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Growing For Market part1…. Repost

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This entry is part 1 of 10 in the series Growing for Market

This is a repost from my grow for market series. Please click on the older posts at the bottom of the pages to get back to this whole series. Thanks

Trailing Begonia

One of the best feelings for me throughout my nursery career has been a combination of joy, pride and accomplishment derived from giving or selling something that you produced from a seed to the finished product. to someone else. It’s like giving a part of yourself to the eventual customer, and if they want to pay you for it, so much the better.  These are some of the things you will feel if you start growing for market. Also tired, pissed off, cheated and lied to. But the good outweighs the bad by a long shot.

Growing for market can be something you do on a part time basis, like growing some extra tomato starts and a few zucchini seedlings. You take whatever you have that you think will sell to the market on Saturday morning then count your cash at the end of the day. Then there are folks out there that have farms that grow acres of berries or melons that count on the market for a good part of their living. I figure most people that will read this blog are going to fall into the middle of this range. I will use myself as an example. I grow some baskets some bedding plants a few veggie starts and some oddball stuff for my markets. I have a pretty good following, not because I have the best stuff at the market but I think because folks just get to like you. That’s important at any market. Your reputation becomes known to the customers and to the other vendors. I would expect my reputation is, he grows some okay stuff some good stuff and some crap. And he only comes for three months of the season.  So, some good some bad. That’s my rep and that’s what I have to work with. I created it so I will live with it.

 

 

If you think that marketing is in your future then it’s time to start your research. Have you ever been to a Farmers Market? Do you know someone who has? Have you got the time to grow for the market, or bake or cook or whatever it is you would like to sell. If you are going to grow, do you have the facility to grow in? Have you grown before? Do you like dealing with the public?

I think the best way to start is start going to some markets. Walk the aisles see what people are selling. See where the lines are. See how the stalls are set up. Get a feel for some of the successful vendors. You will know them by the lines at their stall. Watch how they interact with each customer.  Note if they have a smile on their faces. Watch how easily the transition from one customer to the next. As you get comfortable with them go up and ask them about marketing. Almost any vendor is happy to see new vendors coming into the market. There is kind of a circle in markets. The more vendors you have the more customers you will have. While that may cut into a vendors action a bit it also presents more customers to sell to. What came first the market or the customer? This is not a trick question. The more the merrier in both vendors and customers.

What should I sell? How much? At what price?  What do you do well? Do you bake a mean apple turnover? If you do you are set as baked goods seems to me to be one of those things that always creates a line up at their stall. Add some coffee and pop on ice and you are set. Are you good at woodworking, and does you market allow things that are hand made? I you are and they do then start making trellises and tomato cages. Don’t quit your day job though. I see some really nice stuff at the markets that I do that just plain doesn’t sell. The vendors are very personable but selling their goods is really tough. Keep that in mind but don’t let that burst your bubble. How about starting a few tomato plants and setting them into your wood planters. Not planted in them just sitting in them. Then know something about that type of tomato. For me it seems that the more I can tell the customer about that plant the better chance they will but it. I know common sense stuff.

I’m going to assume based on the fact that you are visiting my website or blog that you want to grow plants to sell at market. Great now what? Remember when you were scouting that market? What was selling. There really isn’t that much different that you can dream up that someone else isn’t already doing. However you may be able to present the same product in a different way. I don’t try to compete with half of the other vendors at our markets by selling 4″ tomato starts. I sell only gallon tomatoes. I don’t get the highest price at the market but I do sell all of my gallon tomatoes.

