>>>>>I have not done any research yet (such as checking the cost for a spot, normal crowd #'s, etc) because I am still trying to decide if it would be worth it.You need to do your research before you can decide whether this is going to be worth it. I don't think the small number of plants for a four day show will work. I'm guessing that a show stretched out over four days brings in a lot of people. If your landlord will let you put in a garden or if you use containers I think it's well worth it to look into farmers market. The market I attend welcomes small growers. They set up to be there at opening and then pack up and go when they are sold out. Their quality is just as good as the big growers. We're happy to have them.

Check with local and state officials to find out what the legalities are. You might need a license to sell live plants, a tax id or your state's equivalent and perhaps more.

The yellow pages might list greenhouse supply companies in your area. A search on Google might bring up something useful. You can get soil, containers, labels, etc. from a wholesale supply company. You will probably need to show your tax id or whatever it is your state requires to buy wholesale. If you can't buy wholesale you can window shop at the big box stores for the information.

To price your plants - figure out the cost of them including everything from pot to soil to seeds, addition to the light bill, etc. so that you know the minimum you need to make to break even. It's unlikely that on a small scale you're going to make much money for your time. The payment will come as experience and enjoyment. Take a look at other sellers to find out the average going price. Take all that info and give it your best guesstimate. How's that for unscientific. Hopefully someone else will be able to be more exact.

You're wise to start looking into this now. Good luck!

Just addressing the power bill part, it's quite easy to work out. Standard fluorescent tubes are 40W. If you have 4 tubes burning for 16 hours a day, then you will use

40 x 4 x 16 = 2560 watt-hours = 2.45 KW per day.

Multiply by your power company's charge per KWh, and you have your cost per day.

Multiply again by the number of days you think you'll need to use the lights, to get your total cost over the growing season.

Divide by the number of seedlings you plan to produce, to get your cost per seedling.

Hope that helps

Kevin

kevinw1,

The power consumption is about twice that, the balast uses about the same amount of energy.

Mark

Hi Jenna,

If no one else is selling heirlooms currently, then you could have a real niche. In my area of SC (upstate) people aren't real knowledgable about heirlooms, but interested. So maybe think in terms of pictures and info to educate and entice them to buy. The same with the herbs - provide growing instructions and recipes, etc.

I think it is a great idea, one I have considered myself. Have fun!

For a once a year four day market, you will probably need at LEAST 500-800 plants at the bare minimum. If you are planning a weekly market, you will have to have LOTS of plants in order to 1) make it worthwhile and 2) not run out of plants before you run out of market. At least here, tomato plants will sell very well until the first part of July - then you aren't able to give them away. Consider other plants to extend your market season - and consider growing basil plants to sell.

I take about 800 plants to each one day (four hour) market - and sometimes I have little left to pack up at the end of the market. It takes a LOT of plants and constant work propagating more during the market season to replace what was sold in earlier markets.

Go to one of the big box stores and look on the bottom of the plant nursery containers - that's how I found the wholesale place I now buy from (and, fortunately, they are VERY close to where I was when I started out - and less than 1/2 hour away now)

If herloom tomatoes are not yet popular in your area, consider planting some of the popular varieties too - sometimes it takes time before people are willing to try anything "new" (ie: new to them)

Consider looking for greenhouse space to rent if this is something you really want to do. Can also look for small nurseries and smaller stores (ie: local hardware stores) to sell wholesale to.

I started five years ago and the first year was a HUGE learning year - and I LOVE what I'm doing! (mostly perennial herb plants, small fruits, berry plants - edible landscape and medicinal herbs) It is a LOT of work - although VERY enjoyable.

Thanks everyone for the replies so far!

I know it's a very small number of plants to start with, but if they charge per day at the festival I could just go the first couple of days if I got lucky enough to sell out!

I know lots of people have shown interest when I talk to them about heirloom tomatoes, but almost no one knows anything about them. I asked a guy recently at the market what kind of tomatoes he had for sale, and he looked at me like I had just sprouted a third eye and said,"ummm....local tomatoes..."!!! I had already thought about using pictures of the end result to try to sell the plants. I know that cherry tomatoes are popular, and I could try growing some eye catching types, stuff no one else would have to offer. Maybe a few herbs not commonly seen, along with the usual culinary ones.....

I get excited when I think about it, and I have so many ideas for a future permanent booth! Which is why I would like to try it on a tiny scale next spring, while still working my regular job.

Thanks for the advice about the power bill! Also, if any one else has any ideas or suggestions to contribute to this thread I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks again!!!
Jenna

Reinbeau,
We must have been typing replies at the same time! How big is your market? Ours is pretty small. I used to work out there (my job was unrelated to growing plants or selling them) and the shows in spring and fall do draw large crowds, but large for this area. I have no idea how many people go normally (will find out) but it's hard to imagine anyone selling that many plants that fast! There are maybe 14 people who are there regularly spring-early winter. Then that number drops by more than half in the cold months. Do you still think I would need that many plants? If so that's kind of discouraging :)
Jen

That's a SMALL market. The smallest I go to has 40+ vendors -- the largest has almost 200 (and I don't go to the largest ones) - hundreds to thousands of customers a day.

