent number of garden tools already, we still needed some specialized things for growing on a larger scale. In addition to needing to spend a bit of money on some of the more “usual” garden tools like a gardening hat, tomato cages and a metal rake, we also needed to buy several 5 gallon buckets for harvesting, sharp harvesting shears (these are my favorite), and heavy-duty harvesting gloves.

To expand the farm in the fall, we also invested in a heavy-duty silage tarp, as well as an electric tiller, both of which allowed us to kill off large sections of what had formerly just been lawn and convert them to garden beds. We also decided to invest in a backpack sprayer so that we could fertilize large areas more quickly with fish emulsion, and we also bought a specialized hose nozzle for watering seedlings.

Other random expenses included head lamps so we could work when it was dark (which happened more often than you’d think) and special auger drill bits for drilling holes to plant bulbs.

Total Cost of Garden + Harvest Tools: $529

Floral/Bouquet Arranging Tools

Here’s an area that I definitely overspent in — I basically just looked at Floret’s Cut Flower Garden book and bought nearly every single thing she mentioned in the “floral tools and supplies” section. However, as I was a bit of a one-trick pony this year and mostly just stuck with doing hand-tied market bouquets, I didn’t need anything like chicken wire, floral frogs, etc. I also bought a LOT of thrifted vases (and got probably well over a dozen for free from other sources), only some of which have ended up actually being useful thus far.

Down the road, I might get a lot more into the “floristry” side of the business and utilize all these things, but for this year, I really didn’t need so many.

For those starting out, I recommend a few different sizes of vases so you can get a sense of how it is to work with each (I usually preferred the ones that flared out at the top a bit), some good floral snips, and floral preservative for sure, especially as you’ll want to give a packet with each arrangement or bouquet you sell.

The mainstays for me in this category ended up being brown kraft paper, rubber bands, and ribbon. Later in the season, I cut down on how much ribbon I was using and only used it in mason jar arrangements (instead of around each hand-tied market bouquet), but it did give a nice finishing touch whenever I used it. I also substituted the more inexpensive twine on occasion as well, which looks nice too.

Lastly, I thought I was going to be selling to florists as part of my business plan, so I ended up getting quite a few different sizes of floral plastic sleeves in case I needed to bundle up stems and sell them in groups of 10 like that. While I didn’t do that this year, I am planning on having such an abundance of certain crops next year (mostly lilies and ranunculuses) that I do anticipate those will eventually come in handy.

Total Cost of Floral + Bouquet Supplies: $476

Business Expenses

This category included all kinds of things, such as advertising on social media (we spent around $110 total throughout the season), the cost of setting up the business as an LLC, a membership to my state’s cut flower farm association, and more.

It also included the more expected expenses of purchasing a card reader to take payments, postage to mail out business correspondence, and business stickers. I didn’t order business cards this year because I didn’t think people really used them anymore, but that was a huge, huge mistake. Those are definitely at the top of the list of things to buy next year for this category.

I also counted our expenses for selling at the farmer’s market in this category, which meant buying a shade canopy, folding tables, and a magnetic tile board to display prices.

Total Cost of Business Expenses: $1,004

Books + Research

While you can find quite a lot of information for free online, I found that often the way to get the most important information in the most concise way (and without having to sift through a lot of unnecessary advice) was just to buy some books on the subject.

Now, after buying *quite* a few books this first season, I can say with certainty that really only about a handful have been extremely useful (while the others have just been eye candy). I plan to do a later post on my favorite books on cut flower farming and flower arranging, but for a few that I couldn’t live without, you can check out these: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Total Spent on Books + Research: $501

Grand Total: $9,182

Now, in all reality, we could have gotten by with spending less–there were some things we purchased that we later realized we didn’t really need (like much of the floral arranging tools), and considering that I only regularly refer to a handful of the gardening books (yet bought probably between 15-20), I could have cut down there as well.

