Maximizing Production For a Small-Scale Flower Farm
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Back when I first started dreaming and scheming about starting a flower farming business, I had two reasons behind it:
Flowers are amazing, and
Flowers are considered one of the most profitable crops to grow per acre.
To be clear, I needed to look through the lens of having square feet, and not acres to work with. I was looking at a tiny garden plot in my backyard that somehow I could turn into a profitable business. I was not seeking incredible profits; I was looking to do something fun with my girls and make a little bit of spending money for my hobby/passion for gardening and flowers to pay for itself and then some.
Starting a flower farm seemed like a win-win to me!
Whether you have access to a lot of land or a tiny plot, efficiently using your space will increase your sales potential while decreasing the amount of land you must tend to.
In this post, we are going to cover the following:
How profitable is flower farming?
How to work with what space you have
How to plant intensely and still get oodles of stems
Which varieties are best for a small-scale flower farm
First things up, how profitable is flower farming?
How Profitable is Flower Farming?
The ever-common number of how profitable cut flowers are per acre comes from Lynn Bycyznski, founder of Growing for Market magazine and author of “The Flower Farmer.” I am sure you most likely have stumbled across her numbers; if you haven’t, let’s review them. Note: the link to purchase Lynn’s book is at the end of this post.
In multiple articles and Lynn’s book, she estimated in 2002 that a single acre of cut flowers, when “well-grown and marketed,” can bring $25,000 - $30,000. She further clarifies that the amount is in sales, and realistically, an “established business that grows flowers for profit will net 50 percent to 60 percent of its gross or about $15,000 an acre.”
Lynn’s estimation has become the number many flower farmers have grasped for over two decades.
I went down the rabbit hole, investigating where this number came from. Her educated guess seems based on her experience and talking to other flower farming friends. No actual study or data has been done on Lynn’s numbers that I could find.
In another article from 2017, Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower Farm references Lynn’s numbers and then states that their farm, Floret Flower Farm, was bringing in over twice the sales thanks to “small-scale, high-intensity production techniques.” Erin added that it was twice the number with most wholesale sales and that they brought in an “additional $25,000 to $30,000 worth of value-added revenue to our farm each year.” Added value mainly in terms of weddings. On a “good year,” Erin’s numbers add up to $80,000 to $90,000 per acre; they were, in total, bringing in.
Now, I am probably using two of the more prominent gurus in the flower farming industry as examples.
Our experience with less than half an acre of production and a significantly shorter growing season shows that a flower farm with intense spacing and added value can be lucrative.
To put things in perspective, let’s roll back to our beginning.
With 1600 square feet of growing and an un-established business at our last property space, we pulled in about $12,000 in our first year, actively selling the whole season in our small rural town from late May through mid-September. This was through a weekly farmers market, selling at a vintage pop-up shop, several bouquet subscription members, and a couple of tiny (like a bulk bucket and some Mason Jars) weddings.
To put the growing space we were working with into perspective, sales were $ 12,000 for 0.0367309 of an acre. Note: none of these numbers take inflation into account, either.
I don’t think I hit Lynn’s profit margins that year; we still had much to learn. What we did, though, was the flower farm began to pay for itself, and we even got some extra cash for family fun. The flower farm began to bring some much-needed relief to the strain on our finances.
My point in all this is to share that even with a small amount of space when utilizing intense production planting, it is possible to grow a lot of stems from selling.
Let’s review some key ways to maximize cut flower production with a small growing space.
How to Work with the Space You Have
Regarding row layout, especially back at the first property, we needed to work with what we had. We learned the importance of working with what we had the hard way very early on, which partially jeopardized our entire flower-farming venture.
Bloom Where You are Planted
Our first growing space was far from ideal, and I remember feeling embarrassed and silly referring to our business as a “flower farm” since it was hardly even the size of a die-hard hobbyist gardening plot.
This left us seeking ways to find more space to grow in.
Early on, the hard lesson we learned stemmed from when we attempted to grow on someone else’s property, ultimately wasting time, money, and energy. The hours driving back and forth to the property, all the plants dying once planted there. It was earth-shattering. We did this for about a month, and finally, with tears rolling down my cheeks, we loaded up the dying plants, and I began planting them in our tiny garden patch one late May evening.
I remember the moment when I felt like an absolute failure. I was so emotionally invested that I planted the sad plants anyway, thinking I ruined my flower farming season before it even had a chance.
The sad plants ended up flourishing.
In the end, we found success using the space that was ours.
My original intent and dream was to have my cut flowers grow in my backyard, but the buzz of other people’s well-intentioned guidance made me doubt myself.
As I worked through settling on growing on our tiny property, I remember buying a cute chalkboard and writing “bloom where you are planted,” the quote from Saint Francies de Sales. That became my mantra in times of feeling unworthy. It is still a quote I carry with me during moments of self-doubt.