Everyone wants to know what sells. Everything, now, what can you grow? There are the easy things like marigolds  and the hard things like begonias. Start with the easy and work your way up. One of the things you will find if you decide to grow flowers is that there are tons of companies out there that grow the starts for almost anything you can think of. You can buy as little as 4 flats of 50 liners/plugs from a grower and have them shipped to your door for less than $125. These are patented plugs that are ready to shift into a 4″ pot or 3 or 4 to a 12″ basket. All you need is a place to grow them on after planting them. You may want to grow stuff from seed. Same thing have you, can you and have you got the room. I have found that growing plants from cuttings pays very well. We’ll look at some plants and plant ideas tomorrow. If you have questions feel free to put them in the comment section. I’ll get back to you soon.going to market

 

Growing For Market part 2

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This entry is part 2 of 10 in the series Growing for Market

Growing stuff. Have you got a favorite plant? Do you like fast growing things like flowers and vegetable starts. Or have you got the patience to start shrubs or trees from cuttings or liners/plugs. One thing I have done is our local Home Depot had a huge sale on a bunch of gallon Pieris, Holly and some dwarf Alberta Spruce. $1.88 each. My wholesaler sells them for around $2.25 each. I bought them took them home and shifted them up to 2 gallon pots and have been selling them for between 8 and 10 dollars for two years. This fall I shifted them up again into 5 gallon pots and will sell them for $13-$15 next year. These are third year plants now. I’ve paid for them with the first 20 plants I sold and will end up making around a thousand dollars on those one hundred on sale shrubs. This is the patience part I was talking about.

If you like fast think about bedding plants. There is a lot you can do with them. You can sell them in six packs, 31/2″pots or 4″ pots. If you have any sense of color or artistic flair (I have neither but my combos keep selling) you can put several plants into a combo. The bigger the pot the bigger your return. To a point of course. There are some things that sell very well in a 31/2″ pot for very good money. Some of them are things like wave petunias, trailing mini petunias (Calibrachoa, calis) Bacopa, Diascia, strawflower, lotus vine,lobelia,sweet potato vine and another hundred different types of plants you buy in as liners/plugs. Liners and plugs are usually patented plants that are grown by huge wholesale growers strictly for the retailers out there. You can go to companies like Park Seed Wholesale and look at their plug and plant lists to see all of the different thing available in varying sizes and different price points.

Most of these plugs are bought in 50 or 100 cell plug flats. A flat is a 10″x20″ plastic tray that has anywhere from 12 to 512 plugs in it.You pay somewhere around 50 to 75 cents each and at the higher price it will include shipping and a tag. The smaller the plug the lower the price. If you order a 512 flat of Lobelia you will pay around 5 cents a plug. That’s only $25 for the whole flat. Imagine that 5 cent plug in ten cents worth of pot and soil,then think of what you can sell them for. With Park Seed you can order as little as three or four flats  of fifty plants (each flat is one variety) and have them delivered for $125- $175. You decide when you need them so that your pots or baskets will be ready during the growing season and they will deliver on your date. Another way to order plants is to find your local plant broker. They don’t really make you broker and you don’t pay them any more for your plugs than you would pay the grower. In fact most large growers will only sell through a broker. In the Pacific Northwest I use a broker called Wehop. Western Horticultural Products. You can find them online along with another fifty or so other brokers. I have been using Wehop for over 20 years now, and am almost always happy with our relationship. They take a huge load off of you when it comes to ordering your stuff. The nice part about a broker is they will help you with your order. They can give you invaluable tips when it comes to ordering  the right plugs for you and help you schedule your delivery dates. Park Seed Wholesale is basically a seed seller and plant broker. They have a dozen or so growers that they sell for so you can go to their site and find almost any plant in production today. You then order directly through Park Seed Wholesale.

The picture below is my stall at the Friday market in downtown Centralia. It’s a small market with only 15 vendors.This is more of my social market. Interacting with other vendors. Note the baskets are almost gone.

at the market

At The Market

 

That’s it for today, if you have questions feel free to post them in the comment section. If I left anything out that you want to know just ask. Tomorrow we will talk some about your growing operation.

 

 

 

 

Growing For Market part 3

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This entry is part 3 of 10 in the series Growing for Market

We’ll talk about growing today. What do you want to grow? How much room do you have? Have you got a greenhouse or are you going to start your plants in your garage, or on top of your refrigerator ? How many market days do would you like to attend?  Do you want to start early in the season or wait until it warms up a bit? How much room do you have to spread your starts out once they are ready to be shifted up?  Do you have a place to hang baskets? Should you even grow baskets?