On the other hand, there were also areas that we were able to save money by shopping around, picking things up from estate sales (like ribbon), or getting them for free (such as many of our vases).

All told, is it possible to spend less than this to start a small-scale flower farm? Absolutely. However, I CAN almost guarantee that it will cost much, much more than you think it will, just because there are so many “invisible costs” that are easy to overlook.

I hope you found this useful, and please, don’t hesitate to share, pin it for later, or comment below with any questions you have!

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Day in the LifeFlower Farming

Day in the Life of a Flower Farmer {Summer 2021}

by torriemeidell
written by torriemeidell

I decided back in the spring that I wanted to do a Day in the Life post for each season of flower farming, just so you can get a sense of what the work looks like at different times of the year, and also how it changes. I’m currently just starting the super busy season, as I finally have enough flowers not just to fulfill my weekly CSA bouquet subscriptions, but also to start offering weekly (or bi-weekly) arrangements to the general public.

The majority of mornings involve some kind of harvest nowadays, as well as some sort of flower arranging. Pretty much every day involves marketing on social media and taking care of the business side of things, in addition to the regular farm chores of weeding, watering, and planting. We’re basically almost done planting for the season (just a couple really quick bloomers left to put in), and I’ve already sowed all the plants that we’re going to be overwintering, which will be planted in late August.

Something I’ve definitely learned quick is that as a flower farmer, you always have to be thinking several months ahead!

But without further ado, here’s what flower farm life is looking like now, at the end of July:

Note: There are affiliate links to products mentioned below, which means I may get a small commission on any purchases made through those links at no extra cost to you.

28 July 2021

6:30 a.m. I wake up to my alarm going off (Smashing Pumpkins “1979” this time—my alarm is set to play YouTube Music on shuffle), sit up in bed, notice that my daughter had crawled into bed with us at some point in the night (no recollection of this), and then say my morning prayers.

6:45 a.m. After a quick trip to the bathroom (where I check the flower farm’s Instagram and Facebook feeds to make sure there are no messages to respond to), I go to the kitchen and start cleaning the two white 5-gallon buckets I’m going to use for harvesting. Normally I would do this the night before, but I got distracted when I went to do it last night and then never got around to it. After the buckets are washed, I fill them each with about 4-5″ of cold water, grab my favorite cutting snips (I love this pair), put on my harvesting gloves, and then head out to harvest.

7:00 a.m. I always harvest in the same order and direction so that I make sure not to forget anything that might be in bloom and ready to cut. I start over at my next door neighbor’s, where they have so graciously allowed me to use one of the raised garden beds that they weren’t planting this year. I was nervous about how much shade it gets, but because the beginning of our summer was so unusually hot and even more dry than normal, everything in that bed is actually thriving because it had more protection from the heat. I harvest about two-thirds of what is ready, purposely leaving things in the bed that I normally wouldn’t because I know I’m harvesting again tomorrow morning and need to leave enough for 3 bouquets then.

7:30 a.m. My first bucket is full (with snapdragons, stock, basil, mint, and gladioli), so I take it inside and put it up on the kitchen island and grab the second bucket. I head back out to harvest the rest (amaranth, statice, sunflowers, zinnias, and some other random bits and pieces).

8:00 a.m. Harvesting is done, and I take the second bucket inside and have Matt help me carry them both downstairs to one of our basements (yes, we have two basements, and no, they don’t connect to each other) because it’s about 10 degrees cooler down there. (In case you didn’t know, you should leave recently harvested flowers in a cool room to “condition” for at least a few hours before you work with them. This allows them to hydrate, get the field heat off, and perk up if they’ve become wilty.) Then I sit down to eat the scrambled eggs and toast that Matt made for everyone. The older two kids have finished already and are in the playroom, but Hyrum (our youngest) is still eating and now starts whining until I share my toast with him. Cute little mooch.

