Most & Least Profitable Cut Flowers I Grew in 2023 💐 First Year Backyard Cut Flower Farm Australia

hi everyone welcome back to another video if you're new here my name is Robin and I live here on the south coast of New South Wales with my partner and our two cats and we have just finished up our first year flower farming here on the property we have around half an acre here where we kind of grow more so on a quarter of an acre and we have multiple different gardens around the property one which was more of a Cottage Garden where I also grow like veggies and herbs as well as flowers and then I have a separate really dedicated flower farm area where I grow the bulk of my flowers I am really passionate about growing plants and I really wanted to have a farm for as long as I can remember um I actually have a background in environmental science where I did my PhD looking at Land Management specifically on mining sites up at cap York Queensland Australia so I have a little bit more of a science background soil science and and large scale Land Management and I feel like I have applied a lot of that knowledge to my backyard to start this backyard cup flower farm but other than the knowledge that I've gained throughout my PhD on how to actually work with the land and work with soil and water I don't particularly have a farming background nor do I have a floristry background so this is all self-taught um and I've just learned a lot from YouTube and reading books and finding inspiration from a lot of people here online we also live on a rented property here so there are some limitations in terms of the infrastructure that I can install here we also know this isn't going to be our forever home so I've tried to kind of create the farm um in terms of adding a little bit more temporary structures and infrastructure and that includes like the irrigation that I've added in um really minimizing what money we've spent on uh amendments and like mulch and things like that and trying to follow really simple gardening practices uh and maintaining organic principles throughout the flow Farm gardening and flower farming alongside nature is also um a really big part of what I want to do so I'm not really a mass production flower farm um one day I would love to expand but yeah we are really small um but I have tried to pack in flowers as much as I can into the space that I have uh and today I wanted to talk talk a little bit about the profitability side of flowers and what flowers have actually been the most profitable for me in a backyard Cut Flower setting again this is just my experience for my first year cut flow farming um I'm sure this is going to change and evolve as the years go on but I think it's cool to kind of look back to see what was profitable and my experience of first year flower farming and then see how that changes as we progress so this is going to be uh part one of this series of talking about my experience as a first year Cut Flower farmer so there will be extra videos to this series including a complete financial review of how we did have I actually liked flower farming and some of my favorite varieties that I've grown combinations of flowers um and that kind of thing so if you do have anything that you would like me to chat about do leave a comment in the comment section and I can include that in one of the videos but for today's video we're just going to be talking about what flowers have been most profitable and I have my laptop here of a list of flowers that I'm going to chat through and I'm going to try and order these from most profitable to least profitable even though all of these that I am talking about are in the most profitable list um I have a few separate ones that weren't exactly profitable this year but have a lot of potential to be profitable either next year or the year after and also just a few flowers that I won't be growing again that weren't profitable at all for me and uh yeah that I'm definitely not going to grow again I also wanted to just start out by talking about what profitable means for me as a micro cut flower farm uh because there's so many different ways that you can measure profitability and again I'm sure this is going to change as we grow as a business uh and expand our growing space but for now what I'm really looking at is what flowers produced a decent amount for me because we are so small I'm looking for a lot of plants that are going to provide me a lot of good quality stems in a fairly small area as well as flowers that I can Harvest kind of all at once so I get a really good flush of flowers so that when I do go to the market I have a good range to provide my customers with uh and I can kind of add more available bunches to my website as well as how much time went into actually growing the plants and how much kind of effort that it needs um and also then how much can I actually sell the stem for when I'm putting the stem into um bouquet to kind of like add up to my usual $20 limit which is what I usually sell and bring to the markets and then I do have higher value products on my website as well for larger bouquet there and the last thing that I look for in a lot of these flowers is whether I can use them for more than one um area in the business so whether I can dry the flowers whether I can press the flowers um or try and make a little bit more money