Jenny (00:29)
Today I'm chatting with Julia Keele of Full Keele Farm all about efficiency and profitability. Julia is located in North Central Florida and has been growing about one acre of specialty cut flowers specifically for florists since 2019. She has such a wealth of knowledge about growing in a warm climate, which I know there is not a ton of resources out there.
for warm climate growers, so she is just so amazing if you're looking for more information on that. But she is a professional farmer with an absolute knack for efficiency. So I can't wait to talk about it with her today. So without further ado, let's talk with Julie.
Jenny (01:09)
Well, welcome, Julia. I'm so excited to have you here to talk to me today. So I mentioned this to you before, but you are actually one of my favorite Instagram accounts to follow, and anyone who's ever heard me talk knows that I have this very much negative relationship with social media, but I've always loved following you, and it's because you talk so much about farming.
And farming is really my passion, like much more than the flowers. And I love learning about all the ways that you grow flowers in Florida, because it's such a crazy different climate than where I am in New York. And so I just love following you and everything. So welcome. I'm so happy to have you. Do you want to tell us just a little bit about you and your farm and what you do and maybe like your sales outlets?
Julia Keel (01:53)
Sure, so we are a small cut flower farm in north central Florida. We grow about one, this year we'll grow one and a half acres of cut flowers. We started growing in 2019 and then kind of scaled up production each year until we maxed out our initial farm at about a half an acre in production. And then last year we purchased an additional farm property that has really allowed us to scale up production from there.
So since 2020, I have sold exclusively to florists and I sell to both like event florists and retail florists, but the bulk of the flowers are going for event floristry. And then kind of have a slightly atypical growing season because of our climate. It's kind of two growing seasons. We have cool season annuals that we pretty much harvest.
starting in February that transitions into some warm season annuals that we harvest in May and June and then we pause for the summer and right now we're starting to see warm season annuals again and we will have a short fall season that's anywhere from late September to early October through the end of November.
Jenny (03:06)
Yeah, that is a really unique, growing season. That's much different than most people. So that's really cool. Now we were talking a little bit before we hopped on here and because you live in such a hot climate, like it's just too hot to grow flowers in the middle of the summer. Right. I mean, do people do that or is it just not really a thing where you are?
Julia Keel (03:26)
So there are some growers who do grow year round or who extend their season a little bit further. I think even within kind of this broad, like warm climate category, there is a lot of variability in terms of what climate looks like within different locations, like within the state of Florida, within the Gulf Coast, in the southeast. So there's a pretty big range there.
And there certainly are growers who do have warm season annuals throughout the summer who are geographically not too far from me. For us, it's kind of a couple factors for our decision to pause. Since we sell to florists, sales really do decrease in the summer. There's just a lot less demand. There aren't really the same number of weddings and events happening through the summer. But then also because we sell to florists,
and not retail, kind of the standards that we need to achieve with stem quality and like the consistency are higher and it becomes much more difficult to estimate availability for me in the summer because the crop quality becomes more inconsistent and also the percentage of usable stems that the crop is producing becomes lower.
And so for me, like financially, it doesn't really make sense if, you know, during kind of our prime season for like zinnias, maybe like 60 % of the stems I would like grade out and say are acceptable to go to florists or 70%. But in like June or July, that might be like 30%. Well, you know, it's stops making sense to be out there in really unfavorable conditions to have much lower margins on those crops.
Jenny (05:04)
That's pretty crazy. do you find, so one of the reasons that I don't love sell, well, I shouldn't say I don't love selling to florist except I don't, but I thought when I first started my farm that I really wanted to sell to florist. And I was really excited about that part of my business, but I felt like I had to grow a really large variety of things. And of course everybody's markets and like customers are different, but
Julia Keel (05:07)
Yeah.
Jenny (05:31)
felt like I always had to have another sales outlet to move stuff that I wasn't selling to the florist. Like there would be a lot of waste if I was only selling to florist. So I think that it's really unique that your only sales outlet is selling direct to florist. You find that you have a lot of waste, like not even just in the summertime when you're like grading out low quality stuff because of your climate, but just when you're growing things and maybe a florist doesn't need whatever shade of, you know,
whatever color of a flower, do you find that you have waste?
Julia Keel (06:01)
There are definitely some weeks, but I feel like we're really fortunate that we are in an area where demand for local product really exceeds availability at this point. so florists want local product and there are thankfully continuing to be more growers who are growing for florists, but we're not producing anywhere near the same volume of stems for florists as some of these other markets are. And
I think through refining my crop planning and my selection and using data from previous seasons to guess what I need each week, thankfully there were lot of weeks this spring that we basically sold every stem that we could harvest. then there were some weeks that I really missed the mark. I planted extra cosmos because I had seeded the trays and we had a really warm spell.
two full beds of cosmos came into production in a matter of three or four days. And so, that's kind of the turnaround in terms of, I had been anticipating them in eight to 10 days. that's something that you can't really, a florist might want 30 bunches of cosmos, but they wanna know two weeks out that they're gonna have 30 bunches of cosmos. So moving something like that, you can't really hold in the cooler that long. That's kind of where the inefficiencies can come from.