It is okay to work with minimal space, mainly to test the waters of flower farming before committing to putting time and energy into someone else’s property or pushing yourself to uproot your life to a new property before you are emotionally or financially ready. It is also okay to start small, even if you do have space already accessible to you. Focus on quality before quantity, building healthy soil before planting more than you can handle.
We made the 1600-square-foot growing patches work for three years. Those patches were the foundation of our flower farming business. There have been many times when I miss those growing patches. There was so much learning and excitement that happened in those tiny plots; we grew as a family with the flowers during those early years.
We discovered that it’s not about the amount of space you have but how you use it.
Maximizing the Space in Your Growing Patch
We had 1600 square feet to work with; we needed to determine how best to utilize that small space.
We messed around calculating growing bed space versus walking paths and decided to have eighteen-inch walking paths to forty-two-inch width growing beds. These are the exact dimensions, just different lengths, that we have kept to continue maximizing our growing space at our current property.
We decided on more narrow walking paths to maximize the amount of growing space, which ultimately translates to more plants, which means more stems to sell. Though pretty when in bloom, our cut flower field is designed to be more efficient while maximizing space.
Your space, physical needs or capabilities, and climate may be different. You may be looking to create an experience for guests rather than maximizing output.
These are all details for you to consider, but if you want to operate with highly intense productivity, consider having a lean ratio of growing beds versus walking paths. Proper trellising can significantly help even more narrow walkways remain accessible.
The industry standard for market growing, essentially what we do as small-scale flower farmers, is thirty-inch growing beds and twelve-inch walking paths. Most equipment and kits, such as caterpillar or low tunnel kits, are made for thirty-inch growing bed widths, so that’s something to keep in mind.
If you'd like to learn more about row layout, you can just read our blog on that topic here.
Along with maximizing the growing beds, we further maximize the space by planting the plants closer than is typical.
You Can Plant Closer Than You Think…
It is incredible how closely you can plant the various flower crops.
Initially, I read Floret’s blog to get an idea of how to get the most out of our limited space. After all, my little knowledge of plant spacing came from a hobbyist mindset over a commercial small-scale grower mindset. Floret’s spacing ranges from 6x6’”, 9x9”, 12x12”, 15X15”, and 8x8” for vining crops. Ultimately, we discovered even Floret’s spacing was too generous and complicated for crop planning for our flower farm.
The wheel hasn’t been reinvented for intensely planting crops in a small area. A known method is SPIN, which stands for Small Plot Intensive Farming. Wally Satzewich, a Canadian grower in the mid-’90s, created SPIN. Satezwich’s approach to small-scale growing is essentially what we do as flower farmers growing on less than an acre. This method is geared towards small-scale vegetable growers, aka “Market Growers,” but applies beautifully to flower farming.
The idea behind SPIN farming is, according to this Cornell article:
Succession plant
Intercropping
Plant vertically
Intensive spacing
Some of the SPIN tactics, such as interplanting, are more advantageous for a vegetable grower. As a cut flower grower, you can interplant to some degree. For example, we commonly interplant violas with our peony plants; overall, we try to focus on planting crops together in beds that will ideally finish around the same time for the bed to be easily turned over. Planting crops vertically may work wonders for vegetable growers planting cucumbers or tomatoes to save space. As for the flower farmer, there isn’t much room for vertical growing other than vine crops. The SPIN-Farming model leaves us with intensive spacing and succession planting. To read our blog on succession planting, click here.
Another resource on understanding how to plant intensely without impeding the quality of the crops came from John Jeavon’s “Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible” book. Jeavon's focus was growing bio-intensively, utilizing organic practices, and focusing on soil health in small spaces. His focus was not only on producing large amounts of produce with small spaces but also on doing so using less water, labor, and time. His approaches were invaluable as we looked at growing in small spaces with a fresh perspective. You can find the link to this treasure of a book at the end of this post.
These intense-growing methods are essentially the model behind Floret Flower Farm’s small-scale intensive productivity model, similar to the one we adopted. This concept is also found in square-foot gardening.
All these different models and techniques are a way to approach your limited space and not waste an inch. Land is becoming increasingly scarce, making maximizing the space you can access essential.
Living in an arid, high desert climate, we discovered that we can plant much closer compared to growers in more humid climates. Our crops also don’t naturally grow lush; our soil has lower amounts of nitrogen. Therefore, we have adequate airflow even when planting closer than other growers. Additionally, we are dealing with intense sunlight at our elevation; growing the plants closer pushes them to compete, providing longer stems.
When deciding how much to space out your plants, you should experiment. Research what other growers in a similar climate have found success in plant spacing.
Also, looking at the commercial growing information provided by suppliers such as Johnny Selected Seeds will provide incredible insight.
Along with the resources already named, we will share what has worked for us.
