The first year of flower farming has come and gone and I am already deep into the early stages on year two. I’m not new to growing, but there is always room to learn more and boy did I ever!
Lesson 1 – Flipping beds is no joke!
Farming in a small space has many challenges – one of the biggest for me was the number of times I had to flip a bed.
If you’re not familiar with the term, what I’m referring to is removing a crop as soon as it is finished or better yet, before it is finished, and then planting a new crop in the same space.
For example – I had one 4×8 bed filled with ranunculus. The ranunculus were absolutely gorgeous in late April and into May, but once the heat arrived they started blooming less. I prolonged the blooms for a bit by utilizing shade cloth but that can accomplish so much – once summer arrives they are done. I needed the space to plant dahlia tubers so I had to pull out all of the ranunculus corms and plant the tubers. This was completed over one weekend.
That’s one example, but I had to do this “bed flipping” dance many times during the season as I only have 11 beds dedicated to flowers.
Lesson 2 – You can’t plant all the things!
Is anyone else lured by the siren call of flower seeds? You see them in seed catalogs. You see them on a bazillion websites. You see them on YouTube. You see them on Instagram. Flowers are beautiful and I want to plant them all. But unfortunately, I do not have acres of planting space, and even if I did, that’s probably not a great business plan.
I over-ordered seeds last year.
Which led me to over-plant seeds for transplant.
When it was time to transplant the seedlings I walked outside and asked myself “where in the heck am I going to plant these?”
This led to me popping things into random places in my front yard. I even dug a random row in my front yard and filled it with flowers as well. Luckily, my neighbors like what we are doing…or at least they compliment the yard when they walk by. Maybe they are just being nice and deep down they think I am a crazy flower lady.
So far this year, I have mostly practiced restraint when it comes to ordering seeds and planting them. I will make a plan and stick to the plan!
Lesson 3 – The pest pressure struggle is real!
I’m no stranger to pests. But when you have an all-you-can-eat flower buffet for pests of all shapes and sizes they somehow manage to find it and pig out. During our fist season we were plagued with neighborhood cats mistaking the empty raised beds for litter boxes, a rabbit, aphids, mealy bugs and the worst one…voles.
We don’t kill things, we don’t spray things – for the most part, we just let nature run it’s course. But sometimes you have to try something else or else you run the risk of losing your entire crop.
I covered the raised beds with Hortonova netting to prevent my garden from becoming the local cat rest stop. Once the flowers were big enough to fill in the beds, the cats went away.
The rabbit left after I went outside and had a talk with it – I asked it to please move on but extended the invitation for it to come back and visit occasionally. I never saw the rabbit again after our heart to heart. I hope it’s off living it’s best life somewhere…
We also had a little help from some lacewing larvae and lady beetles. That took care of the aphid problem.
The mealy bugs were only ever on the ranunculus. Rubbing alcohol kept the numbers somewhat manageable but once the ranunculus were done for the season and removed, the mealy bugs were gone too. Problem solved.
The (insert curse word of choice here) voles – I lost about half of my tulip crop to voles. It was literally like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I would go out and there would be holes where the entire tulip was pulled underground and devoured. Other times the tulip was left behind and the bulb was gone – resulting in an extremely wilted, unusable tulip. We tried those solar ultrasonic things – complete waste of money. Occasionally one of our dogs manages to dig a vole (or sometimes a mole) out of the ground and kill it – not super effective in reducing the population but I’m hoping the word gets out in the vole underground and they eventually leave. We are experimenting with the last resort this season. We have lined the bottom of each raised bed with chicken wire or hardware cloth. In theory this will prevent them from tunneling up into the flower beds to dine. I’ll post an update at the end of tulip season…fingers crossed it works.
Lesson 4 – There’s a lot more to this than growing pretty flowers!
Running a business takes a lot of work. Growing flowers is the easy part and probably the part that requires the least amount of time. To be a sustainable flower farm, you have to treat this like a business from day one.