Jenny (06:59)
my gosh.
Julia Keel (07:22)
But thankfully those are kind of more productive, right, like high stem production and like low cost to grow. So it's a little bit easier to accept those.
Jenny (07:30)
Yeah, I feel like, I mean, it's no matter what you're farming, no matter what your sales outlets are, there's never going to be perfect production on a flower farm. You're either going to have a little too much or a lot too much or not enough. And it's just kind of the way it is. so accepting some shrink and just making sure that you're pricing appropriately for that seems like it's kind of like it is what it is. Right.
Julia Keel (07:52)
Yeah, and I also, have some florists who have more flexibility, who are primarily doing retail work, who will take grower's choice. And so that's like a great way to kind of look at the orders for each week and then, you know, allocate for specific events who have, you know, more rigid constraints in terms of color palette or in terms of like specific flowers, like what they need to take. And then
the florist who will take growers choice, you know, it's usually still a great selection. It may just be like the color is slightly different than what someone wanted or maybe nobody really needed snaps for their event work, but the retail florist can use snaps. So I think encouraging florists who have the flexibility to take growers choice has also been a really good way to kind of find, you know, outlets for all of the stems each week. And there's a slight financial incentive for them to
grower's choice, right? So their price per stem I offer is slightly lower in terms of doing that. And sometimes they get things that I don't have a ton of and I'm not putting on the regular availability. So there can be a perk to like something that's just coming into production that might be really in demand that I don't list. Like they might get that in their grower's choice bucket. So sometimes there's like little treats and then, you know, it works out for them to have that flexibility.
Jenny (09:10)
That's awesome. I was actually just talking to a couple that came to my on farm workshop this summer, Bill and Krissa Horman in, New Jersey. They're I think it's daybreak farm. Not positive about that, but anyways, they sell a lot direct to florist and they're telling me that they have all these florist customers that just have a standing order with them. It's
I don't know, a few hundred dollars a week or something. I hope they don't mind me sharing this. didn't ask them. I didn't think this was going to come up in conversation, but anyways, these people that I know have all these standing orders from their florists all the time. They just give them whatever looks best every week. I was like, that's awesome. Like I would definitely consider doing more florist sales if I could convince some of my customers to do that, which I think I could. But anyways, well, that's really cool. So I just am so impressed
You do so many, just everything you do is direct to floor sales. So, which means that the quality has to be super high. Right. And I know you were saying earlier when we were talking before we started recording that the quality can be a really big issue in your climate. So what are ways that you have tried to circumvent that to get higher quality stems in your climate?
Julia Keel (10:22)
Yeah, so I think, you know, I kind of had convinced myself early on that climate was always going to constrain quality and that I kind of just had to accept lower quality was going to be the cost for trying to grow cut flowers in a warm climate. But then I really started kind of trying to understand, especially what were the environmental factors that were necessary for the production of specific crops.
And rather than kind of thinking of farm scale production techniques, I really looked at crop by crop. What do I need to do in terms of adjusting the timing, adjusting the nutrition, adjusting the cultivar selection to encourage the highest quality possible? And in some cases, that was changing our fertilizer regime. And sometimes, in some cases, that was changing the timing.
And then in some cases it was like picking cultivars that would offer like nice tight flowering windows or be more responsive to those adjustments in fertilizer. So I think that kind of really experimenting with those things and having concrete goals each season for like which crops I really wanted to make gains on.
I had really terrible delphinium and I said, you know, this season my goal, like I just pictured it in my head, you know, like beautiful tall delphinium in the tunnel. Like, what do I need to do to achieve that? And like really looked at the culture sheets and looked in, you know, specialty cut flowers and kind of just scoured for information on production. And then said, what do I need to do in terms of like what months I'm planting it or how I'm kind of managing each stage of growth to kind of get that.
spoking and elongation and flowering development on
Jenny (12:04)
So everything that you're saying right now, just makes me think that this is like, you are a professional cut flower grower. And I really believe that once you kind of learn the basics of growing cut flowers for like up and coming growers, they should be doing exactly what you have done is really looking at it crop by crop and figuring out exactly what they need and then testing it and doing all these things so you can have success with it.
And I love this story you told with your delphinium because you ask any flower farmer out there and there's probably at least one, if not multiple crops that they really struggled with at first. Like I really struggled with ranunculus, which I'm known for now. That's like our staple crop, our bread and butter. Like that's our thing. But for the first like three or four years that I grew it, I really lost money on it. I didn't know what I was doing.
And then I did exactly what you're saying, just like really, really studied it and changed things so we could get the best quality possible. And, and now it's great. And so it's really cool to hear you say that, have that other story.
Julia Keel (13:09)
Yeah, and I also think that in a warm climate too, it's really important because for me, I want to be able to separate out like when there is an issue, is it an issue that is climate driven or is it an issue that is like production driven? And I know we're gonna talk about this a little bit more later, but like I think evaluating if a crop stays or goes, like if I am sure that it's weather
climate driven, if I cannot adjust the production anymore, then for me it goes. But if I feel like there are adjustments I can make to my production techniques, then it stays. And in a climate where there are so many constraints, I think being able to really kind of treat those two categories separately is super important for evaluating which crops you're growing.
