When I am weeding out my garden of reseeds and perennials I see $$ signs and wish I wasn't in a dead end developement. If I was on a through or main street I could set up a stand on the honor system - sell pots for 50cents each and pay for this hobby :):):)

I agree the prices in the nurseries for single annuals is rediculous....

Lynne

I drove by a small nursery set up going to work the other day . $ 8.00 for annual flats! 8.00 dollars!!!!!! I nearly drove into the person in front of me.

And have you seen the prices on those 'larger' carry-packs? The white ones that are about 2" square, but are a 6-pack with a handle on it? I saw them yesterday for a whopping $12!!!!

I repeat: Crazy.

Yes arent those the "proven winners" or something!!! Every nursery seems to have those now around here.

I dont have that much money to spend on plants for color!

I wouldnt be able to get my roses that way!

Gawd, I gotta figure out how to collect royalties ;-)

T--going out with scissor in hand to cut some mesclun and cilantro.

We had a city-wide garage sale not long ago, and that got me to thinking, lol. Maybe next year I can sell flowers, squash, melons, tomatoes, etc, at a discount price of course. I doubt I'll actually think enough ahead to do this, but it did cross my mind. I have more vegetable seeds than I possibly could plant in my garden.

However with my luck, I'd end up being out of town or not be ready in time and have hundreds of extra plants I'd have to get rid of somehow :) I also don't live on a main street, so I doubt many people would spot me.

It's funny how WS'ing has spoiled me. I balk at most of the prices in the nursery and head home empty handed. It may take until next year for some of my perennials to start filling out a bit more, but I'm willing to wait.

I keep thinking about this too after looking at nursery prices! I've seen, I believe it was here, that people throw their extras out on a table out front and sell them. But like a few of you mentioned, I live on a dead end out in no where. If I lived on the main road, I'd go for it. I have toms and peppers coming out of my ears!!

Wow, I think it is interesting that all us WSers live on Dead End streets!

I bite the bullet and went to the nursery for my tall Snaps. I just can't live without them for cut flowers and although I didn't try to WS them, I have tried them under lights in the past and I'm never able to get them developed enough (tall and thick and bushy) for cut flowers.

I paid $15 for a flat of (8) fat 4packs. Lord. Killed me (how many packs of seeds could I buy for that??) But the "best" part was checking out the wagonloads of stuff others were buying, paying top dollar for, that I have already HOS in my beds! Cosmos, Marigolds, all kinds of annuals. And the person in front of me had 6 sweet potato vines (blacky) in her wagon (at $4.95 a piece). Had to tell her that I bought one a month ago and cut it up, dipped the ends in rooting hormone, planted them, and now I have SIXTEEN pots for the price of one!She sort of implied that was too much work for her..... (smile) It took all of one hour to do.

Nancy

Well, I can beat that. I went to the local - HIGH END - nursery on the weekend. (http://www.woodleygardencenter.com/) I saw a single (1...count 'em...ONE!!) salvia splendens plant - that's an annual, ya know? And not even rare! It was priced at (brace yourself) $9!!!

I didn't buy it.

i know here in the PNW prices are getting pretty high, I work in a wholesale nursary and go to the nursaries we sell to and can't believe the mark up. our baskets we sell for $15 (12 inch mixed geraniums and mixed fuschia and so on) they are selling for $35. 4"pots are $2.69-2.99. we sell ours for a dollar fifty. our flats are $9 and retailing at $15. It's crazy out there!
Tanya

linda-

Tanya- Yeah, one good thing I've found by accident is a little roadside stand about 5 miles from the local Agway...the lady happened to be out there one day when I was scoping out her offerings and we got chatting. Turns out she has a little operation at the foot of the hill and sells wholesale to that Agway that I shop at! Needless to say, I check out her items before I buy theirs since she's cheaper. She sells Supertunias for $1.50 I think and the same item is $4 at the Agway (from HER!)

It's always good to know the source :)

Not only expensive but the plants are awful. I can't remember a year where the plants looked as bad as they do this year. I have one family owed place near by they don't sell in flats they only sell in the 4 & 6 inch pots but their stuff is gorgeous and boy does it grow. I see people at these big stores paying the same amount if not more for half dead plants. I've tried to find a good deal on some waves but there isn't anything out there everyone wants $3.50 to $5 for one wave! I don't think so I'll stick to my WSed plants and my local nursery.

