What varieties of tomato plants would be easiest to sell?

14 years ago

I plan to try to recoup part or all of the money I spent on my seed starting setup (lights, wire rack, trays, containers) and seeds and seed starting mix and potting mix and pots and electricity by selling my excess tomato plants. I was thinking about specializing in heirlooms, but I am wondering if the average customer would even know what they were and that they could be potentially produce much tastier fruit then the run of the mill plants they could buy in the big box stores or garden centers. Anyone sell plants and if so what did you charge, what size pots were they in and how tall, and what varieties and types of plants sold best? I know I won't make enough to pay for the value of my labor, but I would have done it anyway just for my own plants so I don't count that as a cost.

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (18)

digdirt2
14 years ago
Varieties that will sell totally depends on the region. As others mentioned in your recent post on the CA taste testing, what seems to appeal to folks in one part of CA doesn't appeal in other parts of CA, much less in the NE or SE. Some folks have success selling the unusual colors, many can't give them away.

What sells down here are regional favorites. I get more requests for Arkansas Traveler, Rutgers, and Brandy Boy than all other varieties combined. Some will buy 1 Brandywine because "I heard of those" but will also buy 5 Rutgers and 5 AR Travelers at the same time. So you'll have to discover what would appeal to buyers in your area. I can't sell a cherry tomato variety down here for anything. Couldn't even give them away.

Search jrslick's many posts on his sales this past year in Kansas as he discusses what sold for him and several replies address the pricing - which is also a regional thing. For us it is 6-8" plants in 4" pots for $2.50, 10-12" plants in 1 gallon pots for $5.00. Prices in parts of CA would be much higher I suspect.