8:20 a.m. Breakfast finished, I notice that the snapdragons on our kitchen table are looking a little sad, so I take them over to the sink to give them fresh water and re-snip the ends. Then I head into my bedroom to make the bed and start up the computer.

8:30 a.m. I start drafting up this post.

8:40 a.m. Matt comes in to give me goodbye kisses before he leaves for work, and Hyrum has a minor meltdown when he leaves (he’s in a major Daddy’s boy phase at the moment and wants to be wherever Matt is). I send the kids out in the backyard to play, and only minor crying ensues from Mathias (my 3-year-old) because he wanted to watch a t.v. show instead. Once the kids are established outside (riding their bikes on the deck and playing make-believe), I catch up on this post and check my usual websites (bank, email, business pages, etc.). I try to get Hyrum to go out with the older two, but he’s wanting to stay by me.

8:55 a.m. After the shortest outside time ever, the kids want to come back inside, so I send them downstairs to get dressed, and I fold a bit of laundry while I find an outfit to dress Hyrum in. I get him dressed, then go and start a load of laundry through in the washing machine.

9:05 a.m. I go to the bathroom and then start putting on makeup and getting ready for the day. I am interrupted after a few minutes by Mathias, who needs help finding clean underwear and then getting dressed. I have to go and pull out the laundry from the dryer to find him what we need (since we had to do some crisis laundry yesterday to have clean clothes because Matt’s been working on putting in our new kitchen floor and the machine has been unplugged). I get him dressed then go back into the bathroom to finish getting ready.

9:30 a.m. As I come out of the bedroom after getting dressed (in one of the two pairs I have of my favorite overalls, which I wear most days, and which are actually on sale now so I’m tempted to get them in literally every color they offer), I can hear Raven (my oldest) yelling, “Next c.d.! Next c.d.!” We got her a c.d. player for her 6th birthday, and one of her favorite ways to spend her downtime is listening to audiobooks. She’s currently listening to the second Harry Potter, so I put in the next c.d. for her and get it going again. (Note: I usually let her change out the c.d.’s herself if it’s one of her own personal audiobooks, but the Harry Potter c.d.’s are mine and Matt’s and I am VERY attached to them and listen to the series on almost a continuous loop throughout the year while I’m driving in the car, so I’m definitely more protective of those.)

9:35 a.m. I grab a cold Diet Dr. Pepper and sit down to update this post some more, then I respond to some comments on my other blog. I also update the document I’ve made that shows what went into each CSA bouquet (mostly just so I know what’s blooming when for future years).

9:55 a.m. Okay, time to tackle laundry hardcore until I have to start making bouquets! I put on some YouTube videos for motivation and get going.

10:15 a.m. After folding and putting away two loads of laundry, I start pulling out all the supplies necessary to make bouquets: brown kraft paper, scissors, stapler, business stickers, ribbon, and my cutting shears again. I also pull out two identical vases and fill them with water, then I go downstairs to retrieve the buckets of flowers from the basement. The way I do my CSA bouquets at this point (because I don’t have enough of any one color or type of flower to do identical bouquets) is that I first divide the focal flowers and bigger blooms evenly between the vases to make sure it’s as fair as possible. Doing this also allows me to play around with the color palettes I’m going to go with for each bouquet before I actually go in and start making one, because once I do start the actual bouquet-making process, there’s really no turning back unless you want to start all over.

10:45 a.m. The flowers are divided and the filler stems are situated in such a way that they’re all easily accessible, so I start the bouquet-making process by starting with a focal flower (in this case it was a ProCut sunflower in each bouquet), then add in some of the spikes and larger blooms and filler as I rotate the bouquet clockwise in my hand. I keep on adding in all the elements until the bouquet “feels” full enough (about the area you get when you touch your middle finger to your thumb, maybe a little wider). I examine it from all sides to see if it looks fairly evenly spaced at all angles, then I take my pruning shears and cut off the ends so that they’re all roughly the same length. I always seem to forget to bring the bag of rubber bands in with me (I use a size 32), so I have to go into the closet still holding the bouquet to fish out some of those, which I use two of around each bouquet to hold it together. After putting that bouquet in water, I repeat the process with the second bouquet.