Jenny (13:56)
Yeah. So you have a, a systematic approach to deciding what stays on your farm and what goes, and you're really pinpointing the exact issues that you're having. And if you can't find a solution within your production system, you're like, well, that's it. So I love that. And yeah, let's talk more about that because we were saying earlier that there are crops that I grow on my farm here in New York that are very profitable for me, but are not.
Julia Keel (14:08)
Yeah.
Jenny (14:22)
for Julia and this is so important because you can't just look at another farm and copy what they're doing because there's so many factors that are different. Every farm is so unique. And so I feel like you would agree with me on that one too, Julia.
Julia Keel (14:38)
Yeah, and I also think that unless it's a grower like you or others who are really sharing the data, you also can't assume that because someone is sharing like beautiful pictures of a crop on social media, that they're making money on
Jenny (14:52)
Yes. my, can we, we should repeat that for everyone. Just because you see pictures everywhere on Instagram does not mean that those people are making money off of them.
Julia Keel (15:02)
Yeah. And so, like, I feel like I kind of, you know, there are certain crops that are, like, really kind of heavily promoted as these, foundational crops that you should be growing as a flower farmer. And for me, it was easy to say, like, if I just try harder to do this, it's going to work for me, too. But the reality was that it, like, the math really has to work.
Jenny (15:25)
Yes. And you have to know your numbers. The math really does have to work. And so I think vernunculus is a big example for us where like, I, I just said a minute ago that I didn't make any money on it for the first few years. And then I really figured that crop out. And now it's a really big moneymaker for us. Whereas for you, do you grow it anymore?
Julia Keel (15:46)
No, so we have stopped growing it and like, I'm not going to say that we stopped growing it forever, but you know, essentially the production costs were really high because we have these really high temperature fluctuations in the winter and we have perfect conditions for powdery mildew. So we have to start, we started like preventative spraying.
for powdery mildew as soon as we really start to see green foliage because, know, temperatures, relative humidity that's high at night, temperatures between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, like that's us in January and February. And we're growing them in a tunnel. And so, you know, I can say, I pulled up these because I knew we were going to talk about this, right? Like our, corn cost for the elegance, which is like the seed grown strain.
Jenny (16:25)
Wow.
Julia Keel (16:37)
slightly lower per square foot than some of the fancy varieties, right? The last year that we grew was like 284 per square foot. And our production costs, if I included the labor, chemicals and all that stuff for disease prevention were over $6 per square foot. But we only produced 1 .5 stems per plant because of temperature. So temperature can really impact flower quality. So this would be 1
usable stems per plant. So I'm separating out like all stems. Don't count. It's the stems that I can kind of harvest and sell to florists. And our revenue was so our revenue was 1080 per square foot and our production cost was like $9 per square foot. And so, you know, it just, we tried, like I tried a lot of things. tried adjusting the fungicides that I was using. We tried adjusting the cultivars that we were growing.
but there's really nothing that we can do to overcome those extreme temperature fluctuations. And for me, having it be kind of the first crop of the season, there's a relatively heavy investment at the outset in purchasing these corms was just like mentally a really bad way to start the season where you're just like looking at this crop, that's your first crop, you know, essentially just kind of dying before my eyes. That was like the last year that we grew it, you know, and it's
At what point do I just rip this out and put snapdragons in here because they're going to make me more money. But do I really want to just like rip out $4 ,000 worth of vernunculus corms before I've even sold a single stem off of it? And so, you know, it kind of got to the point where I said until, until I have like a radically new idea for how to approach production, like I'm not going to grow them other stems
Jenny (18:03)
Yeah.
Julia Keel (18:24)
we can grow in the tunnels. Like the revenue is just, the net revenue is so much higher or something like Delphinium or Snapdragon. And it was kind of tough, like ranunculus, it's like kind of like this flower farmer staple. And I really had to say, like, I don't care what other people think about me as a farmer, if I stop growing ranunculus like that. You know, I did my best to try to adjust how I was producing it.
But when I look at the numbers, that's not where I want to be. And at the end of the day, that's really what matters is I want high revenue per square foot out of those tunnels. And if it's other stems that I can sell, then that's what it's gonna be.
Jenny (19:03)
Yeah, I love that perspective. Like you're clearly a very, very serious and very, smart business owner because the numbers tell all like in order to make those data driven decisions to earn a profit on your farm, to actually make money and move your business forward, you have to do those sometimes like heartbreaking equations to figure it out. Like I know for me.