As to size, that was discussed in detail in the recent post linked below.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato plant size to sell
eyesofthewolf
14 years ago
Californian, I was shopping at the big box stores today and I priced their 6 inch plants, all types were from $3.25 to $3.75 per plant, so I would think you would have to really explain that the tomato will not be like they buy at the grocery store, most of us new to gardening really don`t know what heirloom means, I didn`t until I started reading this website. I thought there were cherry tomatos slicing tomatos and roma tomatos, and that was it, I know that sounds very ignorant but I was and I think other people are to. Where would you sale them? At a farmers market? I would like to find somewhere besides even the local plant nursary as they are limited to their varities also. Good luck on your sales. :o) Deanna
Related Discussions
These Are The Tomato Varieties I Planted
Q
Comments (33)
Sheri, Gary is a professional horticulturalist/farmer. He owns and operates Duck Creek Farms. He is a long-time member of this forum and posts here during the off-season, but generally not during the growing season because he is too busy. If you are familiar with the Tulsa-area business, "The Tomatoman", started by the late, great Tomatoman Darrell Merrell, Gary grew heirloom tomato plants for DM to sell for many years. Sometime after DM's death, Gary began selling his plants directly to the public at various festivals and at the Cherry Street Farmer's Market, and Lisa Merrell renamed her dad's business and now operates it as "The Tomatoman's Daughter". I'll link Gary's website below. His schedule showing when and where he sells plants is on his website, and he does sell fall tomato transplants for a few weeks in the summer. He also sells sweet potato slips, which are the only plants he ships, and he has an amazing and wonderful variety of heirloom sweet potatoes available. Some of our forum members are trialing a bunch of heirloom tomatoes for him this year so he can receive feedback on how they grow in different areas and how they taste. Once you're on Gary's website, click on his 2011 Tomato Plant/Herb list to see what he's selling this year. His show and farmer's market schedule is at the end of his list of varieties. As for selling your own produce, if you're selling it from a table in your yard in an incorporated area out in a county, you likely don't have any rules or regulations to follow. If selling in town within the city limits, you'd have to comply with whatever city codes that city has regarding sales. Some cities require you have a license or permit, others don't. With each individual farmer's market, you have to contact them and get from them their list of requirements. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Duck Creek Farms
...See More
What Varieties of 2010 Fall Tomato Have You Planted?
Q
Comments (23)
Susan, You asked where all the 'brave' souls are who intended to plant fall tomatoes. I think we're all still here, but the thing to understand about fall tomatoes is that some years you 'need' them because the spring crop is playing out and its productivity is decreasing. Other years you don't 'need' fall tomatoes because the spring tomatoes are still going strong. I can't speak for everyone else, but my spring crop is in amazingly good shape, so I don't 'need' new plants for fall. That was a decision I made in early June, by the way, because early June is when I would have started seeds for fall tomatoes. I also could have started new plantings for fall from cuttings a week or two ago and still could do that now, but there's no reason to do that with the spring plantings still going strong. I suspect that if I kept records, I'd see that I do a fresh planting for fall about half the time, but not last year and not this year. I have grown longkeeping types and they are OK. Their flavor is nothing to get excited about but it still is superior to grocery store tomatoes. The key to success with longkeepers is that you have to have a place to put them where they can ripen slowly. I use the tornado shelter as a root cellar, so I have that. Depending on the space you have in your house, you may have room to store them and keep them as they ripen slowly. They are worth the effort if you don't have a lot of tomatoes frozen, canned or dehydrated to get you through winter. Since I started dehydrating so many in recent years, I haven't bothered with longkeeping types. The ones I've grown have included Longkeeper, Red October, Yellow In Red Out, Reverend Morrow's, Old-Fashioned Garden Peach and Winterkeeper. Sunray is another one that lasts forever on the kitchen counter even though it is not normally described as a longkeeper. Larry, I'm sorry the drought there is causing you so much trouble. I spent a huge amount of money watering my garden in June (the June water bill was three times higher than the May water bill, and the May water bill was twice as high as the April water bill) and would have lost everything if I hadn't irrigated. The rain that arrived here in late June/early July has kept it going a bit longer, but I'm pretty much at the point that if rain doesn't fall here in July, I may not be able to keep the garden going much longer. It is a simple financial decision, you know, because at some point you spend more to water than you'll get in produce out of the garden. Several times in recent years (2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007 come to mind), I've just basically turned off the water and said "I'm done" and let the garden die, and that was after having a water bill in the triple digits. It is the hardest thing in the world to do, but water is very expensive here where I live and it takes enormous amounts of it to water a huge garden in clay soil. So, you certainly have my sympathy. If it doesn't rain here in July, my garden may not survive until August and that's just the reality of a low rainfall year. Even in a good year we don't get enough rain in June, July and August, and we're not having a good rainfall year here in Love County. We go for long periods with no rain and then get so much at once that much of it runs off instead of soaking in. Diane, Here's the difference between Tim and I. Let's say we cut up a couple of big ol' maters and made BLT sandwiches for lunch. After the meal, if I am cleaning up the kitchen, I look at the two or three slices of tomato left on a plate and decide to eat them right then and there so they won't spoil. They are so yummy! If he is cleaning up the kitchen, he puts them into the refrigerator and NO ONE eats them because of the way their taste and texture change. He doesn't even eat them!!!! So, when I see slices of tomatoes in the fridge, I take them out and feed them to the chickens. I don't know why he doesn't just eat those couple of slices himself, offer them to me, or feed them to the chickens. Ezzirah, To keep that fresh-from-the-garden taste and texture, never refrigerate tomatoes. It basically reduces their quality to little better than that of the tasteless red 'excuses' for tomatoes that most all grocery stores sell. You'd think after well over 25 years of hearing me say "don't put the fresh tomatoes in the fridge" that my DH would understand not to do it, but in this case, it just goes in one ear and out the other. The funny part is that he doesn't eat them after he sticks them in the fridge. My DH is VERY spoiled. He is so used to always having tons of fresh garden produce around that he isn't very good at eating leftovers of anything. It drives me nuts. He is great at putting stuff in the fridge, but not at taking it out, reheating it and eating it. That just drives me nuts! (What is the point, after all, in putting it into the refrigerator if you aren't going to use it?) Sometimes I think men shouldn't be allowed in the kitchen, but then he cooks a lot in the summer when I'm canning a lot and sick of being in the kitchen, so I can't very well order him out of 'my' kitchen, now can I? Dawn
...See More
What variety of tomato plant to give to novices
Q
Comments (15)
I would like to thank everyone for their input. Originally I had planned to just start Celebrity seedlings for distribution. Then I decided to post this message on the forum and I am thankful I did. Besides Celebrity, I will also try Rutgers, Better Bush, and Husky Red. I ordered the seeds yesterday and I am looking foward to this mini experiment. I will keep a few of these plants for myself and grow them on my farm to make my own observations. Celebrity is dependable but a little boring. Now I will have variety and keep records between these plants. I will keep the forum up to date as the season progresses.
...See More
Planting Suggestion for Diff Tomato Varieties
Q
Comments (3)
Well 4-5 gallons is usually considered too small for any tomato plant except maybe for one of the dwarfs. I know some have some success with 5 gallon buckets when they turn them into SWCs or use drip systems and a determinate variety but it is much extra work and in your zone even more. The potential for real success with tomato plants in small containers is so unlikely it really isn't worth the work IMO. In most of the discussions here about container growing you'll find most recommend 8-10 gallon as a minimum for best results with even bigger preferred. It all depends on how you define success, what you are willing to accept for results given the work involved. Don't know what you mean by earth pots? But I sure can't see a tomato plant in with a cuke unless they are even bigger than 10 gallons or you are using one of the small bush cukes. Using proper sized containers for tomatoes and not over-crowding plants can increase your production 10 fold. Dave
...See More
californian
Original Author
14 years ago
Eyeofthewolf, That brings up a good point. Do most sellers have to educate customers as to what is supposed to taste good or grow good, or do most customers already know what they want? I was planning to advertise on Craigslist and the Recycler and PennySaver and sell the plants out of my backyard. I sold a few last year for $2.00 each, but now think I was charging way to low compared to what other places were charging for plants not nearly as nice as mine. The Fullerton Arboretum has an annual tomato sale billed as the biggest one west of the Mississippi and I couldn't believe people were paying $4.00 each for stunted plants three or four inches high that looked like they were suffering from salt or fertilizer burn in three inch pots.
Well I have 90 seedlings going right now and already potted up about 40 of them into 4 inch pots. I can now reuse my seed starting containers to start another batch of 40 seeds.
wordwiz
14 years ago
Last year, I found people didn't care as much about the specific name so much as the type: early, cherry, Roma, beefsteak. Yeah, there are always a couple of people who will only buy a "Brandywine" or "Early Girl" but if I tried to please everyone, I would need to order 200 packets of seeds!