Grape tomatoes are very popular here - may want to grow those too - as well as a low acid (yellow) tomato - many people like tomatoes but not the acid - you can use yellow tomato plants to educate them

If the people you sell to are local people who are not familiar with different plants, stick with mostly the basic herbs: Oregano, thyme, lemon thyme, rosemary, mints. Not too many people have heard of Good King Henry, elecampane, vervain, etc. Most people that go the markets I sell at to buy herb plants are looking for the rare, hard to find, unusual - as well as the common ones. Know your customers and grow the plants they want - plus introduce them to a few new ones.

Coming to this thread a few days late, and NOT a market gardener.

I used to go to farmers markets when I was in a Vegetable co-op (10 families contributing X dollars every 2 weeks, 2 moms go every 2 weeks to buy vegies for all, then distribute them back at home.). THE very best selling tool was a farmer w/ a sharp knife and a fresh fruit ready to be cut and sampled. I almost always bought! Even if I didn't buy, it was fun sampling the new tastes.

Now tomatoes don't cut as easily as a crisp apple or a firm peach, but you could keep cut up samples w/ toothpicks in them on a paper plate nearby, maybe ontop of a plate of ice. Cover the plate with one of those cool screen things, look like an upside down colander, that keeps bugs off of picnic food.

Someone on this forum months/yrs? ago suggested having printed recipes on how to use your "new" heirloom, or herb, or anything else you'll be selling. Make sure you have LOTS of recipes, and hand them out w/ each purchase! Occassional "free" ones could be available,too.

Bake up some cookies, or muffins, or what have yous as samples of how the food will taste w/ your product in it. (always assuming baked goods given away are Legal at your market).

I work 2 days a week in a nursery and we grow our own tomatoes. My work days don't usually coincide w/ seeding days, But, this past winter, I worked beside one of the men while he transplanted the baby seedlings. It was a sight to behold!

We seeded in 500-800 cell trays, so natch, the babies are TIN=EEE! All of those babies went into six packs, 36 plants to a tray. He would fill up aprox 10 flats at a time w/ potting soil, go outside, water the dirt real well, bring them back in. Then he poked holes in each of the 36 cells, on each flat. Then he took a pencil or other sharp object, and poked the transplant out of it's 500 cell and into the prepared trays. He finished off each tray with another dousing of water (which I thought was too much), then on he went to the next group of 10 or so flats. He must have transplanted something like 5000 tomato seedlings in that one day!

That's the only greenhouse we heat, and we kept it at 60 degrees for 1-3 weeks, til the weather warmed up and the plants were big enough to handle the unheated greenhouses.

"Old Codgers" are our primary customers, some yuppies. The old codgers, in particular, gripe about everything. The plants are too young, too tall, too short, too yellow, too old, and of course, WAY too high in price. LOL! And, whether it was tomato, pepper, greens, cauliflower, cabbage, potato, onion, eggplant, herbs, or anything else edible, whatever we had, WAS NOT what THEY wanted! They always want what you don't have, then harumph a lot about your failings!

I wonder about the sense in starting tomatoes in Feb in TX when they won't be weather or ground hardy til April sometime, or later (which is when they start looking too old, too yellow, etc...), but start them then is what we do.

Obviously, you're probably not going to start 4000 + plants, yet! But you'll probably need to start WAY more than you have room for, and figure out lights or outside heating somehow, just to have enough for your four day event. And, if you want to hand out taste samples, obviously those tomatoes will have to have been seeded early enough to give you fruit on the event days. So, you'll have to do some serious sequential planting if you want fruit AND plants on selling days.

Good luck--sorry this was so long.

SusiQ in NE TX

Washington State - at least the counties I sell in - require food handler and sampling permits to sample sliced fruits -- AND you need a commercial kitchen / processing license to even sample out baked goods. They even want a comemrcial kitchen / food processing permit to sell dried herbs! (yet fresh cut herbs nothing required -- they couldn't answer if the herbs dried out during the day at what point I needed a permit to sell them as they hung up in my booth drying out)

Jenna, bear in mind that a clientele grows over time. The big 4-day event market will likely give you pretty good sales, but having a booth at, say, a local farmer's market will be unsuccessful at first, but will grow over time. At farmer's markets, customers tend to go to the stands that have been there awhile, that look full and successful, and customers like to buy from someone they have bought from and been satisfied with in the past. Don't be surprised by getting little or no business at first, but keep going, and they will come.

Jeanne

What jeanne says is so true. I grossed about $850 my first year of market gardening going to market for 20 weeks or so. Part of the problem was no customer base part of the problem was not growing enough or growing the right things. ten years later I get nervous if I make under $600 a week from 2 markets.

Look at your first couple of years selling as going to school. Do not expect to make enough money to live off of, it won't happen. But you will make enough money to contine and you will learn a lot about marketing and human nature and you should have a lot of fun.

What you want to grow and sell is amazingly seasonal. Veggie plants have about a 5 to 6 week sales period from late April until early June. After mid June the plants will sit and not sell. I would grow some red hybrids that are well known by the local population as most people really don't want to try all new varieties, they may buy a few heirlooms but the will also want to put in Better Boys or early girls and if all you have are heirlooms they will likely just go to Wal-Mart for their plants.

Be sure to print out growing instructions that have an excellent description of each type of tomato, a picture of the fruit would be very helpful so people know exactly what they are getting.

Your second season with heirlooms will likely be far more profitable than the first as people get used to growing them and realize there is a whole big world of tomatoes that includes all shapes, sizes and colors of tomatoes.

I have a couple of friends who sell a lot of veggie plants in the spring but I doubt the sales make up more than 20% of their total yearly take. And they are not big at all, maybe growing and selling a couple thousand plants.

Lucy