Can you even grow flowers as a business in your location? We had to obtain a zoning permit for limited agricultural operations in our yard. Luckily our city granted this to us but I have heard and read stories about other cities where this is not permitted. Along the same line, if you plan on selling your flowers from home – is that even allowed? Do your homework first to avoid heartbreak later.
Each state varies but we had to register our LLC, get a business license in our city, research and apply to be a vendor at various markets and events (watch out for scammers that prey on people looking for places to sell their items), set up business bank accounts, set up a sales tax account (and pay taxes monthly). Definitely do your research here as well because each location will be different.
You have to spend time promoting your business – this can take many forms depending on your sales outlets. Social media, web presence, video, reaching out to local florists, wedding planners, etc. It really just depends on how you want to sell your flowers.
If you decide to do the farmers market route – there is the part where you spend every Thursday and Friday harvesting and building bouquets (for me, this was always at night, after I got off work at my full-time day job). Then you wake up early to load your goods into your vehicle, drive to your market, set up your tents and tables to sell for a few hours. If you’re lucky, you sell most of what you brought with you but that doesn’t always happen. Then you load everything back into the car, drive home and try to enjoy a tiny bit of the weekend with your family.
It can be tiring. It can be exhausting. It can also be worth it IF you enjoy it. So far, I am enjoying it but if I ever get to the point where I no longer want to do this, I will quit. My happiness and time with my family is extremely important so I have to make sure to keep my priorities in check.
Lesson 5 – Contrary to popular belief, you do not get winters off!
You can take a break but there is no way you get to just be “off” for the entire winter. The growing season ends at first frost but at that point you need to start planning your next season. Clean up and clean out – beds, hoop houses, greenhouses – all the growing spaces need to be addressed. Prep your beds. Order your seeds or any other supplies you need. Plant your bulbs. Start your seeds. Do all your taxes and business filings. Plan your next seasons markets and sales channels. Make adjustments based on the previous year.
You get the point.
Lesson 6 – You do not have to grow what everyone else grows!
I’m going to go out on a limb here and just say it – I don’t particularly care to grow dahlias. As you can see if you read Lesson 1, I did give them a try. I know this is blasphemy but right now I just don’t think they work for me. I don’t do short-term events (like weddings) so I need flowers that have great vase life, and dahlias do not. I also have limited growing space and dahlias require more space than I care to dedicate to growing them so I will not be growing them next year. I even went so far as to throw many of my tubers in the compost. Please don’t call the flower farmer police!
This is not to say that I won’t change my mind in the future – maybe someday we will move and I will have space for them or my business plans will change. I did keep a few favorite tubers left from what I grew last year. I will probably plant them in the yard for landscaping because I don’t want to let them go to waste. If I do this, I will not be digging tubers the following fall – if they make it, great! If they freeze next winter, that’s sad, but fine too.
Lesson 7 – How to Grow Your Snapdragons
I had a beautiful raised bed dedicated solely to snapdragons last year. They were so beautiful, that I couldn’t bring myself to pull them out when the heat arrived. So I had a full bed of snapdragons all summer long with no flowers. I did this for a reason – I had read that they would start to bloom again in the fall so I waited, and waited…then finally a few of them started to bloom. But the blooms were few and far between and it was NOT worth keeping them there for an entire season. Very underwhelming indeed.
I could have pulled them in early summer and planted more of another flower. So this year, I will be flipping that bed much sooner!
Also, I pinched about half of those snapdragons before I planted them outdoors because that is supposed to give you more blooms than an un-pinched plant. I can attest to the fact that this is a true statement and you do get more blooms. However, the bloom spikes from the pinched plants were shorter and thinner than the plants I did not pinch. Flower farming is all about that vase length so this year there will be no pinching.
Lesson 8 – I still want to be a flower farmer!
Despite some of the ups and downs highlighted above, I still want to be a flower farmer. I love growing things. I love getting my hands dirty. I love making bouquets. I love chatting with customers every weekend. I love hearing stories about how my flowers made someone happy. I love when my neighbors walk by and ask about or compliment the flowers. I love what I’m doing and will do it again this year!