- Farmers Dare to Sow Flowers
- New York vegetable grower
converts farm to cut flowers
- By Brittney Jerred
New York Correspondent
- No, people don’t need flowers but flowers make people feel good. That’s the line of thinking Robert Ambrose had to adopt early on in his farming career after his broccoli stayed on the tables at his farm stand and floral bouquets disappeared from buckets.
His next crop investment became clear to Ambrose after a woman came to his farm stand in Stalhstown, Pa., studied the broccoli and told him she could buy it cheaper down the street. Then she spotted some flowers his wife had picked from her garden that day: “But I love flowers. I’ll take them. How much are they?,” the woman said.
Ambrose hasn’t looked back since. What started as a vegetable farm nine years ago is primarily a flower farm today.
He started with Johnny’s Selected Seed packets of zinnias, snapdragons, status and Queen Anne’s Lace. This season he’ll grow more miniature dahlias and sunflowers, which are pretty popular. Bouquet prices range from $6.50 to $10.50.
Ambrose sells to country clubs, wholesale flower dealers and restaurants. The mix has become extravagant with 250 different kinds of flowers. The switch has been a business challenge, Ambrose said, and an intellectual challenge.
“You’re dealing with an entirely different audience because you’re dealing with a product that is not essential at all,” Ambrose said. Steve Bogash, a cooperative Extension agent with Penn State University, sees flowers as part of the farm market mix.
Bogash travels throughout the Northeast helping farmers get started in the flower business.
If people are serious about selling flowers, Bogash recommends people first learn how to make a bouquet. It sounds simple but there is an art to bunching flowers and many times, growers let this detail slip which hurts overall sales.
Done right, bouquets are a nice way for farmers to add value to their tables, Bogash says, without committing acres of valuable land. If farmers want to go beyond selling flowers at their stands, restaurants and country clubs are often a nice niche that sometimes gets overlooked. He suggests farmers provide a vase service: farmers own the vases and agree to change the bouquets once or twice a week at the restaurant.
Flower farmers can also offer florists an alternative to overseas producers. Bogash recently received a grant for $44,000 from the State Archives and Records Administration to survey 2,000 florists in the Northeast. He plans to find out what farmers are up against when dealing with florists.
Though growers in the Northeast are limited in their production months, they may be able to provide quick and fresh service a couple months out of the year to florists who would otherwise order from South America year-round. More farmers seem to be making the switch.
This year the New York Vegetable Growers Association dedicated a full day of its annual convention in Syracuse, N.Y., to cut flower sessions. Organizers invited horticulture experts as well as wildflower farmers to share their experiences. The sessions were well attended. The Pennsylvania Vegetable Growers hosts a similar show in Hershey, Pa., and Bogash said attendance improves each year. As tomato crop prices plummet, some farmers have told him they’ve opted to plant snapdragons.
Some varieties are easier to start with. Bogash names lisianthus, snapdragons and dahlias as hot sellers that are pretty easy to work with. He also suggests people sell the bouquets as ready-to-go — wrapped in cellophane with plant food included.
“There are so many ways to beat this market,” Bogash said.
Like any other crop, there’s secrets among the growers. Bogash has published suggestions at his Web site: http://buyergrowerconnection.cas.psu.edu/