out of the plant like whether I can sell seeds from it or tubers and again this is because we are such a small operation right now we have a really limited space I'm using all hand tools and sometimes I do need extra ways to make money from the flowers rather than actually just the fresh flow itself so I hope that kind of makes sense but I would love to know what you look for when you're looking at whether a flower is profitable for your business or not but that was just an overview on what I look for and kind of a justification of why all of these flowers are on the list also make sure to grab a cup of tea or coffee for this video it is a sit down video I will be adding some pictures and um videos in over to this but I would definitely recommend having a drink or a snack throughout this video but let's get into all of these flowers that I have here number one I didn't even have to think about this I knew exactly what my most profitable flower was going to be when I was putting this video together and that is status it has been such an amazing flower for me to grow as a backyard Cut Flower farmer and I would highly highly recommend growing these um if you are interested in starting a flower farm or you have an area in your backyard that that you would kind of like to tral out growing cup flowers and just see how you go and the main reason for this is because they have such good value either fresh or dried or in the Christmas ornaments that I was making so I make multiple products from status I use them as fresh flowers and honestly you only need a few that I usually use to surround a bouquet that I'm making um to kind of hold everything in place I also make $15 dried bunches I make $5 mini bunches and these sell really really well the $5 mini bunches it sounds like they are pretty cheap but actually they are the stems that are the leftovers from anything else that I use as fresh or the larger dried bouquet with status you usually get one long stem but sometimes there will be a few little stems that come out of that um that I do need to break off when I'm using it in an arrangement because usually they're too far down on the stem but I do save all of those and I use those in my mini bouquet and I will also dry the whole thing and then prick off the Little Flower bits of the status and then add them to my Christmas ornaments I have only ever really had one or maybe one and a half rows of status and I have always had such a good harvest I got around two or three really good flushes off the plants by that time um some of the weeds had overtaken them and we had also had just really weird weather like flooding and then really dry weather and the plants just were really sad so I've taken them out and I will replant and sew um some more probably when the weather starts to cool down a little bit I also really like these because they uh bloom in Winter where we are um they bloomed kind of late winter and the stems were really really good quality if you're looking for ones to grow um it does matter like what they're called but uh cuz there are quite a few few varieties of status out there but I'd recommend choosing a really deep purple um an apricot and a white as long as you've got kind of those three um you'll be able to make some really stunning dried bouquet or you can kind of pair up the colors for whatever your customers want one thing though with status because they're such a beautiful plant and the color is so vibrant in particularly the purples I have had a lot of people say that they're actually died so if you do have that problem as well maybe just write up a few signs to let people know and inform people that it's actually a natural color and they last for quite a long time I have some dried status that are at least a year and a half old and they look no different particularly the purples to how they did at the start so as long as you're just keeping all of your dried flowers in like a um container that's out of the dark and out of any humidity um they should hold their color I'm going to try and get through this list a little bit more quicker now um but the next one that I have on on my list is straw flowers again and this is pretty much the exact same reasons as status so I won't go too much into detail um but this is just really important for me because we are such a small flower farm that I do have other dried flowers and um straw flowers are another one that dry perfectly fine and that I've used in a lot of my Christmas decorations as well I find that you can even just use straw flowers as focal flowers which is what I've been doing in my bouquet particularly the first few flushes of the flowers that come up because they are a cut and come again the first flowers are often a little bit larger um so I've been using a lot of these as focal flowers and particularly the yellows look really really stunning so yeah I would definitely recommend straw flowers and U just make sure that when you're planting them to get the tall variety rather than the really really short straw flowers unless you're only just using them for the flower heads which is primarily what I do for dried flowers um but I will often just Harvest a bunch of straw flowers when I'm making bouquets um make a lot of bouquets to go to the markets or to my local Garden Center and then any that don't sell uh they last a long time