I love dahlias, they're like the flower that got me into flower farming. But if we didn't sell the tubers, we would not make enough money on the flowers to warrant growing them. And so we were able to find a way to grow that crop profitably because we basically are getting two products out of it. which is like, I think it's kind of funny sometimes. I'm going to go off on a little tangent, but it's like all of us flower farmers are just
buying and selling dialyotubers from other flower farmers. And so we're just like exchanging money back and forth with each other for these dialyotubers. It's like kind of silly and stupid, but like, Hey, I'm here for it. but yeah, there's flowers are just so difficult to grow. I don't even know if difficult to grow is the right word, but it's, takes so much like time and
energy and finances just to grow a flower to maturity. And then if you're not making money on that, you're literally just wasting your time and your resources. like, nobody wants to do that. If, if you love a flower crop, but it's not making you money, you could always grow like a couple feet of it just for yourself. You know, you don't have to bang your head against the wall, trying to make it profitable. And so I think that's really smart of you to just be like, Hey, this isn't profitable for me and get to grow other things that are.
Julia Keel (20:47)
And I think it's really easy to kind of look at, it's really easy to look at the projections and say like, well, in a good year, like this would be really profitable. But I didn't want to, it's like, I felt like I had to just say I'm done completely, not I'm scaling back because I felt like it was going to be too easy to kind of get into this trap of saying, well, you know what, it didn't work this year, but next year is the year that.
Jenny (20:48)
It's a really good approach.
Julia Keel (21:11)
it's going to be profitable. know, like maybe next year it's going to be like totally flipped and it's going to far exceed everything else in the tunnel in terms of revenue per square foot. But thankfully I was able to talk to a couple growers who I like really, really respect to are also in warm climates. And, you know, one of them, he had really carefully tracked his own production data and had also stopped growing ranunculus. And our numbers for two years were
very, very similar. And so I said, you know what, this is the reality. Like he was a very skilled grower growing at a larger scale than I was and had stopped growing ranunculus. And our STEM production and our costs were very similar. So I just felt like, okay, you know what, like I need to trust my data and his data and move on.
Jenny (21:58)
That's so validating.
Julia Keel (22:00)
Yeah, because I also had people who were like, you're going to majorly regret this decision. And I was kind of surprised that people were like, other people felt like so invested in that. it's like, just, you know, I couldn't take it personally that my numbers looked so terrible on this crap.
Jenny (22:17)
And I feel like it shouldn't, like it's hard to remove the emotion out of your business sometimes because you know, you love it and this is your whole life basically. But it really, it can make a big difference in the sustainability of your business, but you could take a step back, like remove all the emotion around it and just like look at your numbers and be like, what is really making a difference here? What is truly moving the needle and really focusing on that? And so.
I love this conversation because exactly what you just said, you can always like hope for next year, like, it'll be better next year. It'll be better next year, but then you get three years down the line and it's still the same. And it's just like, well, I've just been wasting my time. And even if you're super efficient at growing something, if you're still not getting the yields or like the prices or the volume that you need to get a profit on it, it's like just be done.
Yeah. And those corns are expensive for the vernunculus. They really are.
Julia Keel (23:13)
Yeah, and I'm sure the cost is higher now.
Jenny (23:16)
Yeah, it goes up every year. Go figure. But, actually we tried, so we wanted to save some money and we tried saving our own corums and replanting them. And even though we did save a lot of money, we ended up getting lower quality flowers, probably because we like didn't, I didn't really like divide them or anything after we lifted them. We just kind of like pulled them up, stored them and replanted them. which I don't really recommend because.
The flower quality was much lower. The flower head size was smaller and like maybe it was like something with the weather, but I really don't think so. And so we actually ended up having to harvest more stems to fit in a bunch rather than less stems. So then we ended up taking money from the front end rather than the backend anyways. And so it's like, well, I don't know if we actually saved.
any money, like maybe a little bit, but now we're back to like purchasing new forms every year. And so it's all just like one giant. I want to say it's all one giant experiment. don't know if that's the right word, but sometimes farming feels like
Julia Keel (24:19)
Yeah, and that's why I say like, I'm not saying I will never grow them again. It's just that until I feel like there's a better plan, I'm not growing them.
Jenny (24:27)
Yeah. And I think that's fine. I mean, I've eliminated so many things for my own farm. It's not even funny. Like we used to grow like, don't even know 75 or a hundred different kinds of flowers. now we grow less than 20, like including perennials and stuff. So I think it's totally okay. You got to do it makes you money and everything. And another part of having a profitable farm is not only crop selection and really keep tracking.
your numbers so you know what you're making money on and what you're not. But also, you know, if you're not quite making money on something, say something, I don't know, I'm trying to think of an example, but a crop that you know has potential, but you want to eke out some more profitability on it. think really addressing the efficiency and the growing techniques that you're using can really help a lot.
Jenny (25:19)
Hey, flower farmer, real quick, do you find that you are wanting to start a flower farm business or maybe you already have one but you're struggling to know if you're doing things right on the business side of things? A lot of beginning flower farmers are really unsure about a few different things. The first one being the legalities associated with starting a flower farm. So things like business structure, business insurance, business models.
The second thing is finances. So basic financial definitions, taxes, common startup expenses, or just like bootstrapping, like how to actually pay for the things that you need when you're first getting started and different funding options. And then the third thing is marketing. So actually finding and attracting your first customers. So if you feel even a little bit unsure about any of these things and you need a little help, I have a totally free business course for you. Yep.