Sierra Flower Farm’s Intense Spacing
Through trial and error, we have found our most common spacing to be 7 x 7 inches for the majority of our annual plants. Our 45-foot long rows allow us to plant 385 plants per row—Seventy-seven plants down the row with five plants across the width.
For our vining crops, such as sweet peas, we also plant them 7 x 7 inches apart with two plants the width of the row to accommodate their need for vertical trellising. This allows us to fit 154 vining plants per one of our 45-foot long rows. If you are not using landscape fabric, interplanting quick-growing crops on the edge of a sweet pea row may work for you. The sweet peas usually engulf the space, but we have gotten usable stems of garden gypsophila and German chamomile in the past.
For our dahlias, we spoil them a bit more with a 12 x 12-inch spacing. They get planted in our 90-foot long rows. This allows us to fit ninety dahlias down the length of the row and three dahlias across the width of the row, which is 270 dahlias per ninety-foot row.
We do not use landscape fabric for single-stem sunflowers since they are incredibly fast growers that out-compete the problematic weeds. For design work, I also much prefer more slender stems and flower heads since stems become like broom handles and are challenging to work with, and flower heads that are too large can cause containers to tip from their weight. For single-stem sunflowers, we plant two seeds per 4x4”. If I want to grow them slightly larger, I will plant two seeds per 6x6".”
We do grow some crops, such as lisianthus, that could be planted closer than 7x7,” but we have found our battle with weeds to be more important than saving on some space with them. Since we have been using landscape fabric, we find that going much smaller than 7x7” with it, the cloth begins to lose its integrity. Therefore, we don’t intensely plant all varieties as much as we can, especially if we want to use landscape fabric to help combat the weed pressure.
Only having a few different spacings for our crops makes crop planning much more straightforward than when we fussed with more variations. It also allows us to have our pre-burned landscape fabric that is universal for various crops.
A Word of Caution on Landscape Fabric
Until you find the sweet spot of plant spacing that works for your flower farm, I recommend not using landscape fabric before you know your ideal spacing. Landscape fabric is a costly investment; you should figure out the perfect spacing for the crops in your climate and microclimate before putting down the fabric and grabbing the flame torch.
This is just my two cents, but we experimented with spacing for quite a few years before settling on the spacing we have found to be the best fit for the crops in our climate.
Maximizing your physical growing patch is just one part of the machine; the next part is variety selection.
Choosing Prolific and Profitable Annual Varieties for Your Flower Farm
I am a sucker for a pretty flower. These days, we have enough space, and our business model allows me to be that sucker. In the early years, however, I had to be much more choosey with the varieties.
For example, I couldn’t give up row space for a crop such as lisanthus. I am obsessed with lisianthus, but with 1600 square feet of growing space, I couldn’t afford to have such a slow-growing crop taking up space all season long to get one or two cuttings. I needed varieties I could cut from repeatedly or were quick enough to turn the row over every couple of months within the season.
The name of the game was quicker growing crops to have a high growing-bed turnover and varieties that were prolific producers.
For us, the late spring varieties we found to fit the bill were, in no particular order:
Sweet Peas
Ranunculus
Anemones
Seeded Cress
German Chamomile
Feverfew
Snapdragons
Iceland Poppies
Nigella
Calendula
Bells of Ireland
Mint
Bachelor Buttons
Ammi, Queen Anne’s Lace
For summer, the crops that did well for us were, in no particular order:
Zinnias
Cosmos
Dahlias
Marigolds
Strawflowers
Statice
Sunflowers, single stem and branching
Amaranth
Frosted explosion (sprinkles) grass
Ammi, Chocolate Lace
Love in a puff vine
Scented geraniums
Dusty miller
I experimented with growing many other varieties, but when it came down to it, these were the varieties that carried us through. We needed to grow varieties that are fast to mature and prolific producers to pull enough stems from our small space.
If you have some extra room to work with, then I would recommend looking to add some of these varieties:
Lisianthus
Gomphrena
Celosia
Godetia
Mahogany hibiscus
Cerinthe
Foxglove
Bupleurum
Orlaya
Violas
Campanula
Currant tomatoes
Heirloom mums
Feathertop grass
Bunny tail grass
Scabiosa
Yarrow
Some years, we grow more of these varieties than others, depending on the weddings we have on the books for the upcoming season. The core crops that carried us through on our tiny plot have also translated to be valuable on this property. Instead of growing fifteen dahlia plants, we now grow almost two thousand.
Figuring out what varieties work best on a small scale will help you determine which ones are worth scaling up for in the future. Using intense planting techniques will allow you to leverage the growing space you have best.
In the end, remember it’s not about your amount of space but how you use it, and don’t forget to bloom where you are planted.
Until next time we are looking forward to helping you hand blooms soon!
- Jessica & Graham
Some books mentioned in the post that we found helpful in the beginning of our flower farming journey!