so I can just prick them off uh and then dry them and then use them for later projects down the line the next flower that is on my list is Feverfew and I have a little bit here in with one of my roses I absolutely adore fever and this is mainly on the list because of the ease of actually starting these plants and having a lot of plants basically for free so I have been propagating fever few from one or two plants that I had that I did start from seed and it is really simple to propagate fever Fu I'll leave a link in the description of where I included this in a video but yeah I have a full row of this now or two rows actually um and I have been putting it prettyy much in any bouquet it is my favorite filler to use therefore uh it's got to be on my most profitable list because a lot of the bouquet that don't have fever few are the last to go so yeah I always add this in and usually I'm pricing it at like A1 to $150 a stem um and same with the straw flowers in the status I should have mentioned I priced those also around a dollar a stem so technically they're not they're not making a lot of money her stem but because I'm adding them into pretty much every bouquet it does add up and actually ends up being a lot more than some of the higher priced per stem flowers if that makes sense so yeah fever f is definitely one and I will always grow this and I personally I love all the fever few but I just have the single white fever few it looks like little daisies and they last incredibly long in water um I have tried drying it it is isn't my favorite dried so I think I'm just going to stick to it fresh but yeah definitely one that you need in your garden and I think all flower Farmers need this um plant in their Garden number four is zenas and of course this is going to be on the list this is one of the summer flowers that I grow and I actually have some that are finally coming into bloom now so they're going to go into this week's bouquet specifically out of the zeners I want to say that the bener giant variety are the most profitable um because you can price these at two to even $3 per stem for the larger size flowers they look beautiful as focal flowers my favorite ones are definitely the salmon colors they look so beautiful and those paired with a few of the smaller Queen lime variety of zenas look so beautiful in an arrangement so yeah I had to include Zine ear on this um they're also a cut and come again flower so for my small space I can get a lot of stems off the one plant and they just last so well in water the bener is giant definitely has a little bit more disease resistance than some of the other zenas I've grown uh and overall the stems are much stronger and longer as well number five is daers and this isn't really because they are a High um priced flow per stem I suppose like you can price these anywhere from I would say $3 to $5 for the varieties that I grow it's not necessarily just because of that it's also because I can make money from these from um dividing the tubers and also I've been selling um starts of these by taking cuttings from the tubers at my local markets so I've been selling these for um anywhere between $10 and $15 they've been selling really really well um and you just want to make sure if you do this to at least have a photo of what the flower looks like that's going going to bring your customers in and I've been finding that's working well for me I personally don't have a lot of experience with daes so I'm still learning um and yet learning how to grow these well um but I usually would add um maybe 2 to three per bouquet of the $20 bouquet um and that was enough for the bouquet that I was selling they looked beautiful they didn't really last as long as some of the other flowers um but I think just because da are so popular you really have to have them in your garden or flower farm um because they're just rising and rising in popularity and I know a lot of flower farmers are trying to earn a little bit extra money either from selling um seedlings or from propagating the tubers so I'm going to jump on that train as well um next year when I'm going to be dividing all of the tubers that I have but yeah I really do think they're a great investment and I really started out with a few and I had have about 1 2 3 four rows soon to be five and maybe six rows of dailies depending on how many seedlings I have left over um so it's a really great crop to gradually grow more each year and you don't have to invest hundreds and hundreds of dollars in the initial stages there's always gardeners wanting daers so I know that there is like a lot of trading going on between gardeners which I think is great and is something I would love to do as well so yeah all around really good investment and they've been great for me number six is Jun quels this is not a really common flower I feel a lot of flower Farmers talking about but this really fills in the part of the Year where I don't have a lot of flowers and I use these as a focal flower and for me they're profitable a lot because I can um plant them they're going to double or triple as they grow each year and I also don't lose out on any space of these because I plant these throughout the existing landscape and not really in the flower farm or dedicated flower farm area I plant these just in the garden beds that I have around the house