11:10 a.m. The kids need to eat lunch, so I pause for a minute to make them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and get them some glasses of milk with a side of grapes, then I return to the bouquets to wrap them up in the brown kraft paper. Once the wrap is stapled together, I choose a ribbon to wrap around it and then put one of my business stickers on.

11:35 a.m. The bouquets are ready, and I’m noticing that I still have just enough left over to make a mason jar arrangement to post for sale on my farm’s Facebook page. I do have some shorter-stemmed blooms to supplement it with outside, so I grab my snips and head out to harvest some calendula and gomphrena to round out what I’ll need for the arrangement. I come in and try to arrange it, but I’m struggling to make it look how I want it to and I know I need to head out soon, so I decide to just leave it alone for now and come back to it later with fresh eyes.

the two CSA bouquets

11:50 a.m. We need to leave to deliver the two CSA bouquets, so I tell the older two kids to use the bathroom before we leave, and I take Hyrum downstairs to put him in a fresh diaper. Then it’s the mad rush to find shoes and grab stuffed animals for the car before we leave. During this time, I take the bouquets out to the porch to snap some pictures for the farm’s Instagram, and while I’m trying to take a video for an IG story, I hear screaming and crying from inside. Going in, I realize that Mathias is pulling down on the living room curtains trying to get them to move, but he’s about to pull the rod right down, so I frantically yell, “Stop! Stop!” He stops immediately, but then I have to deal with the ramifications of my yelling. I’m not one to yell much, so whenever I do, there always seems to be fallout to deal with after — I have to explain to my daughter (who has started telling me regularly lately how I can improve my parenting skills and how I’m handling things incorrectly) that I’m not being mean and that I was just yelling to get their attention because it was a dangerous situation, and my son is upset because the yelling scared him. I calm everyone down, then get them all into the car and get it started so that the A/C can start working. I then finish up taking some quick pictures of the bouquets sans interruptions, and I give one to Raven to hold for me, and I put the other next to me so I can keep it steady while I drive.

12:10 p.m. We’re finally on our way, and the two deliveries today are actually two towns over, so I turn on the 7th Harry Potter book (which is the one I’ve been listening to for the past several weeks in the car), and we make the 20-minute drive to the first location. After dropping that one off, we then have another 5-minute drive or so to the other house, where I’m invited in for a few minutes to chat and check out some recent painting that had been done.

1:00 p.m. Whenever I’m “in town,” I’ll usually grab a couple $1 drinks from McDonald’s and take one to Matt at work as a little treat, so we do that. (The boys have both been napping in the car for the majority of all this time, btw.) After we drop that off to Matt, we make a quick pit stop at Walmart to grab some milk and bananas.

2:00 p.m. The usual returning-home madness — I have to unload the car, everyone needs to use the bathroom, shoes get left everywhere. Ya know.

2:15 p.m. I realized I haven’t eaten for ages and am starting to feel sick because of it, so I make myself a pb & honey sandwich, pour myself a glass of milk, get a couple snacks for the kids, and we all eat.

2:30 p.m. Raven wants the next Harry Potter c.d. put in and the boys are both happily playing with toys, so I steal onto the computer for awhile to update this blog post.

3:10 p.m. I hear Hyrum crying over something, so I head out of my room to go check on things out there. I help them sort things out, then take a quick bathroom trip.

3:20 p.m. I always get so tired around this time of day — it’s definitely the hour I struggle with the most. Since the kids are still playing fine, I decide to just lie down on my bed while I work on some social media posts of the farm and the bouquets today. I might consider a short power nap on a different day, except for the fact that since Hyrum slept in the car, I don’t even bother to put him down for his regular afternoon nap because I know he won’t take one at this point. Bummer.