It's free. It is a comprehensive, full business foundations course for flower farmers. And I recommend that everybody takes this free mini course before they sign up for my paid online course, which is six -figure flower farming. But the free foundations course includes several hours of instruction of topics ranging from general tips for success, business structures and legalities, finances, marketing, efficiency, and so much more.
I just see so many people struggling with the business side of things and I want to help as many people as possible. Just get their flower farm business off the ground with ease and without total overwhelm because I've been there and it sucks. And I don't want you to have to worry about if you're like forgetting something or like you shouldn't be going into your business, not understanding taxes or anything like that.
Jenny (26:59)
So do yourself a favor, mark your calendars for October 1st, 2024, because that is when registration is opening for this free Business Foundations course, and sign up to get notified for when registration opens. You can sign up to get notified by clicking the link in the show notes of this episode.
Now registration is only gonna be open for a short period of time. We will not be offering this free business course all the time. It's only gonna be available for a little while go ahead, do yourself a favor.
Mark your calendars for October 1st and click the link in the show notes to get notified. All right. Back to our regularly scheduled episode.
Jenny (27:40)
I know that you are a big efficiency geek as I am. And so I would love for you to tell us a little bit about what kind of efficiencies you use on your farm. you know, you're, you also have like a family and all this other stuff. so getting your time on the farm is really important. So you can be efficient and get back home. So what kind of efficiencies do you have on your
Julia Keel (28:01)
Yeah, so I think we could kind of put it in like two broad categories, which is like tools and infrastructure that improve efficiency and then like production, the production techniques that I use that improve efficiency. So we can kind of talk about either one first that you want to. But yes, okay. So and we talked about this a little bit upfront. So you know, when I first started growing, I basically just kind of did what most people do and copied what
Jenny (28:16)
Yeah, you pick.
Julia Keel (28:26)
you saw other people doing. I was kind of going back right to this warm climate issue. I kind of attributed a lot of failures to our climate when, in fact, I was just overextended and not doing things well. And so my husband and I sat down and we kind of really talked about what are the major points of failure that are occurring that are causing us to
dump out seedlings that stayed in the prop house too long or we're having inefficiencies with the watering. So where are things really going wrong? And it kind of takes some humility to say that it's like, I can't just put in more effort. It's not gonna, kind of like the crops aren't gonna get better automatically next year. My ability to do these things isn't just going
improve my time to do these things, like more time isn't gonna kind of just appear. And so we really looked at like what infrastructure we needed to put in place and what tools we needed to buy. And really our two biggest points of failure were like seedling production and planting. And so our, we were not getting like super uniformed seedlings. We were.
I'd be out delivering to florists and getting back and literally running from the vehicle to the prop house to water to try to recuperate these seedlings that were on their last leg and then getting them planted out. So we would have, I would sow all these trays when my son was napping or late at night, but then we wouldn't have beds prepped or it would just take more hours than there were in the day to get all these seedlings in the ground and they would get.
past the point that they were really acceptable quality for transplanting. And so they would kind of get thrown away and we would reseed and it was like really not good. And so kind of like the two main things that we did is that we, we automated the irrigation in our prop house. So that was not that long ago, which is like one of those things that we should have done much sooner. And so we put in like overhead misters that
can go off on very small intervals. So we can do a deep overhead watering in the morning and then have it mist throughout the day for cooling. And that's all controlled by a timer. We have two different zones so that we can do germination on one side and then growing on another side. And then we also invested in the paper pot system to really speed up the transplanting process. And then most recently, we also
purchased fertilizer and lime spreader that we converted to apply compost. And that has really kind of been this key efficiency piece for the new field. So we apply about 60 yards of compost to each half acre block that we prep. So that's slightly over four inches per bed. it was one of these other things where it's like, how am I going to get this?
out like physically how am going to do the work you know like seven cubic feet in a wheelbarrow at a time move 60 yards but then how is all this other essential work going to get done so thankfully we were able to get this spreader and convert it and now we're like putting it out out that way so I think in each case it was really like a critical point of failure that we needed to address.
Jenny (31:45)
You
Julia Keel (31:45)
And we looked specifically for like, would be the best way to do this? That's going to work with our production system and like our soil and our climate.
Jenny (31:55)
Yeah, so basically you looked at your major pain points and then asked yourself what tool or system or infrastructure is going to help relieve this for us. And then that's what you invested in. And the results sounds like it has made your life way easier. Is that right?
Julia Keel (32:14)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it has, you know, and they're like, some of them are tightly coupled, right? Like the improving seedling quality is very tightly coupled with gaining efficiency from the paper pot system, because we want these like nice uniform trays of seedlings to plant out. And so you maximize the efficiency of the paper pot system by having all 264 cells.
have a seedling in them. And then I further down the line, like maximize my ability to estimate availability because a lot of times I'm basing that off on how many plants are in the bed. So if I don't have skips, right, if I know every row has, you know, one plant every four inches, then versus maybe 30 % of the bed didn't get planted because 30 % of the tray didn't have seedlings in it. Like those.
estimates of availability become much more accurate and rather than spending time walking up and down and trying to like count buds or like try to gauge how many plants are actually in this bed, I'm like confident when I'm planting that we have so many plants that are going to be producing once they come, you know, into production later in the season. So I think that like the efficiencies like understanding how you can kind of address multiple efficiencies with by like coupling these
tool and infrastructure purchases is also really valuable.