Stroup

Agree with all of the above. I'm not on a dead end street but it isn't busy either (which is good). DD no longer plays with her Barbies and I'm thinking about next year having a yard/plant sale. I need to think of a way to fund the addiction. With her money she can pay for her new toys (mostly cd's, electronics - woah where did the little girl go?) and I could pay for seeds & roses.

i'm bringing our extra plants home and have put up signs and i am selling them at our wholesale prices. i've made a whole $20. i need more signs. we've got 3 other nurseries in this little town of 4500. i work in the town next door.
i may put an ad in the paper. but every weekend in June is booked solid, i am 3 miles out of town but the others out of town also one about 5. we will see.
Tanya

I sold a bunch of my seeds on Craigslist, and I even sold some of my extra plants on Craigslist.
What did I do with the money? Bought more seeds and some plants! LOL!

i am excited as i sold $20 worth of fuschia starts today! whoo hoo! I am going to go to northwest gardens with that and the $50 my boss gave me for mothers day!. these are gardens to walk thru and say i want this and this and that and then you go to her little green houses and buy them. this is all in her back yard. it's awesome she's been in country gardens magazine also a few yrs ago.

I don't live on a dead end street but the honor system certainly wouldn't work here. The can of money would disappear in minutes. There are already "yard sale" signs all over town so if it's allowed in your area you could put signs in busy areas to send people to your plant sale. Trust me....plants for sale will bring them to your door.

Bonny

I agree that prices are crazy. I was going to pick up a heliotrop at the grocery store then I realized that the 6" pot was $4.50!

I am on a busy street and sell plants. Last year I planned for it a little by sowing whole packets of perennials and putting them in a holding bed for this year. With nothing priced over $3 I've managed to make $250 in the last month and am running out of things to sell.

I am on a highway, but I have seen people in residential areas here have very successful plant sales. They even take people's address, or e-mail and send out a notice when they are going to have their sale. One girlfriend made almost $800 on a ONE day sale together with another friend. They are both pretty social, and advertised very well, including in the newspaper.
I have made $500 in the last two days selling plants from my garden. I did not advertise, I just put up a sign. I have advertised before, and had tons of people come, but it was 4 years ago, so people who stopped this time were unfamiliar to me. My perennial gardens are not even 10 years old yet, although I did inherit a few good sellers like Siberian Iris when I bought the property.
I try to sell generous qt size or 1 gal sized plants for about $3 each, although I will ask $4 for a gallon size pot and I never have a problem, especially if they are looking healthy and are in bloom.
Also, this year, a huge help was photos. I put really nice photos of the plants in bloom right in front of the pot. If that pot sold, I removed the photo and taped it to another front pot. It's amazing how that will sell the plant, even if the plant was just transplanted and is looking sad. Here are some of the ones that I sold for $3 each:
hollyhocks (1 plant)
siberian Iris
ajuga
goldmoss sedum
bee balm
sundrops
common tall garden phlox
ribbon grass
turtlehead
sedum Autumn Joy
yellow loostrife
coronation gold yarrow
geranium macrorhizum
pulmonaria
bearded iris
ferns
geranium Johnson's blue
violets
rudbeckia triloba
stella d'oro
little business daylily (flew out the door!)

wintersown tomatoes in trays with 8 varieties per tray...as many as 16 plants, because I put two seeds for each variety to make sure that I'd get something in each spot. ($6 per tray, and I give them a list for their tray so they know which plant is which variety. The "tray" is actually the bottom of a 1 gallon kitty litter plastic bottle. We saw the top off with a tablesaw and they worked great for wintersowing.)

You can see from this list that quite a few of the plants are very common. My bigger ticket items were some hostas, peonies and some nice hanging baskets, and a few hydrangeas, but 90% of the sales were from $3 perennial pots.

Peonies I sold for $6,7 and $12, depending on how many stems...4 stems were $6, 8 stems were about $12. Peonies are very expensive in the nurseries, so this is good money for me, and a good deal for them. When I had to move peonies from the lawn a few years ago, I planted many where I wanted them, and all of the little bits of tubers, I put out in a field garden to do their thing. Those are the ones I've been selling. I have not depleted them, so in a couple of years, I'll be able to get more for another sale.

I even sold newly sprouted baptesia from my winter sowing, not more than 1" tall in a styrofoam coffee cup...I sold 2 of them like that! The trick? My own large baptesia is coming into bloom right now and looks fanstastic.
This is one of the best tricks for selling the stuff...have lots available of whatever is in bloom at the time of your sale...last weekend, my girlfriend and I did a one day sale at our arboretum. It went so-so. I couldn't give away Siberian Iris. These last two days, I'm nearly sold out because my own plants are in bloom.
I have trays of Sundrops that look beautiful but people aren't biting much...and I don't have a good picture of them like I do some of the others. I have no fear, I will put up the sign when it is blooming like crazy in my garden, and those things will fly out the door in one afternoon.