3:35 p.m. After the shortest break ever, I’m forced to get up because the kids are also entering their trickiest part of the day, and I can hear the boys fighting over a toy. Once I get up and help everyone calm down, I’m feeling more alert and motivated than I was before, so I decide to tackle the mason jar arrangement again. Having waited so long to look at it has definitely helped—I recognize immediately that it’s not working well because I’m trying to include too many different colors and tones, so I decide to just make two separate arrangements and head down to the basement to get a second mason jar. While I’m down there I take a peek at the seedlings in the grow room, and I make a mental note to myself to come back down later tonight to water everything.

4:00 p.m. I have to go out and harvest a few more things to fit the new color palette, and I’m lucky to have plenty because all the blooms that were too short to use in the CSA bouquets are usually still long enough for me to use in these smaller arrangements. It’s not an ideal time to harvest in the heat of the day, but today’s been overcast and we’ve even got a smattering of rain on and off, so I’m not too worried about it. I take the new material inside, and it’s immediately apparent that this new idea of doing two separate arrangements should go much quicker.

mason jar bouquets near the end of the process, before I went and harvested some final touches

5:15 p.m. The two arrangements are complete, and as Matt is walking in the door, I’m getting ready to take the jars out to photograph them to post them for sale on social media. After I post them to Facebook and study the pictures more, I realize quickly that I’m not quite satisfied with how they look, so I go out yet again to harvest a few final airy elements to add some height. NOW I am finally done, ha ha. I try to edit the Facebook page to replace the old pictures with the new updated ones, but I’m having issues doing it and it’s getting too late in the day to really advertise bouquets anyway, so I delete the post and just plan on putting them up for sale tomorrow morning.

6:00 p.m. While I’ve been doing all that, Matt got himself and the kids some dinner (I wasn’t hungry, having eaten a later lunch), and then he started to work on laying more of our kitchen floor down. (Not-so-fun fact: We haven’t had a kitchen floor since moving to our new house last November. To say I’m excited that we’re finally getting it put down is the understatement of the year.) Normally we have family dinner together, but on days when flower farming stuff is heavy, we often have to adjust.

6:15 p.m. I’m finally starting to feel a little bit hungry, so I make a smoothie (enough for everyone since I know everyone will want some) and a couple pieces of toast.

6:40 p.m. Dinner eaten, I attempt to update this post, but since the kids are hindering Matt’s progress on the floor, I’m forced to take a break to distract them. We all pile onto our master bed to do some laundry together, and then I take advantage of the kids being eager to help and have us all take the folded clothes downstairs to put them away in their drawers.

7:15 p.m. It’s past Hyrum’s bedtime and close to the other kids’ bedtime too, so I get started on bedtime routine while Matt continues to work on the floor. I read 3 books to the kids (they each get to pick one) and then a scripture story. Matt pauses work to help the kids brush their teeth, and then it’s last potty breaks, diaper changes, and into p.j.’s. Family prayers, hugs, and lights out.

7:45 p.m. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been sitting outside the kids’ bedroom door and doing my scripture study on my phone to make sure that they stay in bed (as Mathias used to have a problem constantly getting out, which has now been more or less fixed since I sit outside their door). So I do my scripture study and come back upstairs when I haven’t heard any noises from their room for awhile.

8:10 p.m. I started working on this post again, but I must have been overconfident about the kids as I heard the basement door open and one of them comes up. It ends up being Raven going to the bathroom again, so I follow her downstairs to make sure Mathias is still in bed (he is, surprisingly, but not asleep yet), and I re-tuck in the kids and say good night. I only stay outside the door for a couple minutes until I’m sure they’re going to still be quiet and stay in, then I head back upstairs.