Jenny (33:42)
And so for those who are listening who are not familiar with the paper pot system, can you just give like a really quick brief overview of what that is and how you use it? Well, you kind of talked about how you use it on your farm, but really quick overview of what it
Julia Keel (33:55)
Yeah, so it is kind of like a two component system. It has like the, the seedling trays, which are these, paper chains that you kind of stretch out and fill just like you would a conventional plug tray, but they are paper and there's like this soluble adhesive that holds it into this chain shape. And once it gets wet, and the adhesive dissolves, it essentially creates one long row of paper with these little individual cells in it.
And then the second component is the transplanter, which makes a little channel and the seedlings go in and it closes the furrow behind it that you pull by hand. And so we use both components to seed trays into the tray system, the paper pots, and then use the transplanter to plant them
Jenny (34:38)
That is a huge time saver for you. mean, on my farm, I had looked into, I really wanted to use the paper pot system like years and years and years ago, because when it first kind of like came out in the U S market, I was like, this is a genius, genius tool. It's going to save so much time and efficiency and money. And so I had like bought the paper chains and I had planted those by hand. I didn't actually buy the transplanter tool.
And then over time, I realized like, actually this might not be a great fit for my farm, but I really, really wanted it to work because some beds where we're planting really tight spacings, you know, like in our hoop house beds, we're putting like 1500, seedlings per bed. Sometimes that can take us like three hours to transplant or more. Whereas if we had a paper pot system, it would probably take us, I don't know,
20 minutes or less or something. I mean, obviously like the density would be a little bit different with paper chains and everything, but it would still be this massive labor saver. And so I feel like it's so appealing that way. And I'm like sort of jealous that you use that on your farm because I really, really want to be using it. So do you feel like it has really saved you, you know, time or money or generally just
made your workflow better or make your life easier with that investment into your paper pot system?
Julia Keel (36:05)
Yeah, absolutely. I think the workflow is like a key piece of it. know, kind of, most days we transplant for like two hours in the morning and then we turn around and we see those trays again. So we put new paper chains in and we reseed them. So we're really able to kind of maintain this schedule of like planting and
Whereas previously was like planting was like a day activity and then seeding had to be either something that was happening on a different day or that was happening at night. Like there were a lot of nights that I was doing it, you know, like at 11 o 'clock at night sitting on a table inside. And so here it's like great because we're essentially for successions, we will replant exactly, reseed exactly what got planted out. And then in terms of time, it absolutely is.
You know, it's not perfect. There are days that there are like hiccups with this system, like if the soil moisture is slightly off or, you know, but it's, I feel like going into it, anticipating that we might have to do these things, we're like really pretty, we're able to make some pretty quick adjustments to like how we're planting or, you know, one of us pulls the planter and someone else goes behind and like has closed with the furrow by hand if we need to. And so,
Yeah, absolutely. And then like you said, like I plant with really kind of like high density, like planting. And so we don't have to pay attention to in row spacing while we're doing this because the in row spacing is, you know, we were achieving by using the paper pots. So we can get pretty uniform type spacing very quickly versus like using a little stick that's marked and kind of shuffling it down the row as we go.
Jenny (37:41)
That's what I do. It's terrible.
Julia Keel (37:42)
That's what we do for Los Santos. So you kind of just like start to lose your momentum and I'm like counting the bows and like the hoop house like how many more feet do we have to go?
Jenny (37:51)
Yes. And that's why I'm going to say it again. Like I wanted that system to work for our farm so badly. And I think years ago, like when I first started my farm, we were growing a lot of annuals, a lot of summer annuals. And I think I would have probably worked then. However, you know, our biggest crops are like ranunculus, butterfly ranunculus, dahlia tubers.
And which are all like pretty inefficient to grow when you think about it, but we do very few seated trays that are, we're transplanting like a whole or a half a bed of anymore. It's just like kind of a thing of not a thing of the past, but we do so little of it. When I did the math for investing in the paper pot system, I was like, it's going to take us probably four years to make our money back on it compared to the labor that I pay for our people to just transplant hand transplant.
And more and more we're moving away from those summer animals. And so was like, I just don't think it's like the right thing right now. And so this comes back to our theme that we've been talking about where you ran your numbers on those ranunculus, for example, and it just didn't work for your farm. Whereas the paper pot system seems really appealing and like, I really want to use it, but the numbers just don't make sense on our farm. And so I think
We are always going to be in agreement about really pinpointing exactly what pain points you have before investing or continuing to grow a crop or something like that. So how.
Julia Keel (39:17)
Yeah, and what your production goals are. sorry, like what your production goals are. like, because like, you know, 95 % of what we grow are annuals. And so that's like very different. So it's not just that that was a pain point, but it's that that is the bulk of what we're doing is like planting out cool season and warm season annual.
