I recently saw a post from a fellow flower farmer describing a flower farmer’s “schedule”. She amusingly described it as 9 months of the year as “Worker Jane Doe” and 3 months of the year as “CEO Jane Doe”. Jane Doe is obviously not her name, but you get the picture. Basically, 3 months of the year she uses as a time for planning. This is the part most people who want to get into flower farming don’t like or don’t even realize exists. It’s easy to assume flower farming is just frolicking in fields of flowers that magically appear.
I wish. Because I am not naturally wired as a “CEO”. I am much more the worker bee.
But to be successful, there needs to be a time for planning! My first reaction is anticipation. It’s exciting to think about all the flowers we can grow, and ushering those into the world for florists, homemakers, events or to cheer someone up. And it’s fun to look through pages and pages of seed catalogs and look at all the wonderful colors and shapes.
My second reaction is trepidation. (Does anyone even use words like this anymore?!) Trying to navigate the big, scary world of business immediately sets me on edge. Fortunately, my husband has a degree in International Business and has worked for a Fortune 500 company back in the day. Admittedly, it’s a double-edged sword. He presents the business side to me in lingo I do not understand. And honestly, I’d rather just crawl back to the field and grow the flowers… But it has to be done to be successful!
So here we are. In the 3 months of planning. Technically, for me anyway, it’s more like 1 month of planning. Typically mid-December to mid-January, shifting weeks every year, but that’s the core time. By February we are already neck-deep in sowing seeds and selling some of our anemones and narcissus.
For those of us who are not business-oriented, we have to take a deep breath, or twenty, and re-focus our minds. I find the best thing to do is make a list of goals; the business people would say we need to make a business plan- but let’s start with goals. Then start expanding those goals. Each year can be different as your business grows or as you push it to grow. So start with where you are at. And if nothing else, take advice from experienced and mid-experienced growers.
We’ll take a flower farming example. Let’s say our goal is to sell market bouquets at a farmer’s market. This will be just one financial venue from several others we will plan on for the year. Say we want to sell an average of 8 bouquets a week at $20 each. $160 a week for the duration of the market (3 months?). So 12 x $160= $1,920. Awesome!
Now factor in the expenses. An average farmer’s market fee is $35. 12 x $35= $420. Now the expenses for growing the flowers. You can choose to buy plugs or grow your own from seed. Let’s look at both.
Buying plugs: plants grown by others- usually a wholesaler- that comes in different tray sizes. The smaller the tray size count, the smaller the seedling. So a 216/210 tray, which is 23.6″x 15.7″, has 1.3″ cells (12 cells x 18 cells, or 216 cells). Hopefully that didn’t go over your head! Basically, you will get 210 plants (even though it holds 216) that measure 1.3″ across. These are “plugs”. And as an example, Cosmos Apricot Lemonade 210 tray from GroNSell for the 2024 year costs $50.19/tray.
There’s a catch to buying plugs. Most companies require a minimum tray order. Typically 4 trays. This has to do with shipping as a box can snuggly hold 4 trays. For GroNSell, their minimum is 3 trays for the 210 cell size. They also have a $30 shipping charge for up to 72 trays (if I understood it correctly).
So you have to order 3 trays x $50.19= $150.57 + $30 Shipping= $180.57. And we can do 2 trays of other flower plugs. Let’s just assume the other two trays will cost the same as the Cosmos. But we need more flowers AND foliage to make our market bouquets. We know we need at least 15 stems for our bouquets, with at least 1 focal (large, round flower), 3 semi-focal (like cosmos), filler flowers (like celosia and gomphrena) and foliage (like basil or mint).
Let’s order the cosmos, gomphrena and celosia from GroNSell for the $180.57. We need at least a focal flower, like a sunflower. We’re going to order seeds for those. Add in snapdragons and alliums for semi-focals and basil and mint for foliage. We’ll be growing these from seed.
To grow from seed, we’ll need either cell trays or soil-blocked trays. I like using soil blocking because it cuts down on using cell trays. I can reuse cafeteria trays for soil blocking. The soil block cost about $35 (one time cost). Cafeteria tray about $3 (one time cost). Good soil- 2 cubic feet – about $13 bag and can do probably about 8 trays worth. Seeds for the sunflowers ($15), snapdragons ($5), alliums (actually bulbs- $15), basil ($4) and mint ($4) will cost a total of about $43.
So to grow from seed for 5 different seed/bulb varieties (for the season- also succession planting), plus soil, plus tray, plus soil blocker will cost about $100 (buying 3 trays). And I may need to buy more soil bags. So let’s add in another $26.
Let’s put it together. Cost for farmer’s market= $420. Cost for growing the flowers= 180.57 + 100 + 26= $306.57. Total cost (expense) to me is $306.57. My projection for sales just from farmer’s market alone for 8 bouquets sold per week is $1,920. Or $1,613 profit.
But we’re not done!! For the fun of it, calculate what it means we are making per hour based on that profit. If we work 4 hours a day flower farming (5 days a week) and 5 hours on Saturday (4 hours at market and 1 hour for loading and unloading/travel time – probably more…). So 25 hours a week for 12 weeks= 300 hours. $1,613 profit divided by 300 hours (maybe less???) is $5.38/hr.
We didn’t include a cost for a tent or folding table or even a bouquet sleeve. So now we might want to make our bouquets $25 instead! Or figure out how to shorten our 4 hour work days. Or find a market that costs less than $35. Or find a way to sell more bouquets. Or all of the above!
Just going through this excercise REALLY helps us understand how to better have a time for planning cut flowers for the farmer’s market.
So now take this concept and apply it to the other goals you may want to do for your flower farm or flower garden!