anyone growing flowers for market?

One of my 5 goals is to sell something at our tiny farmers' market this summer, as a practice run for when we have our fruit products. We have a "real" farmer who brings in veg and goat cheese; he started the market and I'm not going to compete with him. But no one sells flowers. I'm going to try it. Annuals, but if it works, it would be pretty easy to add things like echinacea, lilies, etc to the mainframe project. And our market is small, mostly weekend homeowners and retirees, so it's more of having a presence until the fruit comes in and it's not a huge investment to try it. Worst case scenario is that I get to hang out with my neighbors for a couple hours a week and fill my house with cut flowers.

Anyone done this? Tips?

I sold flowers at our small farmer's market and they did well...I made really small bouquets of marigolds, zinnias, echinacea, wild flowers, anise hysspo, small sunflowers...things I was growing anyway. At first I did it just to add something pretty to my table at the market. I found that buying really inexpensive small glasses and bottles at the thrift store worked well and helped sales...folks liked having them ready to go. I was surprised, because I thought my flowers were very 'common' and everyone grows them

Great idea on the containers! I need to check on my anise hyssop seedlings. I love that plant

It really depends on your market; if people have money for flowers they will buy them... We used to do a very large market in a wealthy university town and there were 4 or 5 large flower sellers that seemed to do brisk business. Compare that to our local market in a small, economically depressed, town; we tried to sell flowers but people were much more interested in bargain hunting for cucumbers and tomatoes. We would inevitably end up cutting the price by half or 3/4 and still taking them home with us. You just have to know your market I guess...

All that said, you don't have too much to lose. Flowers are pretty easy to grow and beautiful to see in the garden, even if no one is buying them. Plus you generally don't have the extra labor in cleaning and packaging as much as say, lettuce or the like.

One way of preserving a flower crops is drying the petals for confetti. People mail order petals for weddings and the like - great. Use for petals from blemished flowers, especially roses.

We dried our own for our wedding.

A few veggie vendors sell country bouquets at the local markets, and long-stem sunflowers. These aren't their main money makers, but they do add a good bit of cheer to the stalls until pumpkins come into season.

Their prices are low ($3-4), and the bouquets are full of classic and bizarre flowers. They're usually displayed in old canning jars, and I'm sure they'd sell the jar for an extra dollar or so. It's a simple, easy filler -- but I don't think a seller focusing on flowers would do well in the Mid-Michigan markets I frequent.

Good luck!

Ann Torrence wrote:One of my 5 goals is to sell something at our tiny farmers' market this summer, as a practice run for when we have our fruit products. We have a "real" farmer who brings in veg and goat cheese; he started the market and I'm not going to compete with him. But no one sells flowers. I'm going to try it. Annuals, but if it works, it would be pretty easy to add things like echinacea, lilies, etc to the mainframe project. And our market is small, mostly weekend homeowners and retirees, so it's more of having a presence until the fruit comes in and it's not a huge investment to try it. Worst case scenario is that I get to hang out with my neighbors for a couple hours a week and fill my house with cut flowers.

Had anyone done this? Tips?

did you end up selling something at the local farmers market?

if it didnt work think about this

this is left the field. I've started growing flowers like food base flowers and using them in salads and bouquets.  I sell the high-quality pictures of them on things on istock. it's not a huge money spinner but it's decent pocket change. If i was better at making bouquets I'd proudly do better. I've seen people show them off on Instagram that are super nice. think about combing the two. I've recently been looking into selling them local area only same day mail through the internet. to places like small biz so forth. or possibly setting up an arrangement to deliver them to restaurants regularly or small hotels or B&B's . I havent figured it all out only the istock part which has paid but you might want to think outside the box a bit more you might get suprise. it may not be a stall it might be something even better.