8:30 p.m. The kitchen is a wreck, and I know I need to at least clear up some of it tonight because I have 3 CSA bouquets to work on in the morning. I go to the front yard to dump the water from the harvest buckets onto some of the dry spots on the front lawn, and I run into Matt who is doing the evening watering. Normally he would have spent an hour and a half tonight manually watering everything in the flower farm, but since we got a decent amount of rain over the past couple days, he’s just watering the containers and window boxes in the front that don’t get hit by much precipitation. He asks if I’ll go collect eggs from the chickens and put them in for the night, so I go do that and also do a quick walkabout to check that I’ll have enough blooms to harvest for tomorrow’s bouquets. While I do that, Matt comes back in and resumes work on the floor.

8:55 p.m. Outside duties done, I come back in to update this post.

9:10 p.m. I remember that the seedlings downstairs need to be watered, so I fill up a pitcher and go get that taken care of.

9:20 p.m. Even though I’m tired, I know I need to tackle the kitchen so that I have a workspace in the morning for bouquets, so while Matt continues to lay the kitchen floor at the opposite end from me, I unload the dishwasher, load it again and start it, and wash all the dishes that need to be done by hand. It’s not perfect, but at least I’ll have a spot to work!

9:45 p.m. I officially give myself the rest of the night off and read a little in the Kindle app (The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi), then go and watch an episode of Big Bang Theory with Matt.

10:20 p.m. Get ready for bed, read a little bit, say prayers with Matt.

11:00 p.m. Lights out!

And there you have it—a fairly typical day in our life right now. If you missed the spring edition, you can find that HERE.

P. S. If gardening, homesteading, and sustainable living are topics that interest you, there’s a fabulous flash sale going on HERE.

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Flower Farming

Flower Farming Diaries: The June Gap

by torriemeidell
written by torriemeidell
recently pinched zinnias in June

You know the saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know”?

Yeah, I’ve definitely been feeling the truth of THAT this whole first year of flower farming.

I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent individual, so when I approached this whole idea of actually going for my flower farm dream, I did a LOT of research. And I mean a LOT. Even now, several months in, I’m still studying seed catalogs for fun and browsing through a flower farming or flower arranging book nearly every day.

But in all my research and all my spreadsheet-making and all my careful calendar planning, I never stopped to consider that “days to maturity” is SEVERELY impacted by weather. And indoor growing conditions. And the presence (or not) of certain nutrients in the soil. Oh, and I also neglected to note that stem length would also be affected by these same variables.

So when I sat down and made up my list, I tried to account for everything—I was planting things right on schedule, I was leaving things inside for as long as you were supposed to, and I was confident that all of my hard work and dedication and planning and downright worrying about it would mean that I was fairly flush with blooms by late June.

See, here’s what you don’t notice if you’re not a hardcore cut flower enthusiast or flower farmer—

There isn’t much in bloom in June.

Correction: There isn’t much in bloom in June that you can actually use in a cut flower arrangement, not unless you’ve nailed your planning, overwintered plants, and had pretty ideal late spring weather conditions.

In fact, in the flower world, there’s even a term for it — the June gap.

I didn’t have a chance to overwinter plants (because of when we moved here), but I thought I HAD nailed my planning. Maybe that was true on some things, but thanks to a super crazy heat wave early in June that freaked out all my hardy annuals that prefer the cooler weather, all the blooms and stems I SHOULD be harvesting right now are all…extremely short.

gypsophilia blooming too short
gypsophilia (aka, baby’s breath “Covent Garden”) blooming at about 6″ tall

Seriously, if I could have looked back at these first several months of farming in advance, I would have told my March self, “Yeah, you’d be crazy to take on CSA subscriptions this first year, at least not until midsummer.”

But take them on I did, and thanks to many little miracles that came as literal answers to prayers, I’ve somehow managed to have enough for each one of my CSA bouquets on schedule.

Until this week.