Lets start with something easy. One plant that is looked down upon by other vendors is the lowly Marigold. Great there is your first opportunity. Everything nowadays is about new plants. The trailing petunias and all of their counterparts, the fancy cutting grown patented  plants that you have to pay someone else to start for you. And you do have to pay them. These patented varieties are protected by the plug industry by surprise on site inspection. When you sign up with a broker you agree to not propagate  any of their plants from your own cuttings. It took me 15 years in the nursery business before the first plant inspector showed up but when they did I was clean and not growing anything except what I had bought from them. If I had they could have basically black-balled me and my nursery from ever being able to order patented plugs again.

Okay back to Marigolds. I order my seed from Park Seed Wholesale  at least a month before planting time. I start my Marigolds in  start early March. I start some plugs as early as early January. I take a 10″x20″ planting flat that usually holds the pots and line the bottom with plastic or newspaper fill it full of my good planting mix, Sunshine #4, water the flat in until its damp for the first couple of inches then spread the seed around the top of the flat. I try to cover the soil with a pretty good layer of seed, not so much that the seed is stacked up on top of the other seed but close. After I have a layer without a bunch of empty spots in it I cover the seed with a quarter inch of soil and gently water it in again. Cover the flat with plastic and put it in the hot bed that we discussed before. As soon as they sprout take the plastic off and  move them to the cool end of the bed. After two weeks you can move the flat onto a bench and watch them grow. When they are big enough to transplant I take the flat and start ripping the nicely rooted plants out of the flat and shift them up to 3 1/2″ pots. I put one per pot but you could use two. My 17″ square flats hold 25 pots so I might get 6 full flats of 3 1/2″ plants from that one open flat of starts. I sell mine at market at two for a buck. They cost me about 15 cents to produce which nets me 35 cents times 25 per flat times six flats times probably 5 crops out of the one quarter ounce of seed. I’ll let you do the math. The thing about these plants though is not the profit but the fact that everyone can relate to the Marigold., usually from their past. They also serve as great color at the front of my stall and they don’t take up a lot of room while starting, growing or selling.  Another nice thing is that folks rarely buy one plant at a time. It’s usually at least 4 or 6 and often the whole flat.

Before Planting Day

Before Planting Day

We just mentioned room to grow. How do you plan to grow. Greenhouse or some other shelter. I highly recommend a good quality greenhouse with benches for growing.  I would recommend that though as I sell what I consider to be an above average quality Greenhouse Kit. If you haven’t got one go to.stevesgreenhouses.com/and you can look at mine.Yes they are ups shippable. Some folks will start enough plugs/liners and seeds to fill up their greenhouse,don’t do that. You have to remember that  they are going to take up at least 3 times as much bench space once you shift them up into their finishes pots Four six packs of tomato starts will fill up one whole 17″x17′” flat. That is a standard sized flat. There are two the 10″x20″ ,that is the size most of your plugs will come in but I like the 17″ square because it holds 25 31/2″ pots and 16 4″ pots. This will hold true for almost anything you do from seed. I do my veggie starts in 4″ pots. That way I can take a half  of a flat of several different varieties of veggies and not have a whole flat of just acorn squash.

After Planting,full house

If you are going to sell the fancy cutting grown plants,I sell thousands of them, plan your space ahead. Do you have room to plant them all in 3 1/2″ pots 25 to a flat or should you plant some or most of them right into your 12″ basket? I prefer to get their root system up to a better size than the plug by putting them in 3 1/2″ then shifting them to the baskets about two months before I plan on selling them. That gives you a chance to pinch them once or twice in the pot and still have time to pinch once in the basket. By the way with the new trailing plants pinch them until they scream. The more you pinch the bushier they get, but you do have to stop pinching things like the wave petunias a month before you plan on selling them. Although the newest calibrachoa/ mini trailing petunias are better at branching and don’t need quite as much pinching. Nothing is more frustrating than moving a flat of plants  just so you can put another flat in it’s place. Now you have to find a place for the flat you just moved. Have enough space. Buy a bigger/another greenhouse. yay

This is getting long more on plants tomorrow. I’m just going with what I know. I plan on covering most of the plants I do each year.

