Blooming Profits: Conversations with Flower Farmers

@jordonsflowerfarm and I have been texting all season long about successes & mistakes, and we want to share it all with you in a live and allow you to ask questions! More importantly though, Jordon has been hard at work building her "retail" following this winter & spring. Here is what makes Jordon's spring season so impressive:

1) Jordon relocated her farm to a completely different town in Oklah...

Both Jordon and Jessie recently invested in woodies & perennials. We share about the perennials we invested in and why. Jordon was even able to harvest some off of her first year baptisia starts!

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It is one of the most recognized fertilizer brands amongst small organic flower farmers and gardeners, yet many of us have never heard of the origin story of Neptune's Harvest. We talk about what it takes to make this fertilizer, the difference between a cold process, hydrolyzed fertilizer vs a fish emulsion, and when/how to apply fish fertilizer. I hope you'll enjoy this interview as much as I did!

Want to buy Neptune's Harvest fe...

This is part 2 of my interview with Lennie where we talk high level how we can set ourselves up for profitable flower farming. Here are some of the topics we cover:

• Marketing for year 0 flower farm
• Advice for the flower farmer who is maxing out at years 2-4
• What profit margin you can realistically expect when you have hired help
• Recommended % of time to spend on marketing
• #1 piece of advice for new flower farmers

Link to ...

This is a longer interview split into two parts and this is Part 1!

I interviewed Lennie of B-Side Farm & Flower Farming for Profit to talk about how we can set flower farms up for long term success and we got down the rabbit hole of farm stands! We let the conversation go DEEP and I know this conversation will help you- whether you're looking to sell through a farmstand or a different outlet.

We cover the following topics:

Robyn is a microgrower in MA. She took The Tulip Workshop to maximize her indoor growing space where she was able to grow over 5000 stems this winter. Without a website or a traditional sales outlet, she was able to move a majority of these stems through pop ups!

We talk in detail about how she approaches pop ups, realistic expectations and how a "hustle" mentality has led to a successful second season. I loved this conversation be...

SOOOO much to talk about here with @jordonsflowerfarm. Lots of successes but also lots of failures and we won't shy away from discussing where we went wrong and how that impacts next year's plans.

Topics being covered:

• Field grown tulips in a hot zone (Oklahoma)
• General failure/attrition between field & hydroponically forced tulips
• Sales strategy for moving an excess of tulips for Jordan
• Selection of varieties for 2025 base...

I sat down with Marie aka  @floristsonfarms  for a chat. We talk a bit about Marie's background, having grown up in the floral industry and how she ended up as a farmer florist. More importantly, she shares how her design skills help set her apart from a highly competitive floral market where floral prices can reach rock bottom.

For more content, check out the bareflowerfarm Youtube page 

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This is going to be a really interesting conversation. I'm personally excited to catch up with Jordon because she is doing SO much especially in year 2, some of it quite high stakes when it comes to $ & time investment.

High level, we will be talking about:

1) Pushing the envelope when it comes to what we're seeding and experimenting growing wise

2) Crops we are "betting on" in 2024

3) New farmers market sales strategy (Jordon)

I catch up with Haley, a full year later after our first interview to talk about the following topics:

1) General expansion from year 1 to year 2, including how she more than doubled sales

2) Why she expanded into retail after launching with selling to wholesale only

3) Updates on her winter tulip forcing in year 2

This is less of an interview and more of two flower friends catching up. We hope you enjoy! You can find Haley at @Bry...

In this live, we switch gears, talking about selling retail but specifically at farmer's markets.

Jessie spent her first season selling at a local farmer's market and appeared as a guest in the 2023 season. Prior to, she had sold at dozens of markets for her other side hustle soap business.

Jordon also spent her first season at a popular farmer's market in OK.

We'll talk about what we learned, tips, pricing, set up and so much more...

This was such a fun interview with Serina from You Can't Eat the Grass! Serina and Ian have been a huge inspiration for me.

The algorithm fed me their content back in 2021 and I was hooked. This was when I didn't even realize flower farming was a "thing". Serina focuses many of her videos on the flowers and selling them, but we get into flower farming business and profitability topics like:

1) Her farmer's market vs farmstand reven...

In our 1st live, we spent all of our time primarily talking about the traditional route to selling to florists - delivering to them either through a bucket run or via an availability sheet. But ya'll were still interested in hearing more about my experiences selling to a cooperative (similar to a collective) and shipping to florists. So that's what we'll cover in this live.

This will be a ~1 hr live where we will have a structured ...

In our latest interview, I sat down with Lauren of Alchemy Farm House, located in the Hudson Valley NY.

Lauren is entering into year 4 of growing and has largely sold her flowers through a CSA subscription. She has now grown this subscription to 45 shares this winter! We take a deep dive and talk about all things related to CSA, including:

• Why a CSA?
• Biggest challenges with running a CSA
• Starting CSA size and scaling it up
• Stru...

 In our first of many joint weekend morning coffee chats (via Youtube Live), Jordon and I will go into deeeeeep details about selling to florists.

Why us? We are two "newer" flower farmers reflecting back on selling to florists for the first time (Jessie was in year 2, Jordon was in year 1).

Here is what's going to make this conversation interesting:

** We have two completely different sized farms. Jessie grows on 40x90 ft with a h...

I sit down with Melinda from Springdale Flower Farm, located in Dover, MA about how she found success in her 1st year of flower farming on just 800 sq ft.

Melinda is a complete new grower who started from complete scratch this year. She not only had to learn flower varieties, but also how to grow and sell her product. Impressively, she achieved all this AND found a very profitable sales outlet, with some weeks selling $1k! 

Catch t...