I was supposed to send out 7 bouquets this week. As it stands, I’m only going to be able to send out 3, and they will be the smallest bouquets that those CSA members will get this season. And the only reason I’ll even have enough for those is thanks to: 1) The experimental sunflowers I’ve been planting out weekly or so since April (but which I should have planted a LOT more of), 2) the hardy annuals I direct sowed on March 1st, which have provided some of my much needed filler accents (and which have *barely* hung on long enough to allow me to do these, though they will for sure be done after this week), 3) the perennials and bushes that were already established on the property before we moved here (seriously, I was SAVED by the fact that there was an established patch of gorgeous Oriental poppies and a few peonies that popped up earlier this month), and 4) the fact that I basically live in the countryside and have been able to forage for the remaining filler and accents I lacked.

snapdragons budding too short
these snapdragons should be so much taller than they are…they should all be through the netting by now

It was not a fun task to contact the rest of the CSA members who would have to wait longer to receive their expected bouquets. Granted, every last one of them was gracious and wonderful and so, so understanding, but still—

I feel like I should have put in more safeguards, somehow.

My biggest problem right now is that almost everything that I SHOULD be harvesting right now is blooming too short. I should have had plenty of filler for these bouquets—the airy baby’s breath pictured above, nigella (pictured below), the handful of larkspur that actually germinated out of a couple hundred seeds sown, and the prettiest annual phlox in all shades of purple plus an antique cream/rose combination. And all of that is indeed blooming…on too short of stems. I am pinching off the too-short blooms like crazy to try and stimulate the plants to get taller and keep producing, but my hopes aren’t high at this point–that heat wave we had a couple weeks ago seemed to shock all my cool-loving plants into frantic production, and I don’t know that there will be a chance for them to bounce back now that we’re into the heat of summer.

However, making mistakes is part of the process (and I’ve made a LOT of mistakes this first year). My job now is to use those mistakes to inform my plan for future years, which is what I’m trying to do now. I’ve been studying the Instagram feeds and YouTube videos of flower farmers with similar growing seasons/zones as me and seeing what they have blooming in June, and then I’ve been taking steps as I can.

The biggest thing I can do?

Establish June-blooming perennials, such as peonies, roses, and daisies. The peonies I was already on top of, as I planted something like 9 or 10 peony tubers/plants this year. However, as those will take around 2-3 more years before they start really producing, I have to still look elsewhere for solutions. I did plant 5 bare-root roses early in the spring (and have plans to purchase more in the fall), but once again, the problem is that I’ll have to wait a couple years before I can really start expecting the blooms and stem length I need from those.

I have planted two ruffly varieties of Shasta daisies–which should help a bit next year–but it won’t be enough. So I’m trying to go all out and figure that overplanting will be better than underplanting, so I’ve put in some Canterbury bells and foxgloves (both biennials that won’t produce until next year), I have plans to overwinter as many hardy annuals as can tolerate a Zone 6 winter, and I’ve put in an order for 500 ranunculus corms (gulp). Honestly, I worry that I’ll kill every last ranunculus plant because they’re notoriously fussy to grow (especially in a climate like ours where our spring is over in a flash), but I’ve got to try.

All this is to say that the flower farm doesn’t look like much right now–just a whole lot of green, mostly–but that I’m at least learning from my mistakes and trying to correct them as early as possible.

At the very least, it’s been extremely easy to stay on top of harvesting, as you’re actually really not SUPPOSED to see a lot of blooms on a flower farm (as that usually means you’re past the ideal harvest time). And I will say, I have enjoyed the one perk of having everything blooming too short—getting to enjoy a lot of short bouquets in my own home!

I’m crossing my fingers that July brings an end to the worrying about whether or not I’ll have enough to fulfill the CSA subscriptions every week, but only time will tell. Here’s hoping!

enjoying my short little bouquets 🙂

What blooms in June in YOUR neck of the woods?

P. S. If you want to see what IS blooming tall enough (and what my bouquets have been looking like lately), make sure to follow the flower farm over on Instagram!

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