Blooming Insights: Unveiling the Secrets of Cutflower Gardening with Roz Chandler

If you're someone who has a passion for cut flowers, our environment and wants to make the world more beautiful, you're in the right place. Whether you're growing flowers for pleasure or profit, I'm on a mission to empower flower enthusiasts and professionals to help change the world around them. Whether you're just starting out or needing help in hand, or looking to scale us to substantial flower business, I'm your Cut Flower Woman. Welcome to the Cut Flower Podcast. Hello, so today is rather unusual. What I'm going to do is I'm going to answer all the questions that were put on a Facebook post in the Cut Flower Farmer Facebook group, so we do have a Facebook group called Cut Flower Farming, Growth and Profit in Your Business. And that's what I intend to do, give you Growth and Profit in Your Business. So I want to answer some of your questions and I asked you what were your biggest struggles in your business. So let's kick off and go for this. So Paula Marshall said, I really struggled to price bouquets, poses and buckets. I really don't want to undervalue the price of flowers and also don't want to outmarket myself. There are a few flower growers locally and also want to work collaboratively too. It's our first year of grown flowers and I really want to price blooms well. And that was echoed a lot actually under this Facebook post. We had Kimbley Jean saying the same thing. We had Danielle Grief saying the same thing. There were at least five or six people talking about pricing. So I think it's probably worth coming back and doing another podcast on pricing. But I don't want to leave you hanging, so I'm going to tell you what my views on it are. So this is probably the hardest thing that you're ever going to do in your business is get the pricing right against the costs. Now remember as a flower farmer, that's really difficult because you're putting everything into the ground. You're investing a lot. You're buying tunnels, you're buying seeds, you're watering and you haven't really sold anything yet unless you're lucky enough to be part of a CSA, but we'll come back to that. So the difficult thing is, okay, what are your costs? You've got to plan your costs for the whole year. And then you're going to have a strategy for actually what you're going to sell. What are you going to sell to whom and at what cost and what profit does that leave you? Now pricing is a very sensitive issue, of course. The price is only what somebody's prepared to pay. It's like a house really. If you think your house is worth a million, that would be lovely, isn't it? If you think your house is worth a million and it doesn't sell and nobody buys it, it's probably because it isn't to them. So you now have to think about that and you need to think about the value of your property. There is a good book called Pricing for Profit by Peter Hill. And he was a speaker on my Blooming Business course and we'll be running this again in September, so more on that later. But he has a different approach to pricing. You can only grow your business by increasing the number of customers, by increasing the frequency they buy, so lots of subscription models, increasing the average value of each transaction, increasing the price you charge, or increasing the efficiency of your business by lowering your overheads. They're a tweak on each of those, actually, would make you more profitable. But back to pricing. So pricing is about value to me. It's about what are your customers prepared to pay for what you're offering them. You know, we can all sell a pen, a pen does exactly the same thing. A bi-road does exactly the same as a really lovely Montblanc. But we decide to invest in that brand Montblanc for lots of reasons, because we love the brand, we love what it stands for, we love the values, we love the way it writes. Even though fundamentally they do the same thing. So what value are you offering your customer? What service are you giving them? Why are you different? Go back to that. What is your USB? And what we need to know is who are your customers and what are they prepared to pay? If I look at my business, we sell wholesale, we sell retail, we sell on flower markets, we do weddings, we do funerals. And if we go back to the per stem cost across all of those business channels, they are not the same. All right, they are very different. We are not selling the same thing to the same group of people. So I want you to look at that and think about what your strategy is and what you're going to sell for. So there isn't a simple rule. There's nothing which says, well, if you multiply it by three, you'll have all your overheads covered. Bear in mind and look at a florist model. And I always recommend to people to go and work in a florist for a short period of time, because it's a real eye opener. It's an eye opener in two ways. They are very clever at working out what their costs are to go into a bouquet and what they sell it for. And this will be very different to you, because obviously they're not growing. But they are buying it in from a wholesaler. So if they buy a rose in for a pound, they will need to charge that rose out at two pound fifty or three pound per stem in order roughly to cover their overheads. They've got rates and business rates and water