Jenny (00:28)
Welcome back. Believe it or not, the choices that you make this month are actually going to directly impact your flower sales next spring. I know that sounds crazy, but that's what we're talking about today on the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. I have a little bit of a head cold today, so I apologize if I sound a little nasally. I know I'll be pausing this and we'll have to edit it out when I have to stop to... ⁓
cough and stuff like that, but who gets a cold in the middle of summertime? Like, why? It just seems like it shouldn't happen. I'm really mad about it, but apologize if I sound a little nasally or congested. Let's get back to what we're gonna talk about.
It may seem weird to talk about next spring right now when we're in the middle of summertime, but there is so much value in planning early and getting ready now for the upcoming season. And trust me, I know it sounds nuts, but in flower farming, you're always thinking ahead three months, six months, 12 months.
maybe even longer. And so
I'm going be sharing some actionable steps about how you can kind of dive deeper into what to think about right now to make sure that you have a really successful spring season ahead. Now, again, we're in the middle of summer, so why are we talking about this? But the lead time required in farming and being profitable with your farm is kind of wild. Like, we all know we have to order our bulbs and our plugs and our seeds, all that stuff well ahead of time.
Particularly things like bulbs and quorums, like I usually order those in December for planting that fall. I guess the fall after that, December, January, February, that time frame for planting that fall.
So hopefully you've already thought about ordering your plugs and your corms and possibly even some seeds. But the important thing I'm trying to drive home here is that the spring flush is really only profitable if you start working backward from it.
now. And so I feel like when I first started my business, I was always really good at planning, but I never really paid attention to like timelines of things and how critical they were until a few years into my business. And I wish I had paid attention to it more early on. Most farmers are kind of reactive when it comes to planning for springtime or the season ahead or doing their crop planning, but profitable
farmers really plan for it. So this time of year, I'm actually ordering some plugs to plant in the fall. So these are also things that you could start in your greenhouse. You can start from seed. But in my climate, where I am in central New York state, Western New York state, it gets way too hot in our greenhouse. Even if we put shade cloth on, even if we had roll-up sides and fans on all the time.
It's just way too hot in there to start a lot of these fall-planted flowers that we get to bloom in early springtime. If you think about it, flowers that bloom in early spring are usually cool, loving flowers. And if you're new to flowers, there are flowers that like it cool, and there are flowers that like it hot. And so the flowers that like it cool, they don't want to get started in a 100 degree greenhouse, which is why I just order plugs for our fall-planted flowers, because
These plug companies have state-of-the-art greenhouses where they have the perfect temperatures and environment. They're super high tech for these early spring flowers, whereas I don't have that kind of equipment and I don't care to make the investment on it. It wouldn't be worth it for me. So I'm ordering plugs of things like Snapdragon's, Dianthus, Campanula, sometimes Icelandic poppies, Delfinium. And now we don't grow things like
Well, I guess we do sort of grow fever few, but we don't grow bupilarum or I'm trying to think of some other flowers we've grown in the past that we don't grow anymore. And it's not coming into my head. But those are the main things that we plant in the fall for an early spring bloom. And so now is the time when we're ordering those plugs in July, August time frame. And primarily, Snapdragons.
And Campanula and Dianthus are really big producers for us. ⁓ Things like Snapdragons and Dianthus are really profitable because they make a lot of stems. We can get a pretty good price point for them. Like our spring Snapdragons are by far the best Snapdragons in the world. We routinely get like four foot stems that we have to cut down because they're way too long. The stems are super thick.
huge flowers, like they're beautiful. And it's because we purchased the plugs to be delivered. We plant them in the fall, overwinter them in our high tunnels, and we get them to bloom in the springtime. Campanula is just another amazing one where we get four foot stems, massive flowers, because we're planting it in the fall for early spring bloom. And they're being planted in our high tunnels. So if you don't have a big high tunnel, but you have maybe a small caterpillar tunnel or something like that,
This could also work for that. I also added in delphinium this year, which is not super profitable for us. I actually don't really love it. I don't really love planting it and growing it. And we don't get a ton of stems from it, but it's so popular. And that's why we added it back into our lineup this past year. But we also plant it in the fall for spring bloom. And people are just always asking for blue flowers lately, like,
If someone listening, if you could just tell me where this blue flower trend is coming from, I would like to know where it's coming from so I could go and punch that person in the face. Not really. I would never do that to anybody. However, I don't understand why people are always asking for the one thing we don't have. It's so frustrating. And so we have just been getting so many requests for blue flowers, which is why we decided, all right, we're going to grow some delphinium.
in the spring, and we use that a lot in our bulk bucket requests. We put it in the mixed bouquets that we make, and people are really, happy with it. So alas, we have started growing it again.
