Here’s the big question for 2024: do you want a cutting garden or a flower farm? Because honestly, they are two very different things! 2023 was my third year of flower farming, and now, going into my fourth year, I have lots of lessons to share with you all and to help you make your own decisions on whether you want a cutting garden or a flower farm. And though there’s no right or wrong answer, I hope my experience can help you figure out what works best for you!
If you prefer watching to reading, check out the YouTube video below:
What I learned about flower farming in 2023
As you might already know, running this flower farm is not my first time being self-employed. I ran a successful music business as a private voice teacher, and I know from running that business and from learning from other business owners that the third year of any small business really is a make-or-break year. That being said, if I hadn’t run a business previously, 2023 might have actually broken me.
2023 was really rough for business owners.
All of the weddings I expected to come in and all of the ebook sales and website traffic that I expected to have were definitely lower than they had been in past years. I know times were really tough for everyone, so people were generally just not spending as much as they would have done before. Quite honestly, I feel like it’s a huge accomplishment for any business to have stayed the same, or to only have fallen a little bit, and to still be able to keep going after the rough year we had!
With all that said, here are six lessons I learned in 2023 about running my flower-farming business!
1. Cut what needs to be cut
One lesson I’ve learned is to have the fearlessness to cut what needs to be cut. When something’s ready, I don’t try to save it anymore–I just cut it. Or if I don’t have an occasion for it, I don’t waste time feeling bad or anything. I’ve learned that flowers don’t keep, and if you wait for that magical, mystical perfect time, their time will have passed, and you will have wasted a flower!
This lesson can count for both in the flower farm and just in your business in general. With my business, I feel like I’m mostly continuing to do the same things I have been doing, but I have decided to cut about half of my markets. Since I’m cutting something, I also decided to double down on weddings in 2024. I am very passionate about weddings so much and know that that’s what I really want to do. If I could have two weddings every single weekend that it’s feasible with the flowers I have, I would be quite pleased.
P.S. If you’re getting a bouquet CSA from me, just know that it could be very wedding-themed this year!
2. Know what works and what doesn’t
Another lesson is to really drill down on what works and what actually doesn’t work for you and just drop the things that don’t work.
Learning what works for me and what does not work for me includes things like the quality of soil I have, the time I have, what I tend to be good at growing, what I’m not good at growing and what my customers like. And I’m sure that will grow and evolve as the years go by. It was very easy to be fearless with my 2024 seed order because I knew what I needed, and I didn’t need to waffle or feel like I was making any egregious errors.
For me, one of the things that hasn’t been working is dahlias. While I’m still going to plant dahlias, I’m just not going to obsess over them. We have a lovely grower here in Saskatchewan (Melissa of Backroad Blossoms) who grows amazing dahlias, so at least for my wedding work, I know that if my dahlias aren’t looking great, I can always order from her.
The same thing goes for sunflowers. Many of you know that I don’t grow a lot of sunflowers because I have someone five minutes down the road who grows tons of sunflowers, and she does a beautiful job of it! I don’t waste time worrying about these crops because I’m surrounded by experts who I can support whenever I’m in need.
Related: How To Tell If Maker Markets Are Right For You
3. Accept help
This year, with having a baby and three other children, I really could not do everything myself. (I know if you follow me on social media and YouTube, it probably looks like I do everything myself, but my writer, Siarra, is responsible for much of what you see. What I do, what she does, and what my gardening hand Chasidy does adds up to at least one full-time job with a bunch of overtime hours.) So, don’t be a hero! Hire someone. Even if you feel like you can’t hire someone, you’ll be so grateful for the additional help with weeding and other small tasks if you hire someone for 2 hours for $30 or so.
Put it in perspective: doesn’t that amount of weeding feel totally worth it?
I often joke that my business would have been a bunch of weeds and me crying if I didn’t have that kind of help last year. Maybe for you in your operation help doesn’t look like that. Help might be child care, or help might be somebody making meals for you or doing deliveries or whatever, but however help looks like at some point, you’re probably going to need some, and you should absolutely take it! You deserve it.
4. Extend your season
I really started to hone in on how to get more reliable early flowers for Zone 3 last gardening season. I’ve done a lot of experimenting over the past six years, and there have been a lot of dead plants along the way. Maybe, to some people, too many dead plants, but it’s worth it because every year, I’m getting more and more flowers that are ready before everyone else’s.
If you want to learn more about how I do this, check out my new ebook, Frost Proof Flower Garden to extend your short growing season and add 45-60 more days of flowers to your cut flower business, especially if you live in an area where you have a lot of competition with other flower farmers!
5. Maintain your soil health
Soil health is so important. I know that soil health isn’t one of those things that flower farmers often think of as the fun thing about gardening because we’d rather think about all the pretty flowers we’re going to grow, but if you have bad soil, it’s really going to limit what and how much you can grow.
I haven’t wanted to invest the thousands of dollars that it would have cost to get all-new soil, so instead, I’ve been doing the slow version and just slowly building up my soil. It has been rough, but now that the earlier beds that I started on are starting to get better, I can really see the difference that good soil makes.
We’re still making amendments, and our soil is still not perfect by any means, but now after the third year of flower farming and technically the fourth year of gardening (because we were gardening here before I started Shifting Blooms), you can really notice a difference in our soil health and it’s really starting to get there!
P.S. Always throw in a shovel or two of manure when you are planting your pumpkins! It really makes a difference.
6. Nourish relationships with customers & followers
Finally, the last lesson is that having a relationship with your followers and customers is everything! Whether that relationship is on social media, through an email list or if you just do regular in-person markets and you see the same people over and over that relationship is so key to having a good business. I would argue it’s more important than growing perfect flowers!
So, whatever you can do in 2024 when people are still feeling really strapped financially to make sure that you do have a good relationship with your customers, do it!
If you liked this blog post, find me on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram for more cold-climate vegetable gardening tips, delicious recipes, and cut flower goodness! I also make weekly videos over on my YouTube channel. I hope to see you there!
Want to start your own cut flower business?
Marketing is the core of a successful flower-farming business. This bundle will teach you the basics of running the back end of your business, targeting your ideal customer, making money as a flower farmer, pricing your work, standing out from the competition, and so much more! Plus, at the end, we bring it all together and show you how to make your own plan that you can easily implement–so you don’t forget about your main goals as the days and months slip by!
Join the conversation