and electricity and staff. And that's roughly how they work out what their profit is. Now, obviously you've got a difference in our because you're growing. You're not going to go and pick a rose at a pound and sell it at three pound, because that doesn't take into account any of your costs or your overheads or any of the value of that product. So my initial, without doing a full podcast on pricing, is to have a look around, have a look at what other flower farmers are doing and what their business models are, have a look at wholesalers, get a wholesale list from your nearest wholesaler and work out what they're selling their flowers for wholesale. That will give you an indication of the value of your flowers, but do, do, do not undervalue your flowers. Your value, your flowers are a better product. They're scented, they're British, they're seasonal, they're hand grown by you. You need to start to think about why you're different, write all those things down. I know a lot of people who grow purely for florists and what they do is grow for the florist specification. That has a value. If the florist comes along and says, I would like you to grow, Queen of Sweden roses for me. And I want them at this, a 50 cent to me, to stem length, and I want them to be available on this date that has a value, all right? So do, do not undervalue yourself. I have seen lots of things on Facebook groups of things where people say, I've only just started and I'm selling jam jars at the end of the drive and I'm selling them for X. And truly, truly undervalues yourself. You've got to think where your market is. So I hope that helps. And like I said, I think we need to do a whole thing on pricing because it's the biggest issue. But have a look around is my piece of advice. So I had something from Tina Caddy. Her question was, in the context of scale, I ran into this issue this year of growing lots of things that took my time and energy and didn't pan out for several reasons. Guys, time to germinate, time to size up, they're not ideal for my growing zone, they're trying too many new things. And maybe there's a rough formula for those of a seasoned and not so seasoned that help us grow the right amount of things for our farm or our garden and our size. So Tina, I'd like to answer this, there is no formula, absolutely no formula. If it was, it would be easy. But I'm thinking what's your market that would go right back to who are you selling to? So when you start with that, then you know your customers and then you know what they'd like to buy from you. And that's what you grow. So have a look at your ideal customer, name them, let's call them Sophie. What's Sophie's likes and habits? How often will she buy? Will she buy into a CSA and assuming you're based in the US? Will she buy into a CSA? Will she have a subscription model? What does this person look like? So if you were growing for weddings, you would be growing completely different to if you were growing for seasonal bouquets, they are different flowers. So it's all back to your markets, you need to start with that. Then I'd say, okay Tina, how much money do you want to make? Let's take a 12 month calendar, you know there are certain months of the year that you revenues will not come in as a seasonal flower grow. So how much money do you want to make and spread it across the months that you can make money? Look at the total revenue and take out your cost, take your time out as an employee, pretend you're an employee of this business, it's not your business and calculate your time. And then you'll be left with a profit. So you need to know who you're selling to, you need to know what you're selling, you need to know what your market is and this determines what you grow. Honestly, in the UK, if I had my time again, I would set up a foliage farm because right now you can't get hold of British foliage. It's a real shortage, we had lots of frost and cold last year and it's a shortage every year but it's made worse if our winters cause problems with foliage. And therefore the opportunity is there but obviously with foliage it takes lots of time to get it to fruition and maybe three years before you've got a product which is, you can actually make some money out of. So think about that. And then there are also more profitable crops than others, alright. So on this farm, in an idle world, we would have 60% of our stock would be perennials. 30% of our stock would be annules and 10% would be foliage, probably more foliage. My math isn't very good, maybe 20% would be foliage but then I'd get to 110%, but that's, you know, we all grow more than we should. So there are profitable crops and these are your cut and come again, of course, crops like dae ears. So if, but you've also got to think about the season, think about if you want a long season, what can you get in early that you can then turn around and do again? So if you're going to get tulips in early, you're going to turn them around and then you get dae ears in, that plot of land has really made some money for you. Alright, dae ears are cut again, tulips at the beginning of the season, are you going to go to croffisants, are you growing under a tunnel, work out your season and how are you going to fill that gap in January? In the UK, it's a problem, which is seasonal flowers in January and in issue and what are you