What I Learned as a First Year Flower Farmer
And that’s a wrap! The 2024 season is coming to an end and it flew by quick. It was a big year for my flower farm and floral design studio: with 4 weddings, a farmers market, grocery store, and selling to florists, the year wasn’t short of anything but busy. Plus…we finished building our house and started on this new farm.
2024 was technically my first year as a flower farmer, I’ve grown with my mom and helped her (that’s where I learned a ton about flower farming from!) but as I started my own farm I had quite a few learnings along the way. Every farm is different, from the soil health to the amount of sun/shade you get, to winds, nothing is the same from farm to farm (as I learned quickly this year :))
I wanted to share 5 key topics I personally learned along the way as a first year flower farmer that may be help to you one day. Again, no farm is the same so things that I may have learned or found that have helped may not apply to you!
Landscape fabric is a must for weed control!
It’s funny that this is my first key learning…but I learned the hard way. I thought I wouldn’t need landscape fabric and could simply mulch to keep up with the weeds. But I realized quickly that’s not the case in my area; I farm right next to a protected wetland prairie that has native plants and grasses. Because of the sheer amount of native grasses, the weeds are constantly blowing seeds onto my flower plot making it nearly impossible to keep up with the weeds. I didn’t want to invest in landscape fabric in year one not knowing how I wanted to position my rows, I have a better idea now of how I want my farm layout to be, row size, and row length that I’ll be able to invest in landscape fabric in 2025 that will last years. Some flower farmers have been super successful growing with out landscape fabric so test out not using landscape fabric the first year to see if it’s something you need or want (maybe you are lucky and won’t need it!).
Soil health is key to maintaining a healthy crop.
This one isn’t an easy one to tackle, and it takes a long time to get your soil where you want it to be. Our farm is an old alfalfa field, and I’m not sure if the past owners used pesticides or not. We also farm on a hill, so washout is an issue. Overall our soil health is not great, it’s a very clay heavy soil that doesn’t have much organic matter. We are a chemical and pesticide free farm so slowly but surely we are working on converting the soil back to being healthy and adding organic matter. This can take years to get your soil where you want it to be but in the end it will be worth it. We’ve already brought in quite a bit of compost, and will continue to bring in more. We are also working on boxing in our rows so the washout from the hillside doesn’t wash all the compost away.
Find flowers that work for you and your market.
It’s overwhelming when you start shopping for seeds the options of flowers and greenery there are. I pulled back this first year and didn’t try to grow anything and everything, but there are still a few flowers I tried and just didn’t like or they just didn’t work for me. I try to grow 6 different types of flowers which create balanced, mixed bouquets: focals, secondary focals, fillers, line, greenery, and airy accents. I learned I need a few more line flowers and fillers going into 2025, but I also learned there are some flowers I just don’t like and won’t keep for 2025. Dianthus and orlaya are a few I won’t keep for 2025, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try to grow these again! A few flowers I loved and will continue to bring on are: dahlias, zinnias, gomphrena (even though I hate harvesting it, I do love these guys), celosia, yarrow, snapdragons, apple of peru, cosmos (although I had tremendous bug pressure this year on my cosmos) and dara. Find what works for you and what’s easy to grow the first few years, and expand as you go!
Start selling before you have flowers available.
I followed this mindset as I went into the 2024 season, and will continue to follow this in 2025. This may seem like a silly concept and against what you’d think you should do, but our season is so short you need to secure selling outlets before you have flowers. I secured my grocery and farmers market in early April which allowed me to start selling immediately when my flowers were available. I should have reached out to florists earlier in 2024, but I waited until I had flowers to start building that follower base. I had a good amount of florists in 2024 that I sold to, but I found that given florists have a busy summer wedding season, emailing them during the summer wasn’t the best idea. I’ll continue to reach out this fall and winter to secure sales in 2025.
Treat your flower farm like a business.
Follow this mindset IF you want your flower farm to be a career, not a hobby. You don’t need to go all in the first or even second year, but if you have the mindset that this is a business it’ll help set you up for success. This includes figuring out where you want to sell (which can evolve over time), tracking your expenses vs. income, getting all your federal and state filings set up and having a high level idea of branding (how do you want your business to be portrayed? fun and light hearted? sophisticated?). I follow this mindset because I want Laurel’s Flower Farm & Floral Design to be a career, so I use simple tools to track my expenses vs. income, I justify spend and set budgets, and I continue to adjust as I learn what works/doesn’t work for my business. It’s truly a learning experience, and you won’t have all the answers the first year. This has continued to help encourage me throughout the year knowing that every small business starts somewhere.