One thing I plan to do this year is have samples on site - Delicious, Legend, Better Boy - for people to see. If my Goliath plants produce nicely, I may also sell those, as I have two packets of seeds that were sent as extras in packages.

Mike
slo_garden
14 years ago
californian,

Last year I sold tomato seedlings in front of my house on a Saturday. Between word-of-mouth and an ad on craigslist, I sold almost 200 plants in under four hours. I could have sold twice that as people kept coming all day. I charged $3 each or 4/$10 for a 8-10 inch plant in a 4" pot. The "exotics" went first (black, green, striped, etc.), followed by yellow/orange, then reds, then pinks were last. Few people asked for specific varieties, but many people were looking for unusual and colorful, as they have gotten used to seeing these types of tomatoes in farmer's markets and restaurants. They only specific requests that I got were a lot of people were looking for compact plants to grow in containers. I hope that was helpful.
vikingkirken
14 years ago
If I was going to sell plants (and I'm thinking about it), I would spend a little time making color labels to put on the pots, with a picture, variety name, DTM, and "type" as wordwiz suggested...

I don't know where in CA you are, but if it's anything like the NYC metro area, you could probably sell a lot of heirlooms just fine if you hype the "gourmet heirloom" aspect... it's really trendy nowadays!
fusion_power
14 years ago
pictures sell.

4 inch cups are best for small producers.

Sungold
Camp Joy
Dr. Carolyn Pink
Black Cherry
Galina

Kellogg's Breakfast
Brandywine
Cuostralee
Paul Robeson
Cherokee Purple
Dr. Wyche

Opalka
Heidi

DarJones
trudi_d
14 years ago
I donate all my extras to Zonta, my service club, and we sell them in-house. I can sell as many hybrids as I can OPs. The fastest to sell are dwarf plants like Tiny Tim which can be grown in a windowsill container--not everyone lives in a house and so you need something for the Apt folks too, also DETs go faster than INDs simply because they're smaller plants and easier to care for--a lot of the Zontians are seniors and so they're mobility-impaired and need plants which require less work. I usually include several DET hybrids which have disease resistance simply because it can me an success for the gardener--also, the familiarity of the name is important, Celebrity and Rutgers will run out before Great White or Pink Floyd ;-)
hardclay7a
14 years ago
With an El-Nino spring on its way, you might want to consider some disease resistant varieties also. Especially If you want to sell more plants in 2011.
cyrus_gardner
14 years ago
With $3 /plants you cannot afford to educate people. Just make the best possible efforts to sell types that people already know them(big boy, big girl,,), plus some that are rare (color, shape..cherry, grape, yellow , stripe)
It would help to have pics and shortb decription put on a board, so people can educate themselves.
Just my views.
armymomma
14 years ago
I agree with those who say that pictures sell. I know this holds true when I shop the seed catalogs. Unless I am specifically looking for that type of tomato, an entry without a picture generally doesn't get a second glance. I'd also do a short description (like the seed catalogs) extolling its virtures of taste, disease resistance etc.
sue_ct
14 years ago
Go for standards that everyone knows and some heirlooms with fun or colorful names that sound "heirloom". Without photos or education, the names are all people will have to go on and the name alone will have to sell the plant. Big Boy, Beefstake, Early Girl (descriptive), and names like "Amish", Cherokee Purple and Mortgage lifter with a small card in front of those plants with a short history of the name. Include a couple large tomatoes, a couple early ones, and maybe a grape and/or cherry. You could add sungold or Kellogs Breakfast for the adventerous.
mtbigfigh
14 years ago
Calif
I think in response to your statement:
"I am wondering if the average customer would even know what they were and that they could be potentially produce much tastier fruit then the run of the mill plants they could buy in the big box stores or garden centers"