Jenny (39:20)
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. And so it just really depends on your production system and your business model even too. I mean, it depends on everything, literally everything. There's so many things to consider when you're talking about this kind of stuff. what other, are there any other efficiencies that you use like a day to day on your farm that you feel have really kind of changed the game for you or made your life easier or, you know, made you more profitable or anything like that?
Julia Keel (40:05)
Yeah, so I would say like day to day efficiencies, like I've seen your like level of organization with things like inventory and stuff like that. And you know, that is an area where I need to improve a lot. But I think that are kind of like our production techniques in terms of how I approach each crop is maybe improved our efficiency. So we do a lot of things like at tight spacing and we harvest it at one time. And so that means that
For me, the harvesting time and the labor is much quicker because I'm not really kind of having to grade stems out as much. We're not like going back and looking through stems that, you know, maybe are too far open or too far closed. For most cool season annuals, we're getting like three weeks of production off of a crop. And so probably like 25 % the first week, 50 % the second week and 25 % the third week.
And we're just cutting, you know, like every day to every other day at the optimal stage. And it makes it really fast. You're going through, you're cutting at the base of the plant and then you're moving through the bed. like bachelor buttons, for example, is one that we basically cut like one stem off per plant. And and that was it. Then we just like moved on to some other things. And I think, you know, we had about
$900 in revenue from one bed of bachelor buttons, which would be higher if we were cutting multiple times, except that the number of hours that we spent harvesting that one time was really low compared to kind of like going through and cutting individual stems. Go through with the snips or the knife, like go from plant to plant like super quickly and just cut them out, maybe like two to three hours total to harvest that entire bed of.
of bachelor buttons compared to like hunting individual stems. And so for me, that approach, it's a little bit hard to get used to because you're like, well, maybe this will produce more, more stems, but really like quick crop off the bed and then and then flip it to something else.
Jenny (42:10)
Yeah, I love that example. And your approach to that is so insightful because so many people don't even bother growing things like bachelor buttons because so many people have said things like, well, they're not profitable. You know, you they're annoying to harvest. They take forever to harvest because you're like you said, hunting through stems and they get all tangly or whatever, but you're just getting one cut off of it, moving super quickly through the crop. And because you're able to move fast and I imagine.
that one stem that you're getting is really high quality so you can get a good price point for it, you're still able to profit off of it. And so there are always more than one way to skin a cat. Not a great expression, but I don't know of another way to say it.
Julia Keel (42:53)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's one that it's like, it's also really easy to tell, is this not the right harvest stage? Because it's either like showing color or it's not. And if you're keeping up with it, then it's like anything that's showing color, like starting to open, we're basically cutting compared to something like, know, zinnias or some other things that you might need to like kind of look more closely at. So.
Jenny (43:15)
Ugh, I hate zinnias.
Julia Keel (43:16)
I'm
Jenny (43:17)
Do you grow zinnias?
Julia Keel (43:18)
Yeah. They're kind of one that I'm like, what could I replace this with? But then they always like sell really well. You know, and I'm like, you know what, like I need that revenue in May and I kind of just have to but I also like I get frustrated with them. Yeah, because they're kind of a nuisance to harvest but because also
like maybe overly selective about the zinnias that I bunch and the zinnias that I discard. And I think that indecision kind of slows me down. So that would be one area where I say I'm inefficient is I probably spend too long being like, this zinnia acceptable or not? Whereas like other things I'm like, okay, this is good and this is not good. And zinnias I feel like it's this like super long gradient of like, maybe this is good enough, maybe this is too ugly.
Jenny (44:04)
my God, I have the same problem, the same problem. This is what.
Julia Keel (44:06)
and I'm like always afraid I'm gonna include ugly zinya in my butt.
Jenny (44:10)
my gosh. We're the same person. I do the same thing because my, they just, for us, they just take forever to harvest. like, you know, my employees do like the wiggle tests and I feel like after, like, I don't feel like I need to do that so much because I've been harvesting them forever. I can tell if they're ready or not for the, and so I like, I feel like I can do that. But
My employees are so, they're the best. They're so amazing, but they're like afraid, you know, they don't want to cut one at the wrong stage and have it die. And so they, it just takes them a while, which is fine. But then they'll harvest stems that I'm like, that is so ugly. Like when the cones like are really like starting to like protrude a little bit. And I'm like, I think that's not one we should have harvested. And I'm super picky about it. And so the amount of time that they take is just like.
Julia Keel (44:47)
Yeah.
Jenny (44:58)
insane, but same with us. like fill that gap for us. It's in July. And so people really buy a lot of them in July. And so we're still growing them. So it is what it is. Zinnias, Zinnias.
Julia Keel (45:10)
Yeah, I mean, and it's like a white, like, you know, Oklahoma white, like the ones that produce nice quality flowers, they're like beautiful, like fully double white flowers that we can have in June. Like there are not a whole lot of white flowers that we can have that looks excellent in June. So we kind of just have to, yeah, deal with the downsides because.
