Plant sales as side income source

[sky]

Gary Pilarchek is posting a series of videos on how to start plants indoors and have them ready for a plant sale in the spring.

https://youtu.be/7hegp3hqTms

I am going to start a selection of culinary herbs for a garage sale in mid May.

[Sclass]

You know, I think there is something to this if you choose the right plant. I suspect there are some rare plants that people just want to have for decoration, herbal medicine or spice. Not necessarily marijuana either.

Take this for example. Why steal these when you can set up a garden?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ing-crisis

My mom has a patch of this stuff that went feral after it broke out of her neglected pots. I have this wall of succulents to dig out because they colonized a leaking drainage line. They didn’t seem to require much encouragement to propagate.

[sky]

Here is my plan...

Start one 72 cell tray 12 weeks prior to sale, in my case February 22 start date.

I want my sale to be the Saturday after the average date of last frost (May 16 for me).

I will grow culinary herb plants: Oregano, Thyme, Chives, Rosemary, Peppermint, Lavender, Lemon Balm, Sage, Spearmint.
These are all cold hardy herbs which also happen to be perennials.

After about 1 month, around March 22, I will split the plants in cells in two and transplant to 4" cups. The cups I have are 4" at the top and 3" at the bottom, 15 cups fit on one 1020 tray (10" x 20"). This means I will have 144 cups, or about 10 trays.

I can make room for 10 trays on the lighted shelves that I have. If I were buying 4 foot shelves with 4 foot shop lights, 10 trays would require 3 shelves with lights.

From March 22 to May 16 I will have to monitor and water 10 trays, which is a fair amount of work.

The last two weeks or more, I will have to acclimatize the plants by taking them outside for a short period of time daily to get them used to sunlight. I am hoping that I will have a shelf on wheels and that I can roll them in and out of the garage by then, rather than taking them in and out of the house.

This is a significant amount of work and maybe not worth it if one had to buy all the trays, shelving and lights. I garden as a hobby and have most of the equipment already. The cost of seed and soil is extremely low, so this allows me to fill my garden with perennial herbs and have about a hundred plants to sell. If I sell them for $2 each, thats $200 profit for more gardening stuff. The main thing is that I will learn how to do it and can repeat it next year if I like doing it.

[ertyu]

Sorry for the dumb question but what happens if you're a muggle with a yard who throws a bunch of seed in the ground when it gets warm enough outside? Would this work if the herbs are for your own garden or is the february-tray method necessary regardless

[sky]

You can start them in the ground, but they grow slowly and weeds will cover them and out-compete them.

[IlliniDave]

Sorry for the dumb question but what happens if you're a muggle with a yard who throws a bunch of seed in the ground when it gets warm enough outside? Would this work if the herbs are for your own garden or is the february-tray method necessary regardless

Most of those would do fine from seed in the spring if they were in a tended garden but depending on your length of summer you might not get much to harvest out of the perennials the first season. If you plant mint or lemon balm, you'll have it forever. It will even survive in a lawn that gets regularly mowed.

[jennypenny]

@sky -- We have the same frost-free date but most of the herbs are already gone by the weekend after. You might want to aim a little earlier to catch people shopping for plants. I'd never wait that long to buy my herbs for fear of missing out on the good stuff. Many people keep herbs indoors or on patios so the frost free date isn't as much of a concern. They are also a popular mother's day gift, which falls before the frost-free date.

In my albeit limited experience, thyme and rosemary need more than 12 weeks before they are in sellable condition. I'd probably start them immediately if doing them from seed (I have more luck with cuttings).

Good luck!

[sky]

Good point
I usually wait till June when the prices go down, but... I'm not normal.

[chenda]

FWIW , I know someone who ran a successful heather growing business out of a couple of dilapidated sheds. It seems quite scalable to a micro level.

[Gilberto de Piento]

This is a thing where I live. Lots of rummage sale style plant sales in the spring.

[7Wannabe5]

I second jp's suggestion that Mother's Day marketing would be good idea. I've considered doing this myself and I was also going to use very inexpensively obtained assortment of second hand, eclectic, decorative planters/containers (maybe $.50 each on average.) You could also make/sell a stack of wood-block print cards and/or extra seed packets. Johnny-jump-ups or similar small flowers interplanted with herbs might look nice. I mean, just some mint in a plastic toss-away, you might get $2, but if it is in a cute little old sugar bowl with a card attached with raffia and something pretty blooming around the edges, you could charge $6 easy.

I also second SClasses suggestion for succulents as being very easy, popular choice. I had some rimming the entire edge by the concrete drive of one of my gardens and they were perky and invincible.

[Sclass]

I also second SClasses suggestion for succulents as being very easy, popular choice. I had some rimming the entire edge by the concrete drive of one of my gardens and they were perky and invincible.

I wonder how you find out which ones are the hot sellers. Travel? Internet forums?

The idea that these coastal California ones were big in China was a shocker to me. I think I have a cluster in my mother’s patch. I was about to mulch them and put them in the composter.

[7Wannabe5]

@Sclass:

International trade in ornamental plants is a bit of a dubious enterprise, because consequences have frequently been what ffj is currently dealing with in trying to eradicate invasive species from his woodlands. OTOH, it is kind of fascinating, because it is obviously only successful if plants are nurtured in greenhouse/window environment or transplanted in similar micro-climate as that of genetic origin. So, for instance, humans at similar Northern latitude around the globe will have cuisines heavily based on head cabbage.

There are also a multitude of examples of species of plants that are not at all closely genetically related, but can easily be mistaken for each other, because they evolved towards similar niche function. Therefore, it could be argued that even if a plant like honeysuckle was not imported to the U.S., over the long run, the human practice of clearing/maintaining trails wide enough for a cart to traverse through a woodlands, thereby providing more sunshine to edge of trail, would have eventually led to the independent evolution of a species much like invasive honeysuckle, because you can't maintain wilderness right next to clear-cut of civilization, no matter what the scale. Permaculture solution would be to attempt to plant something like honeysuckle, with some ability to directly compete with honeysuckle, but preferable for human consumption and/or aesthetic and/or other use, for instance, some variety of bramble fruit.

[sky]

I started Rosemary and Lavender today. Almost 14 weeks prior to the sale date of May 2.

[sky]

Rosemary and Lavender are sprouting. I seeded Oregano, Thyme, Chives, Lemon Balm, Peppermint and Spearmint today, 12 weeks prior to my May 2 sale.

I am starting them in my microgreen growth chamber with settings of 72F temperature, 4 day flood cycle, lights on 16 hours - off 8 hours, and fan run 5 seconds every 15 minutes. It is possible that I will not have to touch the system for 4 weeks, other than to refill the water reservoir once or twice. However I like to look at my plants and usually check them several times a day.

In about 4 weeks I will split the cells and repot the plants.

[sky]

I did not stratify, however the seed came by mail so it probably was cold for some time.

[sky]

I finished repotting all my seedlings, and have 122 pots to sell. They have about 6 weeks to grow until the sale on May 2. I may start some additional brassicas and warm weather herbs in 2 weeks.

[Gilberto de Piento]

I was looking forward to buying plants at yard sales this spring but I don't think there will be many sales and I wouldn't go to them right now anyway. Ordered seeds instead.

[sky]

One or two weeks to the sale. Here is my roadside stand, a bicycle camper trailer I built last year.

https://i.imgur.com/EQtWxCv.jpg

[George the original one]

Very cool.