 

 

Growing For Market part 4

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This entry is part 4 of 10 in the series Growing for Market

Continuing with growing plants today. I mentioned that I get my first plugs of the year  delivered in early January. This coming year those will be my begonia starts, both trailing and upright. I will get my fuchsia starts at the same time.  We’ll do the fuchsias first. I end up selling fuchsias in different ways 3 1/2″ pots,combo baskets and straight fuchsia baskets. Since I use them in different ways I will plant all of them into 3 1/2″ pots as soon as I get them. This is a good time to pinch for the first time.Pinch out the center stem with the top couple of leaves. This break will cause two new branches to come off of the main stem. Once the plugs have grown into the 3 1/2″ pots and the roots are well established you can move the to your baskets. This is also a good time to pinch again. Find where your last pinch was and follow the two stems out to their ends,then go back down the branch a couple of sets of leaves and pinch there.The straight baskets can be all one variety or a mix. When I do a straight basket I will use 4 fuchsia starts to the basket. Fill the basket to the top with soil, water it in then make four holes with your finger. If the roots are starting to get rootbound you can loosen them up some. Plant the four plugs so the soil level of the plug ends up even or just below the soil in the basket. With a multi color basket I will usually put two plugs of different colors into the basket and sometimes I like to add a trailing lobelia to the center of the basket. This really perks it up if you use the trailing blue. In my combos I will mix two like fuchsias with a Bacopa and a trailing mixed lobelia. This is my best seller. I will pinch everything in the basket again once it is established and actively growing. If something starts to look rangy and you have a few weeks before your planned sale dates you can selectively pinch again. This works good in theory but I usually forget until it’s too late then kick myself and say I will remember next time. I don’t.

 

10'x10' demo @Portland Home and Garden Show

If you are doing to sell the fuchsias in 3 1/2″ pots you can plan on pinching three times or more. Begonias are kind of tricky. They like warm night temps and require some extra day length. They don’t like wet soil and like air movement to keep them from starting to rot. Fuchsia have several problems in growing but it helps a lot if ou can keep good air flow around them. Aphids love fuchsias. This is usually the first place I will see them in the greenhouse for the year. The first thing you will see is what looks like little white aphid skins. They are. I’m not an expert in aphids but this seems to be one step in their growth pattern. The next way you will see them they will be a nice fat green bug with the biggest being the size of the head or a pin or slightly larger. They really like the soft fleshy underside of the newer leaves. You will find hundreds of babies around them SQUISH THEM ALL. Then get a pesticide like Bayer’s Rose care with systemic Pesticide. Use about one teaspoon to 3 or 4   3 1/2″pots and a light tablespoon for 12″ baskets. I apply this systemic to the whole flat trying to keep it away from the base of the plant then water in the whole flat. As this product gets  into the plants system the aphids will get it into their system from sucking it out of the plant. If you see aphids the first thing you do though is SQUISH THEM ALL with your fingers, then do the pesticide. There is also a magic product out there called Marathon. I think the patent may have run out so there are cheaper varieties of it too. Check with a greenhouse supply place for it. This product gets sprinkled over the soil in each pot and works the same way. It is touted to last several  months, It seem to last about a month and a half for me. That means you have to apply it at least twice before you sell your plants.

The begonia is kind of a picky plant. It’s probably best to hold off on these for now. There are plenty of things you can grow from plugs and seed without having all the problems.  Don’t discount them completely though, when something is harder to grow you can usually get a premium price for it.

Wish I hadn’t lost most of my pictures when my computer crashed, I had some nice ones of my geraniums. Geraniums is one of the easiest plants to grow for market. You get the plugs put them into 4″ pots  stick them in a corner somewhere fertilize and water them and before you know it they are ready to sell. This is one of the most problem free plants that I grow. I don’t know why more people don’t grow them for market. If you keep the dead leaves picked off and fertilize once a month they seem to take care of themselves. At the Friday market I do there is only one other person selling Zonal Geraniums. At the much bigger Saturday market there are only 4 or 5 selling them and 3 of those are nurseries that sell at market.