So the reason why I'm talking about ordering these plugs or thinking about starting seeds, like usually I would start these seeds in late August, early September in our greenhouse in my climate. But like I said, it's too hot. And it's just easier for me to order these plugs now. Like in the springtime, we do almost all of our seed starting in our own greenhouse. But this time of year, we don't. But the reason why we're talking about it is because the timing of plantings
is wildly important for the profitability of your farm and your flowers, especially in spring. I would say that if you're a grower anywhere from zones like three or four to zone seven-ish, you should be highly considering planting in the fall in a high tunnel for early spring bloom. And all the planning for it starts now. And the timing
of those plantings is critical. To get high quality spring flowers that are not dying over the wintertime, the timing is critical. So if you plant your things too early, then the plants get too big, they get frost damage, they get petritis after they get frost damage, and they just suffer. You're not going to get as good quality. You're going to be fighting disease all wintertime. It's not going to be good. But if you plant too late in the winter or in the fall,
Your plants are not going to get established enough before the cold sets in, which can invite pests and disease. The stem length is going to suffer. The quality is going to suffer. And your yields are going to drop. And so this is important to understand because the timing is so critically important. And it's a little bit different for each one of these plants. So snapdragon, cyanthus, campanula, delphinium, we pretty much all plant those at the same time. We order our plugs.
for them to all come. However, things like ranunculus and anemones, they get planted after them. And it's important to understand the timing for each of the different flower crops that you're planting. I'm actually doing a workshop on this coming up very soon on August 12th. And I'll talk more about that at the end of this podcast. But if you're interested in diving into the nitty gritty details of timing plantings, like do's and don'ts, I'll be talking about that during that workshop.
In a nutshell, planting now means better availability, better quality. You can get better prices in the spring since you have better quality flowers and just a higher success rate in general. So some other things to consider for fall planting are bulbs and corn. So not just plugs or things grown from seed.
But things like ranunculus, anemones, butterfly ranunculus, and then, of course, like tulips or any other bulbs that you grow. Ranunculus are the bread and butter of our farm. I've talked about this in podcasts before, but Ranunculus bring in somewhere around 25 % of the farm's
overall revenue. So like a quarter of the revenue we make from flowers comes from rununculus, which is crazy.
But the only reason that they are bringing in that revenue for us and that they're profitable is that there's demand in the spring that is unprecedented the rest of the year. mean, your business might be a little bit different. But I think for most flower farmers, after the wintertime, spring is here. People are out shopping for bedding flowers or shopping for potted plants and ⁓ hanging baskets.
And they're looking for color. They're looking for signs of spring. They get so excited that the warm weather is here. And so the demand for flowers is just crazy. Rhinoculus are a super unique thing. They can't really get it everywhere. And they're beautiful. And we get a really good quality and quite a few stems from our Rhinoculus plantings, making them fairly profitable for us. But planning now on when we're going to get those planted in the fall, coming up very, very soon,
is critical. And the biggest mistakes I see people make with these kinds of crops with like Ranunculus and Anemones is that you're planting them way too late. Like there's a lot of advice out there that you plant these in the spring, but it's like when you plant them in the spring, they're really short. So if you get ones that are like six inches tall, the flowers are really small, you only get one or two stems from plant, from a plant, it's probably because you're planting them way too late and you're planting them without protection.
So all the things I'm talking about really benefit from having that added protection. Even if it's just one layer of plastic and some frost cloth, you can do it kind of on the cheap. It doesn't have to be really an expensive setup or anything like that. But just growing in things like high tunnels, you get wildly better results. Like the investment is so worth it. You get better stem quality, better flower quality. You get bigger flowers. You get better stem length.
You can control the whole environment better. you're controlling weeds better. You're controlling the water. It's just an all around no brainer. And I'm definitely diving into growing in high tunnels in that workshop I mentioned that I'm hosting on August 12th. More details about that in a minute. But all of these early bloomers that hit the market really early in the season when prices are highest,
you're just making out like, I don't want to say making out like a bandit, but ⁓ it's definitely worth it. Investing in these early spring flowers, planning for them now, and planting in high tunnels, high tunnels are definitely one of the best investments you can make on your farm, in my humble opinion. So the other thing that we're doing right now to get ready for planting in the fall, so we can have those really beautiful, really abundant, productive,
profitable early spring flowers is we're getting the farm ready to plant them. So right now, we are doing all of our bed prepping for those plantings. If we have, like for example right now, we have a whole tunnel of Ranunculus that has all died back. So it bloomed this spring. It's all kind of died back now, turned yellow. And so now we're ripping out all those plants to get that area ready to be replanted with spring flowers this fall.
And they will be different spring flowers, since we rotate all of our plantings. Just good farming practice. You don't want to build up disease by planting the same thing in the same place over and over and over again. But we are actively working right now on getting those beds ready so we can plant in the fall.
Sometimes we cover crop in between when we're double cropping in the same season, but a lot of times there's just not enough time for it. So I would say generally most of the time we're just ripping out old plants, bed prepping so we can be ready when those plugs arrive, when those runiculis are ready to go in the ground to get things planted. So what our bed prep process looks like is we basically pull out old plants and most of the time we're doing this by hand.
⁓ If it's a bulb like Ranunculus, Anemone, we're just ripping those guys out by hand, which is definitely not the most efficient way to do it. But since we're such a small scale farm, the mechanization hasn't really made sense for us. If it's something that has roots that are not a bulb or a corm and it won't come back next year, we can just mow it right down to the ground. And sometimes we'll cover it with a tarp to encourage.
some of the breakdown of that old plant residue. Sometimes we don't. It just kind of depends on the situation. But once that old plant residue is gone, out of there, decomposed, whatever, we add our compost and our amendments. We tilther the top of it, which is a tilther is a tool that just barely disturbs the top inch of soil. So it incorporates all of your amendments with the soil layer.
And it's not like a rototiller where it's completely turning over the soil and disturbing all the layers of soil. It's just incorporating your amendments and making a nice smooth seed bed on the top. Then we put our drip lines on top, our new drip lines, which we usually, unfortunately, have to replace every year because we have really hard water that we have not been able to fix. And it makes hard water scale on our emitters on our drip line and clogs them. And so.
Unfortunately, we usually have to replace our drip lines. So it's a process. And we have quite a few beds to move through. And the whole process of doing that bed flipping, we're starting now because we have time to do it now. In the spring, we're super busy because it's just the busiest time of year between all of our sales. Like we have our biggest sales in the spring. Plus we're doing planting, transplanting for our summer flowers. And then in the fall, we get busy with like
farm cleanup and digging dahlias. And so right now is when we have the time to do the bed prep and that's why it's happening.
This is also the time when I kind of start thinking about some strategic sales planning. So where am I going to be moving these flowers in the springtime? ⁓ Is it going to be through our CSA? Is it going to be through wholesale or florists? Are we just going to sell it at the farmer's market? It's important to have a sales plan in mind when you're thinking about how much you're going to plant, what you're going to plant, where you're going to plant it.
So you're not just planting things and hoping that you'll sell them in the spring. You really want to have somewhat of a rough plan lined up so you know where you're going to be funneling these flowers in the springtime. So some common mistakes that I see flower farmers make is that they really wait until the fall to plan for springtime. And that really results in missed opportunities. I really think that planting in the fall
And I know it depends on your climate and everything, but like I said, zones like three or four through zone seven-ish, like you should be planting in the fall in high tunnels for the springtime. And it's just going to allow so many more opportunities for you to extend your season, to break into new markets, to, and when I say markets, I mean like new opportunities to sell your flowers.
If you also wait to buy things, like ranunculus corms, if you wait to try to buy them in the fall when you start thinking about springtime, you're going to miss out. All the good varieties, all the sizes you want, they're all going to be gone. These things tend to sell out pretty early in the season. And so you really got to be thinking about it and planning on it now and even earlier in the season.
You don't want to just get whatever's left of the gross, weird, black, renunculus. Maybe your customers like that, mine don't. When you really want a yellow and a pink or whatever. So you need to plan on what you need for your sales goals and get on top of it. You also want to make sure you're aligning your production with your sales strategy, which I kind of just talked about a little
And all these decisions, all this planning that you do ahead of time really sets you up for having a profitable farm. I know that on a farm, planning can feel a little ominous because there's so much that goes into it. can also feel like sometimes, I'm not gonna lie, it's felt a little useless when things happen. You have to pivot, you have to change your plans, you have to change up where you're planting things and your crop plan kind of like goes out the window and you have to start over. Like that happens sometimes.
However, if you go into this blind, it's not going to work out very well for you. So my own success with really profitable early spring flowers is directly linked to planning ahead, planting in the fall four spring flowers, overwintering those crops for better quality, extending my season, and having some really clear sales goals. I also think.
deciding on what crops to grow, having a really high standard for which flower crops get planted and which ones don't. Like I make sure whatever we plant, we are going to be making a profit on. Like we used to grow stock, for example, or matiola. Actually, I don't know if I say that right. Is it matiola? Matiola? If someone out there could tell me, I would appreciate it because I've been growing flowers for, I don't know, 12 years or something and I still haven't figured it out. So.
There's that. But anyhow, we used to grow stock. And I really loved it. I love the scent. I love what it added to our mixed bouquets when we did make them. But the numbers just didn't really make sense. Like, we were doing things to try to make that stock more profitable. But in the end, it was just like not really worth it for us. So we cut that from the lineup and we decided to really focus on the most profitable early spring flowers. So if you're listening to this,
And you're feeling like, OK, yes, I really want a profitable spring next year. It's summertime, and I feel like I'm too crazy busy to think about that yet. It seems so far ahead. And I actually don't know where to start. If you have any of those thoughts, I'm actually hosting a profitable spring flowers workshop on August 12th. So it's called Profitable Spring Flowers.
This workshop is going to have a huge focus on growing ranunculus and ranunculus production, especially within high tunnels or with protection. But we do talk about anemones, campanula, snapdragons, and a few other things. So I'll be going step by step through our ranunculus production, all of the successions that we do, tips and tricks for getting really big flowers, really long stem length.
and just basically extending the harvest season of your ranunculus and other things as well. I'm gonna be talking about plug timing. Like I said before, getting the timing right of when you plant your flowers is so important. Plant too early and you get problems, plant too late, you get problems. So I'm gonna be going over how you can determine what the best time to plant is for your specific microclimate. I'm also gonna be talking about
I forgot to mention with vernunculus, ⁓ varieties, all my favorite varieties of vernunculus where you can get them.
And I'm mainly going to be talking about growing all these flowers with some protection. So growing them in high tunnels, whether that's a high tunnel or a caterpillar tunnel, we're going to be talking about what both of those things are, what the difference is and how to grow inside of those structures. So if you're new to high tunnel growing or you're new to season extension, or you just want to dial in your inoculus or your early spring flower production, this workshop is going to go over all of that stuff.
I'm also going to give you guys, whoever signs up for the workshop, a workbook that includes all of this information in written form so it's searchable and it's easy to reference. Because I know before I've gone to talks and webinars and workshops and you get the recording, you're like, this is amazing. But I generally don't go back and listen to the recording again unless it was
a crazy like brand new concept to me, which for you, this might be a brand new concept and you will get the recording so you can listen to it again. But I'm the kind of person where I want to have something written down so I can go back and reference it. And so that's why I'm also giving you this workbook that has all the information in it. It's really easy to just like search through digitally. You could print it out if you want a printed copy. I just think that's super valuable and something I really appreciate.
And that's why we do so many resources and printouts and PDFs and workbooks with all the courses and workshops that we teach. But anything you want to know about growing spring flowers or ranunculus or growing in high tunnels, you can ask any question you want at the end of this workshop. It's going to be a live virtual workshop on Zoom. Come to it live.
ask any question you want at the end. I'm really excited. I love answering people's questions. And then if you can't make it live, no worries. You will get the recording in your email afterwards. Go to trademarkfarmer.com forward slash spring to sign up for that workshop and save your seat today.
Again, that's trademarkfarmer.com forward slash spring S P R I N G. I will also include a link in the show notes of this episode if that's easier for you.
So in a nutshell, to wrap up this episode, I really want you to be thinking about next spring right now.
It's really the key to having a super profitable springtime. So go ahead, grab your spot in the workshop now. It's trademarkfarmer.com forward slash spring. And just an FYI, I'll probably be shutting down the registrations on August 11th. And this is August 11th, 2025. The actual workshop is taking place on August 12th, 2025. So make sure you sign up for it on our website and snag your spot before we close down registrations.
And like I said, there'll be a link in the show notes. I'm really excited to see you guys at the workshop and answer all of your questions. I hope that this was helpful. If you can't tell, I'm a little bit obsessed with fall planting, spring flowers. It's really been a cornerstone that has made my whole flower farm successful. And I want to be able to pass that on and teach as many people as possible about it. So that's it for today's episode. I'll see you next time in the next episode, which is published every Monday.
So I'll catch you then, same place, same time.
