Reddit reviews The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower's Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers, 2nd Edition
We found 1 Reddit comments about The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower's Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers, 2nd Edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Chelsea Green Publishing
Sure. I got a wild hair to grow cut flowers to sell a little over a year ago. So I joined an excellent FB group of professional florists and flower farmers, took a post harvest physiology class, and started reading everything I could about cut flower growing, harvest, and marketing.
I already had a pretty large home garden, about 35' x 35', so I switched over a portion of it to growing cut flower rather than vegetables.
I made a list of cut flowers that grow well in my climate and divided them into categories based on bloom season, purpose, and form. Other For example, zinnias bloom in summer, are a main flower in a bouquet, and have a disk shape. I'd also have something for foliage and maybe a spiky type of flower. With those three things, you can build a decent looking bouquet. Then I selected flowers to grow so I had as many niches filled at any given time through the season.
I picked up the book, Cool Flowers and learned about growing winter hardy flowers for early spring harvest. I seriously can't recommend that book highly enough. It's amazing for anyone who wants to grow flowers, regardless of your purpose.
Then I started using instagram to market myself. I found the attention of an event florist who likes purchasing locally, so I hook her up when she needs anything. I also market on Craigslist and Nextdoor, but those really don't provide much opportunity. Without question, marketing is the most difficult aspect of this. And I say that after getting up before 5am this morning to cut and arrange those bouquets you saw. I also have a very difficult time with pricing. I'm naturally pretty frugal, and it's hard to price these buckets and bouquets so that I make much of a profit. I tend to overprice quite a bit, but I'm working on that.
One other thing I should mention is it's very easy to underestimate how long it takes to cut and process a couple buckets of flowers. It is easily 2 hours of work to cut a couple buckets. Then you have to make time to arrange, etc.
If I were to recommend a few books, they would be: