The real TRUTH about making money flower farming!

Curious about turning your passion for flowers into a profitable venture? In this eye-opening video, we dive deep into the world of flower farming, separating fact from fiction, and debunking the extravagant claims made by some viral videos promising overnight success.

💡 Real Talk on Profitability:

Discover the realistic side of flower farming as we break down the various expenses involved. While it’s true that making money through flower farming is possible, we emphasize the importance of managing expectations and avoiding misleading information.

🚫 Beware of Predatory Practices:

We shed light on the darker side of the flower farming hype. Many viral videos peddling courses and equipment exaggerate earnings, leading aspiring flower farmers down a misleading path. We discuss the cautionary tales and pitfalls to avoid, ensuring you make informed decisions on your journey.

🌷 Peonies and Beyond: Navigating Profitability:

If you’re eyeing peonies as a potential cash crop, we explore the unique considerations and challenges associated with growing these beautiful blooms for profit. From initial investments to care, get a realistic perspective on what it takes to cultivate peonies and other flowers successfully.

👩‍🌾 Actual Practical Tips:

I give my top three tips for actually making a profit if you’re planning on starting down the road to flower farming!

🌼 Join the Conversation:

Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section! Let’s foster a community of transparency and support for aspiring flower farmers, ensuring everyone has the knowledge they need to thrive in this blooming industry.

Ready to separate fact from fiction? Hit play and embark on your journey to make money flower farming with eyes wide open! 🌻

REGENERATIVE GARDENING ONLINE CLASS: https://blossomandbranchfarm.teachable.com/p/regenerative-gardening

ROMANTIC BLOOMS FLOWER ARRANGING CLASS: https://blossomandbranchfarm.teachable.com/p/romantic-blooms-a-garden-inspired-guide-to-natural-flower-arranging

Is it possible to make a profit flower farming can we believe the claims can we buy into the hype let’s find out I’ve been very upfront and honest in the past about my personal profits you can go back and watch how much money do you make FL farming our video from last

Spring if you want to learn more about the details and the ins and outs of expenses and all those things we’re going to touch on some of those things today as well but if you want to do my exact numbers go and watch that video I’ll link it after this one in the

Meantime we’re going to address some other claims the first thing that you should know is that yes you can always do something as a side hustle and guys I am all for more American grown flowers the more cut flowers that are being grown here in the US the better for

Everyone the better availability there is for florist the better availability for consumers then the less likely we are to be buying our flowers imported from Columbia and Ecuador so the more flower Farmers here in the US I think the better but we do have to be realistic when we’re telling people to

Become flower Farmers because there are lots of caveats to flower farming and making money flower farming of course you can do anything as a side gig I’m not here to tell you that you shouldn’t do this or that you should do this I’m just giving you the information a side

Gig can be great it can be a great option maybe you just want to take a few weddings a year and do that on the side maybe you just want to grow some for your friends all totally fine to do as a side Hustle but if you are thinking

About quitting a job investing in becoming a flower farmer or retiring and having flower farming be your plan for retirement you’re going to want to think about some of these things the first one that I’m going to address is the claim I’ve been seeing about flower farmers

Can take the winter off and can still make $30,000 an acre so this is the number that has been thrown out to me in several advertisements by a pretty well-known flower farmer who is selling courses I find this claim to actually be pretty close now in terms of the revenue

Okay so when we’re talking about Revenue per acre $30,000 is not crazy by any means when we’re talking about an acre of land now of course that is net so gross might be more so for example if you look at my video where we discussed my earnings my gross was actually

107,000 but my net was only a little over I think around $35,000 so pretty accurate I find but you do have to be hustling pretty hard to make that happen because you have to be making sales it’s not just about growing the flowers people you got to have a market you have

To have a sales Outlet so that claim I would say check realistic now the other claim that’s being made is take the winners off as a flower farmer well here it is January 8th and I am absolutely not not taking the winter off um I have tons of

Seeds started already right now um this year I overwintered our dalas but typically I would be digging dalas I would be dividing dalas I would be checking on dalas making sure that they’re still alive in storage I would be ordering seeds making field plans and the biggest one that I do in the

Offseason is my marketing my business planning and all of that stuff right taxes paperwork of these things still go along with farming it’s not like you’re just out there in the garden if this is a business it’s still a business you have to figure out where I’m going to be

Selling in the coming year am I going to be doing any farmers markets am I going to do a Farm Stand making pre-sales doing CSA sales figuring out all the sales taxes so I would say that the claim of being able to take Winters off

As a flower farmer is pretty false and I would say anyone in a would tell you the same thing that farmers even though maybe your crops aren’t actually physically producing in the winter time we’re still working during that time so I would say this claim false now that being said the

Workshops that are being sold by person who’s making those claims are really really well known very great very reputable courses so don’t let it turn you off if you want to take a flower farming course to help you learn how to grow flowers or if you want to do it as

A side hustle or if you really do want to take the risk and jump in go for it that’s a very good course to take but be wary when you’re thinking okay I’m going to be able to take four months off out of the year every winter where I’m not

Doing anything that’s just not reality the next video that I’ve seen a lot is um is a claim that you can grow peanes and only work one month out of the year and earn $240,000 man if that were true let me tell you all right so here’s where that

Claim comes from they are saying that by growing 4,000 pey roots and harvesting 15 stems per peie plant and selling those stems at $4 a stem that is equaling $240,000 on the surface this all sounds awesome and I’m only having to work one month out of the year because peonies

Have a short Harvest window if doubt is already starting to creep in and you’re thinking hm this sounds really overly Rosy maybe someone’s trying to sell me something ding-ding you are correct okay someone is trying to sell you a course someone’s trying to sell you some peie Roots

Someone’s trying to sell you something so let’s talk about the real numbers because growing peanes can be a very fun thing to do um if you want to again side hustle if you want to grow some peonies Harvest those pees sell some bunches every year definitely but we’re going to

Talk about doing it on the scale that we’re talking about and whether you can actually make that kind of money so there’s obvious downsides of growing 4,000 panies the number one is it’s a monoculture if you’re growing 4,000 panies in an acre as recommended then you are probably looking at a pretty

Heavy monoculture system you’re going to start running into things like funguses especially things like btis and powdery mildew are really common in pies especially and especially when they are packed in tightly together like you would need to do if you’re trying to do this in an acre so monocultures are

Always bad when we’re talking about farming right flower farming is no exception to this so that’s a pretty obvious downside we’re going to talk some more about costs here in a second but let’s talk about whether 15 stems per Pi is a realistic number now I would

Say yes 15 stems per piie at maturity is a realistic number key phrase being at maturity usually when we’re buying PE Roots especially wholesale PE Roots which are going to be much l less expensive than buying retail peie Roots which usually run around $40 a pop if we’re buying wholesale usually

They’re closer to $10 each we’ll talk about that in a second most of those are going to be a 3 to five IE that means you’re going to be looking at 3 years where you don’t want to harvest any of your peonies off of those plants that’s

Because you want those plants to be putting all their energy down into the tuber into the roots starting a nice strong plant because then in your 4 you’re going to be rewarded with a lot of flowers so years 1 2 and three you are disbudding every single peony off of

That plant every single one there are people who will tell you you can Harvest them yes you can of course they are your plants you can do whatever you want but best practice is to not do it because that’s going to give you a stronger and

Healthier P plant in your four it is worth it I promise you if you do Harvest them you weaken the plant significantly especially in those first developmental years and while weakening them isn’t always a huge deal it makes them more prone to to things like disease they just make some higher maintenance and

Then again in your four you’re not going to be rewarded with as many flowers and over time those flowers can actually start to deine the same is true if you harvest more than a third of your flowers from your pey plants every year so you want to harvest no more than a

Third every year the remaining 2/3 of those peonies you should be disbudding that means removing the flowers because that’s going to help again put the energy into the roots of the panies and help keep them healthy if this is a long-term investment for you people

Always ask me well I don’t do this with my home peonies I let them all Bloom and they’re fine that’s because you’re not harvesting from them if you’re harvesting from your peonies you’re cutting a lot off of that stem the stem that you’re cutting for a cut peie is

Going to be about this long in order to Bunch it have it in a bucket it’s got to be pretty long that means there’s taking off substantial amounts of foliage from that plant pees are when that need that foliage all summer long they’re using that foliage to put energy down into

Their roots for the next Spring’s Bloom so if you remove all of that foliage it’s going to really weaken the plant so when we’re harvesting even if we’re only harvesting a third of the flowers we want to disbud the remaining 2/3 because we’re trying to save the plant some energy because we’re taking

Off a third of the foliage so by disbudding the flowers we’re saving the plant quite a bit of energy in that flower and Seed production instead of having it Bloom and it waste more energy doing that so again this is just best practices when we’re talking about

Growing pies so if we look at this in a business construct the first 3 years we have only expenses we’ll get to expenses in a second only expenses no Revenue starting in year four you can start to harvest your pies but you’re still having to do the work of disbudding the

Rest of them and you can still only Harvest about a third per plant so it’s really not all that many maybe four stems per plant you’re not going to reach full maturity on your peonies where you’re harvesting 15 stems per plant probably for 10 years after

Planting your 3 to five I p& and that’s if everything goes well if your plants don’t get hailed on for example um a big hail storm will really knock them back late freezes temperature swings all kinds of things can set you back with pies so again I’d say at least 10 years

Until you’re harvesting that 15 stems per plant number so now that we have that out of the way let’s talk about the feasibility of actually harvesting those stems so let’s say that you’ve gotten to year 10 you finally have your pies producing about 50 stems per plant and

You’re harvesting 15ish or so that are sellable how much time is that going to take so it’s likely that with 4,000 plants you’re going to need to hire staff to help you harvest because panies are a trickier Diva okay when it comes to harvest window because when we were

Harvesting our panes we don’t want them to be these tight balls right we we want them to be what’s called marshmallow stage so that means they are fluffy like a marshmallow but still closed the window where they’re at that perfect stage is pretty narrow we’re talking

Maybe 3 days so while we can stagger our Harvest by planting early mid and late blooming peonies so we’re kind of Staggering our Harvest it is still not 100% realistic to say that we’re going to be able to harvest all 15 of those stems per plant in the right amount of

Time in the proper Harvest stage in a timely manner because we have we’re working with a very limited time window for proper Harvest if we were talking about a full month of harvest for all the Pees that’s a different thing so again your best bet if you want to do

This make sure you’re going with a mix of early mid and late blooming peonies so again if you want to make sure you get them all harvested you’re going to probably need to hire help because it’s going to take at least 10 seconds per stem to harvest because we have to clip

We have to strip the leaves we have to Bunch we have to put into buckets we have to transfer those buckets to our cooler oh that was never mentioned and then we have to bring empty buckets back so there are a few Investments here other than the time that it’s going to

Take to harvest that many pies that we also have to consider all right so I just hinted at one but let’s talk about some of the expenses that probably were not mentioned in these viral reels or advertisements trying to get you to buy a class thinking that flower farming is

Wildly profitable we have our cooler if you are trying to sell this many Pi stems 4,000 plants times 15 stems 60,000 blooms you are going to need a substantial walk-in cooler because here’s the thing you can’t just cut those piis and bring them inside they’re

All going to open up they have to be stored in a cooler and a walk-in cooler is not cheap all right we you know we’ve made one it’s basically a shed that’s double insulated um very thick insulated walls we have a coolbot running in there

But our cooler is only 8 by8 and even then it cost around $10,000 so if you’re looking at the size of a walk-in cooler that you’re going to need to store 60,000 P stems you’re looking at probably at least 20 grand and up to $30,000 for the cooler alone and this is

An ongoing maintenance cost as well because you have to keep the air conditioning units updated the power that’s required to run that AC to keep those pies chilled in the time between when you harvested and when you can sell them there’s also the upfront expense so we talked about that you’re probably not

Going to be making any money on penies for the first 3 years yet you have a fair amount of expenses to get started growing 4,000 PES and number one is the PE routs themselves so we mentioned you can get them wholesale you can get them retail either way one but retail are

Going to be more expensive so you have to already get your business started up you have have to have all of that ready to go so you can order your roots wholesale you need a sales tax ID and all this stuff to do that so if you’re ordering wholesale you’re looking at

About $10 a rout if you’re ordering retail $40 a rout so $10 a rout 40,000 Roots you’re looking at you’re you’re looking at around $40,000 for that investment upfront just on the pi routes the other thing you’re going to need to think about is help with planting all

4,000 of those pnes if you’re going to be digging them by hand you’re looking at a world of hurt so you probably will want to hire some Machinery or some help so there’s going to be an expense there either Machinery rental or purchase of machinery for ongoing maintenance of

Your P field either one of those depending on now that price could obviously range from a rental cost which could be relatively low but then you’re having to do ongoing rentals every year to do maintenance on your peanes like cutting them down in the fall or you’re

Going to buy a piece of Machinery either way you’re looking at probably another $1,000 all the way up to $30 to $40,000 depending on what size of tractor you decide to get and what kind of implements you decide to get now this particular course that I’m referring to also recommends landscape fabric youall

Know how I feel about that I don’t have to go into it I don’t like it but if you do that on an acre that’s probably going to run you another $4,000 is and a ton of microplastics to yourself but anyway there’s also going to be irrigation if you’re in a dry area

You’re going to have to figure out how to water these because while pees are low maintenance if you really are using them as an investment and you’re wanting to make money off of them you’re going to have to irrigate if you’re in a dry climate like mine we have to water our

Peonies at least once a week so in that case you’re looking at irrigation irrigation tubing figuring out how to get the water paying for the water if you don’t have a water source already and then the biggest cost which is going to be labor and labor is always the cost

That gets left out and I included this when I went over my taxes and all of my profits from that last video and I mentioned that here’s what my per hour payment is but we need to factor in labor into all of this right labor to

Plant the pies labor to weed the peonies labor to cut down the peonies labor to harvest the peonies and the biggest one labor to sell those peonies where are you planning to sell 60,000 stems at retail price $2 is closer for say wholesale so usually Growers who are

Growing a lot of one thing like that many peonies they sell wholesale because they can sell to a wholesaler in bulk they can sell everything at once and they can get it out of there retail we’re looking at maybe $4 per stem but to sell retail 60,000 CS of Pies is going to

Take a ton of marketing and a lot of organization whether you’re shipping them out you’re going to need to staff people to ship to package to get those things out the door or to Bunch them and get them to customers dealing with retail is a lot more labor intensive

Than dealing with wholesale to expect that we’re going to be able to harvest all these peonies and sell them in the time that we should before they really start to lose their quality in the cooler you’re going to need to hire a staff and good luck with that because

I’ll tell you what I am very lucky that I have a gal who helps me in the summertime and is okay with working just 3 months but to find someone who is okay with working full-time for one month out of the year is going to be a challenge

And someone who’s going to be reliable and trustworthy it’s going to be tough all this to say and the other thing is that there is a fair amount of risk when we’re growing a monoculture crop like we mentioned all PES for example we’re taking on a much bigger risk so at my

Farm we grow over 80 varietals of different things some people say that’s a bad business idea I disagree but some people will say just focus on one one or two plants that can be a good plan again if you’re planning to sell in bulk to a

Wholesaler it can be a good way to go but monocultures is one and the other problem with that is the risk so we have had all of the following things happen in The Last 5 Years of me growing pies one we’ve had two major hail storms in

June that wiped out our entire crop we have had a late freeze that just as our peonies were buted and getting ready to go to marshmallow stage they all died so they were just mush on the stems and we had a series of hot windy days that were

Up into the 80s almost 90s in May and what happens with that with peones is these hot dry winds come along and all of a sudden all your pies blow open and then you can’t Harvest you can’t sell a blown open peie it’s just it’s not good

Practice it’s going to fall apart on the customer’s table you won’t have customers next year so there is a lot of risk when you decided to put all of your eggs into one basket and I say this because I had a Consulting client and they were in their 70s and they had

Invested in a field of peonies as a retirement plan and now that they were a year in they were realizing this that they can’t Harvest right away it’s going to be a 10e before they get returns and how much labor it was going to take them physically they

Were not going to be able to do it once those peanes were mature and they had put a pretty good chunk of their retirement savings into this plan and they were pretty devastated um I don’t want that to happen to anyone else I think it’s great that there are people

Who are selling courses on how to flower farm how to grow flowers especially if they’re doing it in a good way that’s environmentally conscious but I think that there are other times when people are selling courses and the way that they’re getting people to buy the courses is misleading at best and

Predatory at worst um so take these things at the grain of salt if it sounds too good to be true it probably is making $240,000 working one month out of the year or being a full-time farmer and being able to take the winters off oh I mean

Maybe but again you can go back and watch our video on how much our average income is but I will say this this year it was different this year I actually had a lower expense number because I didn’t buy in any plants now that my

Farm is up and running I have all my perennials going now that we’re going into year five my expenses on plants have gone way down and I grow all of my annuals from seed and that is a big costs saer and something that a lot of flower Farmers don’t do they buy and

Plugs which can be very costly buying and plugs can run you anywhere from $50 to $85 per tray of flowers and then you also have to pay for shipping which is usually around $75 per box so you’re looking at a lot of money if you’re planning on shipping in all the flowers

That you need from plugs so if you want to make money flower farming here are my tips one learn to grow from seed and learn to do it economically soil blocking right something where you’re going to be able to just use one tray every year year over year and not buy

New ones and a soil blocker and that’s all you need instead of having to buy plastic things every year that’s going to really eat into your expenses so find something that you can do that’s economical but learn how to start your own seeds don’t buy in plugs if you

Can’t this is also because we can control better what’s in the plants and we know that they haven’t been treated with weird fungicides and pesticides but that’s a whole another video the other thing I’d recommend is have a plan in place for your marketing who are you

Selling to and that is going to inform you what kind of flowers you are growing if you want to learn more about this I’m going to be running a marketing course in the next month for flower farmers who want to learn more about that piece of

It but it is important that you know who your Market is so that you can can plan your marketing around that don’t go into it not knowing who you’re planning to sell to and the last tip I’m going to tell you is expect to work hard if you

Go into this because you see an ad that is telling you that you can make this amount of money and take the entire winter off or only work for one month out of the year if that’s why you’re going into it you’re going to be disappointed and any time that we go

Into with a different expectation than what the reality is we’re going to be disappointed we’re probably not going to put in all the effort that we should so know that it is a full-time job and even in the winter time and even if you’re just growing pies you’re still looking

At maintenance you’re looking at weeding you’re looking at upkeep on those flowers you’re looking at sales and marketing the rest of the year in order to push that many stems so be realistic with yourselves and I think that’s it for my rant for today speaking of courses one last thing I wanted to

Mention was that we actually just posted our flower arranging course so if you’ve been watching our short videos about how we put our bouquet together we did a more in-depth instructional video on how we make bouquets corsages and bers and centerpieces so if you’re growing cup flowers from our cut flower garden plans

Any of those ones from last spring then you can learn how to arrange them so I’ll put that course Down Below in the meantime if you guys have any questions that I didn’t address in this video about making money flower farming please let me know below we appreciate your

Likes your subscribes this mean the world to me here in the basement and stay tuned because our next video I am filming tomorrow about which seed starting recipe w all right we did another trial for soil blocking and we have a clear winner so stay tuned for that we’ll see

You guys around here next time at the farm basement