in The Cottage Garden around different trees and they're just really a set and forget type of flower that I don't need to think about really fertilize that much um and I always really get a good harvest of these they last a long time in water um they look so beautiful they smell wonderful customers around me really really do enjoy them um I think it reminds them a lot of childhood or maybe their grandparents had them in their yard and um yeah I find they sell really well around me so they're on my list and they've done really really well for me I usually sell these around $2 a stem and I usually add these to Jam Jar posies which a lot of people seem to like in the winter months just to add a little bit of color and scent to their house and yeah they've done really well so um yeah they're definitely on my list for a good reason number seven is anemones and this was a complete surprise to me I didn't really think they were going to be on my most profitable list but they grew so well in my climate I hadn't had a lot of luck with these the year before and I think that was just because it was so wet that year we had so much rain and I don't think they really enjoyed that but they did amazing this year way better than the ranunculus which we'll get to I'll talk about that later um but yeah these were definitely really profitable mainly also because I didn't pay very much for them I purchased about a pack of 80 of these for $28 and then I got an additional 50 with a bunch of different bulbs which I got about 400 bulbs for a again another $28 but it would have probably been about $5 to $10 for the actual anemones the 50 anemones that came with those I planted all anemones that were from the poppy collection and they did so well I did them in both um Arrangements like my $20 arrangements as well as Jam gel posies because a lot of the first few stems or ones that you'll get after your first flush are pretty short so they work really well in gem jar Posies um and they just looked absolutely beautiful I think next year I'm going to maybe get a collection like this because I really loved having all different rainbow colors but the ones that really did well were the Deep Purple ones and a few of the red ones as well I really loved the white ones with the green sender so I personally want to grow those but yeah the Deep Purple ones they did so well and they lasted quite a long time in water I think anemones are a little bit easier to grow than ronculus mainly because they just don't or they're not affected by disease as much so I really loved that and they're nice early flowering varieties in early spring so yeah I'd definitely recommend growing these um and I was selling these from 2 to $3 a stem mainly $2 particularly for a lot of the shorter ones but yeah they're really great Variety in my opinion and I also grew them so close together and they didn't mind at all so that was another bonus for me because I just just had one bed of them and I harvested so many stems out of that area it was it was amazing number eight is stock and this flower I was blown away by by how beautiful it was it was actually my very first year growing stock and yeah it was I'm definitely going to grow it again I think it really likes our climate we a very like Mediterranean climate I suppose where we don't really have very cold nights and we don't have really really hot days either because we're so close to the coast um and I think that's what stock really likes it can struggle when you do get those really high day temperatures and then cold nights so I think our climate is really perfect for growing stock um and it was also such an easy plant to start from seed as well a lot of flowers can be difficult because the seeds can be so small but I find with stock flowers they're quite large in comparison to a lot of other flower seeds so pretty easy to start from seed I had really great germination rate and um yeah overall the plants were pretty simple to grow I suppose the only negatives is that you do usually only get the one um stem of stock I was growing the column variety of stock and it's known for just the one stem that you get um so in hindsight next time or next year I'm going to be planting more of these but closer together to ensure that I just get more stems in a smaller area rather than space them out how I did um but yeah my favorites were anything that was kind of pale like violet or any of the purples the pinks were okay but they just didn't sell as well as whenever I had a purple in there and I think I might even do selective seating next time where you can pick out what the doubles are going to be when you sew your seeds I didn't really do that this year so I had some singles um rather than just doubles so yeah next year we're going to play it a little bit different um and I am definitely going to be planting lots more next year the next one I had to throw this in here is number nine and this is just this is a very general one but it's something that you do need in bouquet um and I'm kind of cheating with this one cuz I'm going to list multiples but that is just some native foliage I have some beautiful plants on the property that I've been using as foliage and the ones that have done well include bottle brush leaves or for the unopened actual bottle brush flowers they look really beautiful um lepto spum both star