going to do and how do you fill it? So I'd want to see a strategy and I'd want to see who am I selling to, what am I selling at, what cost am I selling, what do they want? I might even do a survey, what they want me to grow and I would really look for the crops that are going to give you a return. So for us, things like all layer going to flora, I could use that 300 times over, it's white, it's seasonal, it goes with everything, it's quick. I grow it in raised beds, it's great, once it's over, I sow again. I successfully sow all layer, same with cornflowers, same with clary sage, same with amaranthus, I was successfully sowed those so I get a really long season. I would intimately put obviously my dailies and my tulips at either end, using peonies in the middle of the season because that gives me my focus flower in the middle. But I'm not a great lover of peonies, okay? There was another question which I'll come on to, peonies are fantastic, they last more than 75 years as a plant and they will keep on giving. But in the UK, the season is four weeks, four weeks for you to maximize your return and I have to tell you have to pick them at the right time, you have to store them at the right temperature, you have to treat them really nicely and yes, they are beautiful, but you have a really limited season. So if you're a peony farmer, which there are lots and lots of peony farmers, you really have to maximize your profit over those four weeks. So you have to know the market, you have to have sowed to the market before you got them there. So I think about that, stay with us, we'll be right back. I first became aware of Sarah Raven many years ago when I started my flower farm. One of the first books I purchased was Sarah's The Cutting Garden. Sarah Raven has led the way in introducing a new kind of productive gardening. Her aim is to create intense colour and beauty, combined with a practical and easy to achieve approach. I still had the book, which is beautiful, and I go back to it again and again for design inspiration. Since the cutting garden, Sarah has gone on to write 12 more books and launch Sarah Raven dot com, home to everything you need for a truly beautiful and productive garden. From bright and highly scented cut flowers, such as Cosmos Azineas, to exclusive planting collections of tulips and our sissine from Lubbid Aliens, all of which Sarah tests and trials in her garden at Perch Hill to make sure it's wonderful in yours. Sarah Raven is offering 15% of for listeners of the Cut Flower podcast during June. Use the code SR Cut Flower 15, that's SR Cut Flower 15, and visit Sarah Raven dot com to discover more inspiration for your garden. Right, next one, Paula Marshall, I'd love to know how to scale up what are the best flowers for values in terms of scale, cut and come again, or cheaper to buy, and then know overheads in terms of looking after them, and also how to best reuse raised beds to get the most out of them in terms of seasonal flowers, what goes in where, okay, scaling up is all about knowing your customer base again, who's going to buy, have a market for it. If you're going to grow, like we did, 32,000 tulips, you've got to know where your market is before that tulip goes into the ground, who are you selling at to, what are you selling it for, and where's your margin? It's very tempting as flower farmers, it's like children in sweet shops, we can go around and buy lots and lots of seeds, and can put lots and lots of things in the ground, and not have a market for it. So scale depends on your market, I want to know what size and market is, who are you selling what to, who are your ideal customers? I know, for instance, that, like I said before, that farmers grow directly for florists. One thing for sure is not to do everything, all right, that will not work. With raised beds, annuals are good, and successful sowing is good. So sowing half the bed, waiting two or three weeks, sowing the other half of bed, waiting for the first lot to finish sowing again, things like all, think about your main crops that you're going to use, day in, day out for everything, and therefore your market doesn't really matter because you're going to use it for everything. Think about all layer to be able to turn the bed around, think about cornflowers, think about amaranthus, get your perennial mix right early on, 60% of it should be perennials. Don't have to worry, year on year, it's going to give you, keep giving and keep giving and keep giving, and it just makes life easier. And don't forget about foliage, get your foliage in as early as you can, like I say, most foliage won't come to fruition for two or three years, and therefore it doesn't pay you back, but boy, it will after that. So yes, you can scale, but I want to know who your market is, I want to know how much money you want to make, I want to know per month what you want to do, and what products you're going to be offering to this market, and then what you're going to grow. So turn it on its head, start with a marketing first, and then don't proceed into the ground until you know what your market is. So Sue, you've got scaling up what to begin, I know that you've got a much larger plug ground space going forward next year. And again, for me, so it starts with this strategy, because if you have two acres, it doesn't mean you necessarily grow