It's something that we can produce then.
Jenny (45:33)
Yeah. And your customers want white. So yeah, I have never grown a nice white Zinnia in my entire life. I don't know how to do it. They all turn brown. They're so ugly. I hate them. I should take a class from you.
Julia Keel (45:44)
Yeah, had a dry May and June, so I feel like the number of usable white stems that we got from the bed was really high this year. Sometimes it's like, my gosh, I'm throwing every single one out.
Jenny (45:57)
Yeah, for sure. So yeah, and that's another part of efficiencies. Like I think this is a good example because you can't like every single crop on the farm on a small diversified farm, like you and me, like we both grow about an acre of flowers. I feel like the diversity is like pretty similar. You probably grow a lot more diversity than I do, like variation, but
Not every single thing is going to be like a home run in terms of like profitability. Sometimes you have to grow things that bridge a gap in the season or that your customers are really, really looking for, or maybe like complements something else at a specific time of year, know, things like that. And so I think that's important and important consideration as well.
Julia Keel (46:38)
Yeah, I agree. And I think that that's where I tend to also look at that from like the cost of production or the risk standpoint. So if it's like relatively low risk, like if it's reliable and the production costs are really low, if it is not as profitable as certain other crops, like something like the the bachelor buttons, it's like really worth it because you need multiple things to sell each week. Like you said, you need things during certain key weeks and
You also need, like I want to meet certain revenue goals each week and right, like you have to have enough crops that you're producing or enough stems that you're producing to do that.
Jenny (47:17)
Yeah, exactly. Now, Julia, how do you keep track of your production costs? Like, on my farm, we just have, like, pen and paper. I have, a little template that I print out, and we keep track of it that way. But I'm always curious how other people do
Julia Keel (47:30)
Yeah, so usually like kind of excel, keep track of like a lot of the costs and the labor for each thing. I also really like to use my phone to just kind of like document things and take notes because I'm not always the best at like keeping really great records. So combination of those things. And then I use
Right? Like all of our QuickBooks, because we sell just to florists, right? Like all my sales records through QuickBooks are like a really great, like crop by crop way to basically keep track then of what's sold through. And then if we do throw stuff out of the cooler, we're essentially harvesting like every stem each week that is like appropriate to sell. And then anything that gets tossed from the cooler, I kind of note down. And then anything
We have all the sales records from QuickBooks. And then we're kind of keeping track week by week of what we're spending time on with other things in terms of input costs or labor costs. So probably not the best way. There are years I've tried to look at individual crops in more detail, but that's basically my approach.
Jenny (48:36)
I think that's great. Like I feel like a lot of times, if I don't have, like my crop journal or something in front of me, like I just jot a ton of notes down in my cell phone. And I think that's a great way to keep track of stuff too. just as long as people are like paying attention to those kinds of things, I think it's like the starting point to.
Really pay attention to all that stuff and looking at your sales. And I was just looking at my revenue this morning from a bunch of our different sales crops and just trying to make a plan for next year, because you know, we're kind of getting to the end of the season a little bit. And I need to really start thinking about what we're going to grow next year and in what quantities and what ones we make a lot of revenue or profit on that I want to push and which one's not. And so I think that's great. Yeah.
Julia, do you have any other things that you want to share with us? I feel like this has been a really fun conversation so far, but is there anything else that you are just dying to tell everyone?
Julia Keel (49:29)
I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know. I feel like we have covered a lot of things. Like if there's anything that you want to kind of go back to or push a little further on, I'm up for it.
Jenny (49:39)
Okay. Well, I think this has been a great conversation and, yeah, just thank you so much for coming on the podcast with me. love talking about this kind of stuff and like geeking out on farming and numbers and business. And you're such a fun and great business owner to talk to this kind of stuff about. So could you just tell everyone where they can find you like your social media or your website or how anybody could possibly work with you in the future, anything like
Julia Keel (50:05)
Yeah, so I am most active on Instagram, and our Instagram is at Full Keel Farm. We do have a website. It's kind of under construction currently, so you won't find a lot there. But I'm working on getting some other educational resources up on the website, because there is a lot of interest in warm climate resources. And then in my Instagram bio, I also have
to some of the other webinars I've done specifically about warm climate production. So for people who are most interested in that aspect of what I do and want more details about that, that's kind where they should go to look for that.
Jenny (50:43)
Awesome. So everyone go give Julia a follow. Like I said earlier in this podcast episode, she's like my favorite person to follow on Instagram. So go give her a follow. And if you're a warm season grower, just go learn all you can from her. She's a wealth of knowledge and we will see everyone next time.
Jenny (51:01)
Hey, one last thing, just a reminder to make sure you click the link in the show notes to get on the wait list for my free Business Foundations course. Like I said, during the episode, I am only gonna be offering this free business course for a very short period of time and I don't want you to miss out on it. So make sure you click the link so you can sign up for our email list so I will notify you when registration is open so you can get registered, you don't miss out and you will get access to this completely free.
comprehensive online business foundation score. So go ahead and do that and then I'll see you next time on the six figure flower farming podcast.
