Rita

I never had enough zinnias to sell in bunches. Growing them here is an uphill battle - I've grown them but only in small amounts.

Good luck at market!

Jeanne

Rita

One of our markets is in a lake community where people from Chicago and Detroit summer. The other market is in a metropolitan area that caters to professional people who are executives, college professors, etc. We've found that mixed sunflowers don't sell well. These folks want the traditional looking sunflowers such as those featured in House is Beautiful magazine, etc. We're finding these people are painting their interiors bright, bright colors such as yellow, lime green and tomato orange. Mixed bunches of fall color sunflowers sell better later in the season when vendors are selling goards, Indian corn, and other fall items. We don't sell any of the multi-branching.

This week we're harvesting about 100 buckets of lisianthus out of the high tunnel. Anyway, that's what it looks to be right about now. I have 50 so far. It looks like I've made somewhat of a dent. With our heat index of 108 degrees, the lisianthus is out of control. We can get 70 stems per bucket. These flowers fetch around $1 per stem. We're using alot of this in our European Hand-Tied Bouquets at market.

As far as straight bunches, we're also currently selling alot of mini-glads and sword lilies.

Hope you had a great market day last Saturday.

Trish

Rita

Zinnias will be $7.50 a bunch of 15-20 stems, depending on size!

Marketing...our market uses weekly advertising, all the free internet sites we can find, sandwich boards at major intersections, and the paper does put us in the "happenings" section. Our board is volunteer too, and its a big job, even with paid market managers.

Good luck!
Wendy

Our market's website isn't very good - we don't have a volunteer web designer, but there are others in Oregon that are great...the link is below...you might check to see if your state has a market association that can provide you with resources!

For free advertising, see if your local paper or even outlying papers will do a feature article in the paper the day before your market is held. Also see if any local radio stations or public television stations will do a public service announcement. See if any organizations or colleges have newsletters with calendars where the farmer's market dates and hours can be listed. Have someone make up some flyers for your market and have each vendor at the market put up the flyers in their neighborhood or pass them out to friends, co-workers and neighbors.

Here are some places a farmer's market can be listed. Did you say what state you are located in? Some states have their own listings.
National Association of Farmer's Markets
USDA List - Link below
Farmer's Market On Line
Local Harvest
Open Air Market

Linda

Last week I had beautiful Pro Cut sunflowers with large heads - I sold 3 in a bunch with about 5 stems of Velvet Curtains Amaranthus for $10 and not one person hesitated at the price (one lady bought 2 as she liked the whole look in the bucket). I could have sold many more than I had. This week the heads aren't so big so I'll be charging $8, and then that's it for my Pro Cuts (kicking myself all the way down the lane and back for not planting more of these beauties - next year I'll know better).

I went to my local farmer's market this Saturday and there was one flower vendor at the whole market (this is the market they told me they had too many flower vendors). She was selling bouquets of mixed colors of zinnias with misty for $8 a bunch. She put the oranges yellow and white in one bouquet and the pinks, yellow and whites in another along with the misty. She had single stems of zinnias she sells to children by the stem and they seemed to enjoy picking out their own. She also had long single stems of procut lemon - didn't catch the price of the suns - as she got very busy and I didn't want to distract the customers. She also had some shorter stemmed very dark red almost black velvety petaled sunflowers I really liked - could have been velvet queen.

She also said she grows hydrangeas under shade cloth (its very hot here) and I am going to buy some to dry to use in dried arrangements.

Linda

the only thing I have to add (which isn't much) is that at our market the single types of sunflowers sell MUCH better than the mixes other people say sell better for them. So it really does depend on your market. Mixed sunflower bunches here - heck, I could hardly GIVE them away. But put a bouquet of 6 or 7 tall, straight pro-cut types and they flew out of my bucket for ten, twelve bucks, easy.

Kristen

I'm not going to have as many flowers as y'all, just a small home gardener. Did come up with a neat way to display what cut flowers I will have though. We went to a yard sale a few weeks ago, and someone was selling a wire tea card and matching stand for five bucks. The tea cart was all rusty, but Ii've scraped it down and have painted it white. A long with the matching stand. They also fit perfectly in the back of my van:)

Looked the tea cart up online, the darn things sell for aroiund 300 bucks brand new.

I've also been 'snitching' the black floral buckets from the local grocery store. Ok, they really just kind of happily give them away. For some of the longer stemed sunflowers, I'm going to paint the buckets we get kitty litter in blue to cover the labels, and use those. The buckets also have lids, so I can carry the water for the flowers in them for transport!!!

The local grocery store sells 3-4 daisies, one carnation and a fern for $3.99. I know I can do better than that!

mj

Admittedly, I was hesitant on this increase. But I was also leary of going in low and then trying to increase my prices later in the season. I guess I thought I was setting my standard for the year, and increasing prices might mean having to make even bigger bouquets. It seemed easier to go in higher then lower the price in the future if need be.

Today was my first market of the year and I had some really nice peony/mix bouquets made up, priced at $10. I was sold out within 2 hours, and did not have one customer comment that the price was too much. So today I made the final decision to up my prices for the season.

I had a great day at market today - I'm still pumped. I also sell dried wreaths and arrangements and had a few left from last year which I took along. They sold, as did all the containers filled with a mixture of hens & chicks & sedums. It was such a good day, I had to tear down and leave early :).

Many of my peony bushes are just coming into bloom so I'll have another bunch to work with for next week's market. Pro-Cuts will be ready by next week, as will more of the filler material. For the pro-cuts (smaller heads), I'm planning on 5 stems plus filler for a $10 bouquet.