Make sure that you do Zonal Geraniums. The seed type geranium isn’t as showy and the person that does Gerans. on a regular basis knows the difference. You can order Geranium cuttings from any broker or Park Seed Wholesale usually in units of 50 or 100.  I plant mine around the end of Feb. or early March. They have few pests and like to grow on the dry side. You can sell these in 4″ pots or combos. I like to mix mine in 12″ patio pots with Euphorbia Diamond Frost and some blue lobelia. This makes a nice 4th of July pot. The lobelia does seem to get a little ugly if they are in the hot sun so let the customer know that they may want to cut it back or rip it out when it starts to go downhill. By late summer the geranium and diamond frost will have completely filled in the pot and they won’t miss the lobelia.

The end of January is the time to start tomato seeds if you plan on selling gallon tomatoes. This gives you a chance to get them up to a good size and also start cooling them down. Sometimes I do get the itch too soon and start planting tomatoes in the end of December, last year I had some really nice bushy plants though by the time the weather co-operated and it was time to sell them. I even shifted some of them up into 3 gallon pots and sold them for up to $10.My goal is to have my gallon tomatoes outside (protected from frost) for a week or two before taking them to market. First they go into a cool house.I have a couple of houses that are only heated to around 35 degrees so that’s where the gallons go until they go outside. If you don’t have that luxury you can section off the greenhouse so that you have a cool area at the back. I’ve found that when I section my house off with the cooler end at the back it is usually 10 degrees or so cooler than the front heated part. I loke to wait until mid march or so to start some of my other veggie starts. I always plant my Zucchini and other squashes too early and find that the seeds I start in mid april start and grow much faster. I just can’t help myself.

Tomorrow we will cover some of the things like succulents, cactus and some indoor plants that are easy and free to start like Angel Wing Begonias.

 

Growing For Market part 5

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This entry is part 5 of 10 in the series Growing for Market

Above are several Echeveria pups that I pulled off of the trunk of the mama plant. I started with one of these plants 8 years ago and have started and sold hundreds of them since then.This is one way of growing for market that is free. There is no patent and you don’t have to buy the seed. I will plant these pups into 4″ pots and sell them this spring for at least $3.50 each. The Echeveria isn’t hardy outside in the frost so I sell it as a house plant. When I sell it I tell the customer how easy it is to take starts and share with friends. When you tell a customer what it is and how it grows they appreciate it but when you tell them how they can share it they see a future in the plant. The image below is a mixed flat of Echeveria and unpatented Hens and Chicks.

There are lots of plants like these that you can find, buy, grow into a large size and then take cuttings off of. I propagate a half dozen different plants this way. These are the types of plants that almost no one else will do. I don’t know why they don’t but it makes my sales of them better. Take a long slow browse down the aisles of your local nursery and look for stuff like this. My criteria for hunting these things is,does everyone else sell this,like sedums. Does it have foliage spilling over the side? Another way to find good stuff is ask the owner if they have any particular plant that they really like.Even in the sedum family I have found a variety that no one else sells and it’s actually very common. It’s a cool color grows fast is hardy as well as covered with flowers in the summer. It is also so easy to start it’s amazing, if you break a branch all you have to do is drop it on a pot of soil and water when it’s dry. So I break 64 at a time and make up 4 flats in the fall and another 64 in the spring. That’s 128 sedums of one variety at say $3.50 each. Interested? The ones in the image below will sell for $5-$6 each.Leave a comment and I will get back to you with the variety. Below  is a picture from the middle of December. I planted 4″ pots into these 6″ pots (after talking them out of the 4″ pot of course) because I want a nice large flowing pot for the Lewis County Home and Garden Show at Centralia in March. There’s a hint, if you want to see a 10′x20′ greenhouse I will have one set up there. Some plant sales too. You could even buy one of these.

Next is the Angel Wing Begonia. Buy two and shift on up to a huge pot. That way you can let it grow for a year before you start taking cuttings. These Begonias are a house plant and very easy to start and grow. I have a couple of pics I will add below.  The most often heard comment I get on these is  “Oh my mom/ grandma/Aunt Sadie  always had one of these in her house” If a plant brings back memories it sells, period. Same  with the lowly Marigold.

A little on your market display tomorrow.