How do I get this stuff? I do have an acre and I have areas that I just use for holding plants that I don't want in my garden...like in a back woodsy area, I had sundrops winter over in cardboard beer trays, totally ignored...about 3 weeks ago, I brought them out, threw out the old tray, cleaned them up and watered, and now they look great. I'll probably make more than $30-50 on just those...and they are so easy to keep going anywhere.
And now, I will be winter sowing plants just to sell them...

I also dig stuff from my garden during the sale, including my more common hostas that I have mass plantings of. That brings in larger amounts of money. And if you have a place for ferns, plant them, and sell them! People are always wanting ferns. They grow naturally in a little "clump", are easy to dig right then and people pay $3-5 for one little clump without batting an eye...because they aren't always that easy to find in the nurseries. I bet I made almost $40 just from the ferns, and I don't even have them in a prominent spot. They grow behind my garage and around my air conditioning unit, so I needed to thin them out, anyway.

Common hostas...my girlfriend dug up her huge albomartinatas, labeled them "monster hostas" and sold 3 of them for $25 each! That's a fast growing hosta and she has a ton of them...

I guess my point is...it pays to keep some plants around, even if they aren't your favorites. Many people groan about Sundrops, but I actually like them and they have a purpose in my yard. Plus, the money is good when they sell and I always am upfront with people about anything that's even got the potential to be invasive.

Another reason I think that I do so well is that I really talk to the people if I perceive that they want help...you can tell right away if someone wants the help or not and it's amazing, the people who engage in conversation and questions seem to be the ones that buy more. And I am not pushy, just informative and friendly. I try to help them figure out what will work for their sun or shade spots and I know a lot about the good and bad qualities of the plants that I grow, so along with the pictures, knowledge of your plants is really helpful. I also try and be generous and sometimes I throw in a bit of this or that...a slip of sedum, or that type of thing.

Another thing...encourage them to look at your garden. Take them to another area to show them the habit of a plant that's not looking all that exciting in the pot. On the way, they nearly always find something else that they like. The next thing you know, you're digging a bit of something you hadn't even thought of digging for the sale. And I never sell anything that I don't want to, or don't have enough of, and I just am honest that I don't have enough to spare yet, and people understand that.

I know this is getting long, but I have to tell you one more thing... I have an area near my garage with annuals that I've been needing to pot up in my planters for myself. Some nice 4-6" pots of king coleus, petunias, that sort of thing... People kept wandering away from my "sale" area and kept looking at my annuals. In the end, I did sell a few of the annuals just because I could spare them. I thought it was funny that I was even making a bit of money off stuff I'd had no intention of selling.

Rhubarb...it's ready for harvest in my garden and I hadn't gotten to it for myself. I made $20 just pulling Rhubarb for people who wanted it.

In a few weeks, I will have another sale...it will be when the sundrops and yellow loostrife are blooming...there's tons of both of those to sell, and I'm sure that in the process, I'll be able to dig a few more this and that's for people. In the mean time, I will work on getting pictures for a few of the things that I didn't have time to do earlier.

If you've been gardening for awhile and you think you don't have much to sell, dig up some bee balm and start putting it in the 4" (quart size) pots. It's amazing how much you CAN'T get into those pots...which means that each pot will have 2-5 larger stalks. You probably only need to dig about a 10" square area of bee balm and you'll have at least 6 good sized pots...that's $18 at 3 bucks each!

Well, I'm sorry that I went on and on, but I really encourage people to try a sale. The first one I had was a big garage sale that I advertised in the paper and I included that I'd also be selling perennials, dug fresh from the garden. I made more than $200 on that sale from plants alone and I never missed a bit of it...

Good Luck!

OK I'm convinced. I think I have known for awhile that the little "nursery" of potted-up seedlings in my yard weren't really going to fit in my little garden. I will probably start by selling some at a garage sale that I'm going to advertise on craigslist.

I need some advice, though, on pricing. The thing that I have the most of is asparagus seedlings. They're about 4-5" tall on the main "branch" with 3-4 more little branches. How does $1 each sound? Too much for seedlings? What about mint and petunias (WS and budding now)? Can I get away with selling them in plastic cups, or should I use nursery pots?