I may have answered in another thread you posted on soggy pro-mix
The Fullerton Arboretum(city you live in) is supposed to sell approx 40,000 tomato plants over a 4 days sale sometime next month - all heirlooms 150+ varieties - I think you mentioned you had been there and the plants were not in good condition last time - well there is an opportunity to sell better plants and see what the consumer is buying

Dennis
californian
Original Author
14 years ago
Well, I decided to buy three 250 seed packs from Hazzard's Wholesale seeds anyway; Opalka, Marianna's Peace, and Cherokee Purple. Got here in only four days, which was faster than even Baker Creek which took five days. It is interesting that they include the germination rate on their packages, which ranged from 85% to 94%. Most seed packages I have seen don't include that information.
I think I will stick to my niche of mostly heirloom varieties. I'm not trying to be a full service seller of every variety. Just want to sell enough plants to pay for the cost of the plants I am going to plant in my own garden.
mtbigfigh
14 years ago
Cali
Cherokee Purple sells well here but the other 2 only so so - though Mariamma's Peace and Opalka are good they just haven't got a big following yet

I thought you had most of your garden plants(50 potted out and 50 more started) started from seed already - how many are you going to grow
are you going to buy plants too ??

Dennis
californian
Original Author
14 years ago
I just planted another 45 seeds today, 15 each of the varieties I mentioned in my previous post. I also planted another 30 old seeds, but I don't have much hope for them as only a few sprouted so far. I am just about maxed out on area under my lights and heat mat and oven, so I think maybe around 150 seedlings will be it until it gets warm enough to leave all of them outside all day and night. Whether I start a second batch of 150 seedlings will depend on whether I can sell most of what I started already. I am hoping that my seedlings get big enough to sell before the Fullerton Arboretum has its monster tomato and pepper sale. Looking on Craigslist I only see one seller so far selling tomato plants, but the number will most likely increase in March. My tallest seedlings are now about three inches tall, and it has been about four weeks since I planted the first ones. I have been giving them some potassium nitrate dissolved in rainwater, as it says on the Pro-Mix bag to start supplemental feeding as soon as the seedlings get their first set of true leaves as Pro-mix doesn't have any fertilizer in it. I believe someone posted Cal-nitro was a good fertilizer to use, maybe I'll go buy some.
azruss
14 years ago
When I lived in Southern California Cherokee Purple was very popular. People couldn't get enough of them!

My own thoughts: many, if not most casual tomato growers are looking for old time tomato taste, which usually also means red (or "reddish") and at least baseball size.

Californians are so lucky: they can purchase this old time flavor at any local farmers' market from June or July to mid November. Dang I miss that in the worst way! (I have been known to occasionally fly in for the day to go to the Santa Monica Wednesday Farmers' Market!)
mtbigfigh
14 years ago
Cali
That's cool - I planted 24 varieties (have 7 more trays to seed) in 50 cells Tuesday evening 5X10 in 1 1020 tray - 5 seeds per cell (dense method) All outside under patio cover on heat mats with dome cover - when it's cold as it has been this week I set the daytime for 70 degrees and at night warmer trying to maintain 75-85 degrees

yesterday and today over 4 dozen have sprouted so they will be comimg soon - will then transfer tray to light system 1 of 4 shelves each with 4 fl grow lights (outside also) - when the seedlings are about 1 month old I will pot out in square 3 1/2 pots and after 2-3 weeks start setting in sun a little each day - as close as we live to each other we should meet and trade some seeds - check out each other sytem
Dennis

What varieties of tomato plants would be easiest to sell?

Comments (18)

digdirt2

eyesofthewolf

Related Discussions

californian
Original Author

wordwiz

slo_garden

vikingkirken

fusion_power

trudi_d

hardclay7a

cyrus_gardner

armymomma

sue_ct

mtbigfigh

californian
Original Author

mtbigfigh

californian
Original Author

azruss

mtbigfigh

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

What varieties of tomato plants would be easiest to sell?

Comments (18)

Related Discussions

californianOriginal Author

californianOriginal Author

californianOriginal Author

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

californian
Original Author

californian
Original Author

californian
Original Author