night and Cardwell have done amazing and the lemon tea tree those are my favorites for kind of more native looking foliage you really don't need a lot of stems of these they last a long time in water and particularly The Starry Night it always sells it just you only need about like three stems to kind of surround a bouquet um but it looks so beautiful the Deep burgundy foliage of that plant just really pops and I am personally in love with it I just I love the plant so much so I really had to include this because it is a large component of putting bouquet together and although it's not really a flower I had to include it in my list because they just really make the boues look amazing so yeah had to include that one and then number 10 is Cosmos and this is down towards the bottom of the profitable list still profitable um but I just have a few things that I don't love about Cosmos one is that the plants just get too tall and too crazy and I just can't deal with it so when I don't deal with it it just goes even more crazy and hard to deal with and then it just becomes a really big job for me to actually remove the plants out and deal with them so that's on me that's not really related to the plant I get it I'm sorry Cosmos but yeah I just find they are very difficult to work with but people do love them I always get comments about oh that's the cosmos oh the cosmos looks so beautiful in in those bouquet even though it's like there's one or two stems of the cosmos it's a flower that people recognize and therefore I will grow it and it does have a place in the flower farm but if you are a micro or a small cup flower farm like myself just grow like a few plants that's all you need you don't need a full bed of Cosmos I'm telling you that now Robin listen for next year you do not need that uh at all maybe just a few plants so that's what I'm going to do next year but yeah I had to include it because people love them and they do make the bouquet look very Whimsical and pretty and beautiful so yeah I do I do like the flowers all right this video is getting very long I know but I'm going to talk through just a few flowers that weren't really profitable this year but do have a lot of potential for me one of them ronculus all I'm going really say about this is they just did not do well this year whether it was my soil or just the weather we've had really really just humid weather this year uh and they ended up getting powdery milw and yeah I didn't Harvest hardly any of the ronculus so I probably broke even on those but the year before growing them I had a beautiful Harvest and they were absolutely stunning so I'm a little unsure about them I will definitely plant them and give them a go next next year again but I might even just start them a little bit earlier than I did um yeah I'm just going to try with ronculus and see how I go another one I have on here is Snapdragons now they did make me money and they were definitely beautiful but I want to be a little bit more selective in the varieties that I'm going to be growing mainly just focus on growing the Costa variety I did a few different ones this year and yeah I just I need to go with just the Costa because they have really strong stems and they are grown four cut flowers so yeah I need to stick with that variety and um yeah just start them a little bit earlier cuz I started them too late this year the next one is corn flowers and this is specifically the blue cornflour mainly because I use them in um like rainbow bunches because they have that blue deep blue color I planted some more of the pink and Maron colors I'm not going to do that next year I'm just going to grow the blue and maybe just grow three plants that's really all you need because I'm rarely harvesting and adding more than three maybe five of the Corn flow stems into arrangements so yeah I'm just going to limit this but they do have also potential for me to dry them and add them into my bath salt so that's another thing I'm going to consider um because I have been drying a few of these uh so yeah there's work I can do on corn flowers I just need to figure out what's going to work for me the next one is yo I think this has a major potential um and I would love to have a like bed solely that is just yarrow right now I have it planted around the garden just in different garden beds and that's not really working out for me so um I just need to have a dedicated bed for yo the thing is I'm not going to be able to grow anything else in that bed so I need to create an area in the garden that can just be Yow and not worry about it that's the only thing um why it's holding me back a little bit but the stems are really beautiful um and yeah I would love to dry it as well another one that has great potential is Sweet William that's because I've only just planted it and I am getting a little bit of a harvest right now and from what I am harvesting I am loving it I'm loving it so so much I love the flowers they last so long they're so easy to harvest takes no time at all um and yeah I just I just love Sweet William I've planted uh the summertime mix and Harald of spring both really like them they've worked really well for me and why they're on here is more like potential flowers is that you get a better Harvest or more um stronger harvest in the second year because they are perennial so I did plant