As of yesterday i made $80. i live about 3 miles out of town and just put up signs. this little girl kept coming and looking at my stuff and bought some veggies. she really wanted some flowers. yesterday, she came back with $5 and bought some flowers. i gave her a really good deal. well, her mom said she went around the trailer park she lives in and offered to walk dogs to make the money to buy the flowers! shes about 9yrs. i was so impressed.
I am thinking about putting in an ad this week. It's really hard when there are 3 nurseries within 3 miles of me. good luck everyone!
Tanya

Mary,

You have inspired me to get out my camera more often throughout the growing season and take pictures of the plants in bloom so that, eventually, if I ever have "enough" to have a plant sale, I will have pic's to show. That is such a great idea! As I have been forcing buckets full of sib. iris on every visitor for the past few summers (just so I would have room for other things) I will think about how I could sell them next year. I find they spread like weeds and I am AMAZED at how the garden centers sell them for 3-4 dollars for one little fan. And I have tons of rudbeckia and purple cone flower and that yellow loosestrife I have been digging up and composting because i didn't think anyone would want it! You have me seeing dollars signs - at least enough to pay for all this Pro mix I go through (I have used 4 bales aleady this season)!

Thanks! Great Post!
Nancy

Wow Mary thats pretty impressive. You've really given me something to think about. Great post.

Ok, I have a question. My seedlings are still tiny, even though they are in the ground. How do you guys get yours to selling worthy? I can't imagine selling tiny 1 in seedlings. I gave away a bunch of toms, and the first people, even though I warned they were little, looked at them funny, like ya, these'll grow.

Sorry that I didn't get back to this thread...I've been very busy selling! I sold so much, I wore myself out. The WS tomatoes turned out to be a huge hit...I could have sold many more. I never adverstised, just put a big sign out that said tomato plants. The maters looked so healthy and nice...and they got so many for their $6 bucks, I even had a guy buy 3!!

Kek19...you asked about selling seedlings. I think I mentioned above that I did sell two baptesia that were just seedlings, but the ones who purchased seemed very plant savvy and they seemed happy to "raise the baby". Most people probably aren't interested in something like that. Since I won't need more Baptesia myself, I plan to pot up my seedlings (they are in sytrofoam coffee cups now) and sell them next year when they've filled in a bit and have survived a winter here in WI.

Pretty much anything that I grow this year from seed, I won't sell until next year now. I really didn't do annuals, just perennial plants from my garden plus the Wintersown tomatoes.

Mary, I was wondering where you get pots to put all these plants you sell. I thought about growing tomato plants or possibly other plants to sell next year, but was wondering where I could get bulk, inexpensive little pots. Also, how much did you ask for tomato plants?

Anyone else have any goods ideas on where to find cheap containers?

I use 2 litre pop bottle bottoms with drainage holes in the bottom, also you can get large quantities of plastic beer cups from costco or wally-world, and melt some holes with a soldering gun in the bottom. Styrofoam cups with holes punched in them work too, but you really have to watch that they don't dry out.
Lots of people around here put their pots out for recycling after they've planted out as well, so scavenging works too.
Sorry for jumping in..just a couple of ideas..

Wendy, by all means, jump in. I'm open to all ideas. Those are good suggestions, and very affordable as well.

One idea I had after I posted is paper pots. I tried making them once with little luck, as I am craft challenged, but perhaps I should try again. I'm not sure how excited customers would be about this, but cost wise, not too bad, and they could be planted directly in the ground. Of course, these probably wouldn't hold up for long periods of time.

I found one site that's pretty decent on prices, especially if you buy in bulk. There are lots of others out there as well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Growers Solution

Wendy 2 shoes,

I'm new on this forum and just had to ask you to describe in detail how you use those 2 liter pop bottles. I saved a lot of them for a while but couldn't think of a good use for them so I tossed them but I always have more incoming from drinking stuff.

I also got a bunch of those red plastic Folgers coffee cans with plastic lids. Anyone have a creative use for them?

Hank
in Oklahoma

i use my coffee buckets for composting the food scraps in the kitchen, i was also trying to find other uses for them.
Tanya

Hank..if you check out wintersown.org (trudi's site) you will find a wealth of info about how to use everyday stuff to either wintersow, or use to pot up. We have a blue box system here in Ontario, and I have a fellow around the block who puts out 13 2L soda bottles every two weeks. (His addition to the soda bottles are out there too, but I won't say how many :-))
Slice them in half, around the middle (I use a sharp knife to start then scissors), then discard tops if you're not wintersowing, or need a lot of funnels for your antifreeze, oil, birdseed, whatever.
Fire up a soldering gun, and melt holes in the bottom of the bottles. Voila..cheapo pots..bonus is you can see root growth.