Bloom Where You’re Planted
Back when I first started dreaming and scheming about launching my own flower farming business, I had two driving reasons behind it: one, flowers are simply amazing, and two, they’re considered one of the most profitable crops to grow per acre. To be clear, I needed to look at this through the lens of having square feet, not acres, to work with. I was eyeing a tiny garden plot in my backyard, somehow hoping to turn it into a profitable endeavor.
I wasn’t seeking incredible profits – I was just looking to do something fun with my girls and make a little bit of spending money for my hobby-turned-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 from Sierra Flower Farm, we’re going to cover how profitable flower farming can be, strategies for working with limited space, and the best varieties for a small-scale flower farm.
Profitability of Flower Farming
The ever-common statistic on the profitability of cut flowers per acre comes from Lynn Byczynski, founder of Growing for Market magazine and author of The Flower Farmer. In multiple articles and her book, she estimated that in 2002, a single acre of well-grown and marketed cut flowers can bring in $25,000 to $30,000 in sales. She further clarifies that this amount is in sales, and realistically, an established business growing flowers for profit will net 50% to 60% of its gross, or about $15,000 an acre.
Lynn’s estimation has become the number many flower farmers have clung to for over two decades. I went down the rabbit hole investigating where this figure came from, and it seems her educated guess was based on her experience and conversations with 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 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 they brought in an additional $25,000 to $30,000 worth of value-added revenue to their farm each year, mainly in terms of weddings. On a good year, Erin’s numbers add up to $80,000 to $90,000 per acre they were bringing in.
Now, I’m probably using two of the more prominent gurus in the flower farming industry as examples, but 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 quite lucrative. To put things in perspective, let’s roll back to our beginning.
Maximizing a Tiny Footprint
With just 1,600 square feet of growing space and an un-established business at our last property, 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, those $12,000 in sales were from 0.0367309 of an acre. 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 that 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 for selling. Let’s review some key ways to maximize cut flower production with a limited growing space.
Finding Space Where You Can
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.
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’d ruined my flower farming season before it even had a chance. But 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 Francis de Sales. That became my mantra in times of feeling unworthy, and it’s still a quote I carry with me during moments of self-doubt.
It’s 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’re emotionally or financially ready. It’s 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 1,600-square-foot growing patches work for three years. Those patches were the foundation of our flower farming business, and there have been many times when I miss those tiny plots. There was so much learning and excitement that happened in those little spaces as 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. We had 1,600 square feet to work with, and we needed to determine how best to utilize that small space.
Maximizing Every Inch
We messed around calculating growing bed space versus walking paths and decided to have 18-inch walking paths and 42-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 30-inch growing beds and 12-inch walking paths. Most equipment and kits, such as caterpillar or low tunnel kits, are made for 30-inch growing bed widths, so that’s something to keep in mind.
Along with maximizing the growing beds, we further maximize the space by planting the plants closer than is typical. It’s 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, not a commercial small-scale grower mindset. Floret’s spacing ranges from 6×6 to 15×15, and 8×8 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.
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, but 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.
Another resource on understanding how to plant intensely without impeding the quality of the crops came from John Jeavons’ book, Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible. Jeavons’ focus was growing bio-intensively, utilizing organic practices and focusing on soil health in small spaces. His approaches were invaluable as we looked at growing in small spaces with a fresh perspective.
These intense-growing methods are essentially the model behind Floret Flower Farm’s small-scale, intensive productivity, 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, and 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, and 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.
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 – 77 plants down the row with 5 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.
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, allowing us to fit 90 dahlias down the length of the row and 3 dahlias across the width of the row, which is 270 dahlias per 90-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 flower heads that are too large can cause containers to tip from their weight. For single-stem sunflowers, we plant two seeds per 4×4. If I want to grow them slightly larger, I’ll plant two seeds per 6×6.
We do grow some crops, such as lisianthus, that could be planted closer than 7×7, but we have found our battle with weeds to be more important than saving on some space with them. Since we’ve been using landscape fabric, we find that going much smaller than 7×7 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, and 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.
Choosing the Right Varieties
Maximizing your physical growing patch is just one part of the machine – the next part is variety selection. 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 lisianthus. I’m obsessed with lisianthus, but with 1,600 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 sweet peas, ranunculus, anemones, seeded cress, German chamomile, feverfew, snapdragons, Iceland poppies, nigella, calendula, Bells of Ireland, mint, bachelor buttons, Ammi, and Queen Anne’s lace.
For summer, the crops that did well for us were zinnias, cosmos, dahlias, marigolds, strawflowers, statice, sunflowers (both single stem and branching), amaranth, Frosted explosion sprinkles grass, Ammi, Chocolate Lace, Love in a Puff vine, scented geraniums, and 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, and scabiosa.
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 15 dahlia plants, we now grow almost 2,000.
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 <a href=’https://www.sierraflowerfarm.com/blog/2024/1/22/maximizing-cut-flower-production-on-a-small-scale’ target=’