these in spring so hopefully next year we should get a good harvest of those and another one here that might be surprising to people but um I've added it here because I haven't really grown it here yet and that is sunflowers and I mean I have grown sunflowers here but not really on a mass scale so I'm only just starting to get a first harvest of sunflowers and I'm not too sure how they're going to go um just because we have a lot of birds around and I need to make sure that uh I'm actually going to get flowers so they have potential to be very very profitable but we shall see over the next few weeks there's only about three flowers that I'm not going to grow again um one of those is tulips I've already really kind of spoken about this but we're just not cold enough for tulips here they they don't do well at all they didn't really grow like at all so yeah I'm not going to grow tulips we also have very very clay soil which they don't like so if I was to ever grow tulips I would grow them in crates but they're off my list I would never make any money with chips they're also just so expensive to buy in Australia unless you're buying like thousands and thousands and I'm not going to be buying thousands and thousand so I would much rather just go to fluad and enjoy the chips there rather than growing them in my back backyard um but if you can grow your lips I am envious because I do love them another one I'm not going to grow is pink corn flowers I charted about this earlier they're just not worth it I have so many other pink flowers that I can use like Yaro and um Laria things like that as like little fill of flowers so yeah I'm not going to be growing this one again yeah there's not too much to say they can just become a really messy plant and while the pink flowers are beautiful I just find the blue way more profitable so not going to be growing those again and the last one on my list is laxer I am going to grow it but not to the extent that I did this year I'm maybe only going to grow like five or six plants because I only really used sometimes just one or two stems in an arrangement I would only grow this on a larger scale if I was selling to florists or doing weddings or something like that but because I'm not doing that I don't really need a lot and they are such beautiful flowers um but they can tend to get a little bit messy and that I just got way too overwhelmed with them um so yeah I'm not going to be growing too much Lux but next year even though they are super pretty but yeah I just don't need that much for the bouquet that I'm producing right now okay that was a lot of information and I have chatted for quite a while now thank you so much if you have um made it this far in the video I hope some of this was useful to you and if not it's going to be useful for me to look back upon and I am super excited to do another video like this next year to see um how my second year flower farming has gone in terms of what's been profitable and not I am really excited to keep making some of these videos and just chatting about like reviewing the year particularly like how much we actually made because I haven't figured that out yet but I am super excited to do the math for that and just get some final tallies and I really want to create these videos as more of a res source to you so if you are even just remotely thinking about starting a flower farm hopefully this is going to be useful knowledge for you and if not then I am glad you've stuck around for a chat and I hope you have been enjoying your drink and your snack maybe go pop the kettle on again because I'm sure your cup of tea or coffee has got cold now um but yeah I am so thankful for you for watching this far in the video if you'd like to see more make sure you sub subscribe to the channel uh and like this video it really does help me out a lot and is completely free for you I've also got a coffee page if you want to buy me a coffee I'll link in the description box if you would like to tip me and pay for my TR lates and coffees that I need to get through doing these videos um and I do have a patreon where I offer extra content and extra little perks over there if you want to check that out as well and lastly you can follow me over on on Instagram at the nature patch or at the patch and Bloom where I share all of my flower farming content uh and I've also got a website the patchin bloom.com if you would like to purchase some fresh flowers in the area or I do have other Botanical inspired gifts on there as well that I can post to anywhere in Australia so thank you so so much for watching this video I hope you having a lovely day wherever you are in the world and until my next one happy gardening everyone bye [Music]

Channel: The Nature Patch

Views: 11,254

Keywords: gardening, garden, organic gardening, gardening in australia, Australian garden video, Australian garden vlogger, australia, australian vlogger, australian gardener, australian garden, permaculture garden, cottage garden, cottagecore, australian garden youtube channel, flower farm, Australian flower farm, backyard flower farm, first year flower farm, profitable flowers, most profitable flowers to grow, easy flowers, what flowers make you money, earning an income from flowers

Id: h3SWRctxH2s

Length: 33min 46sec (2026 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2023