on two acres. You might say, I'm going to grow on one acre, and this is what I'm going to grow, and this is how I'm going to maximize my yield. The worst case scenario is having a flower in the field that you haven't sold, because you've paid for that, you've watered it, you've got seed in, it's standing there, and then it's depreciating. So you need to know that everything you grow, you can sell. So it's sort of like almost, what do they call that, almost in time model, you've just got to grow it and then sell it, all right. So think about that, think about your market, your size, what you're going to sell, plan your strategy. So you're going to sell bouquets to whom, when, how, how much, what do they consist of, what can you put in bouquets, how can I cover the whole season, what's that cost going to be, what space do I need to grow it all in, and therefore, you know, we couldn't I could easily grow on five acres, and if I grew it on five acres, I would never market for five acres, all right, I know that, I've scaled, and also you've got to think about the resource needed to be able to do that, I've scaled my farm so that I've got enough resource in terms of manpower, enough, enough in terms of what I've purchased and brought in, enough tunnels to be able to cover all of that growing space, and then that would give me my strategy, but start with, start with, so how much money do I want to make? What would be my best year ever, and then come back to what you're going to grow? So here we have Shelley LaFours, she said, how to know when it's time to hire employees, or is there an alternative? I feel like I'm not getting enough to justify all the employee expenses, yes, I'm getting to the point of really needing help. Okay, this is a tricky one, but it's one that can easily be resolved if you think sort of a bit more, literally, about it, work out how much you make an hour, all right? If you've got your business, you're running, how much of your soul this year, how much is your time worth to you, and this should come up with an hourly rate, and you should be charging you into that, you're not the profit of the business, you're a employee of this business that's paid 25 pound an hour, and you need to work out how many hours you do, and whether this business is profitable. So let's say you earn 30 pound an hour, and I'm a great believer that if I can take somebody on and have a lower cost than my 30 pound an hour, I've made a margin, and I can use that time more effectively, and go off and make more money doing something else, or I can sit back and work on my business, not in my business, by that time it frees up for me, because it's so difficult, and to be out there working, working, working all the time, water, weeding, more weeds, more weeds, and at this time of year there's definitely overwhelm when I've seen a lot of overwhelm with flower farmers, but you need to really think about that, and think, okay, well if I can take somebody on at lower level, let's call it, if I took a qualified RHS water culturalist, maybe that's going to cost me 22 pound an hour. If I took someone who was just starting out, I might be able to get them for 16 or 17 pound an hour. If I took a student who was 21 and has no water cultural knowledge, I might be able to get them for 12 pound 50 an hour. If I took ad hoc freelancers who just come to do a bit of weeding, a bit of this, a bit of that, I might get away with 10 pound 50, 11 pound an hour, and so on and so on. There is a scheme called Rag in the UK, WRAG, and it's an amazing organisation, and it takes horticulturalists on for a year, a year's programme, and they come to you for about 15 hours a week, they're on minimum wage, and your deal is to train them in return for their minimum wage. And boy, I have had four now, and three of them are still remaining on the farm once they've qualified, because they qualify after a year, and then they're a fully-fledged employee, and then you start to play employment and so on. So look elsewhere, in your situation, I'll try freelancers first, I'll get some help in peak season, I'll try students, I'd even try some volunteers in return for training. I never believe that you should invite volunteers and expect them to work for nothing, I find that quite difficult person, it's just a thing I find personally, because your business making money, I'd prefer to bring them in and give them something in return, maybe it's one of my courses, maybe it's training, maybe it's day doing something else. Take little steps, take somebody on a Saturday staff or something, but I know right now I couldn't cope if I didn't have staff. So I think if you want to grow, at some point you're going to have to take the leap. And then I've got Ladmilla, Ladmilla, and she says about minimizing works, what's the easiest low hassle flowers to minimize work? Okay, well the lowest is perennials, all right, certainly in the UK we're going to want the drought climate in the summer, and perennials can cope with that a lot better than perennials. I would always supplement my perennials with annules because that annules is the great thing in the UK that florists want to get hold of and they can't actually get from wholesalers, so you have a unique product. So perennials, annules, and foliage. So think about your cut and come again, think about your day years, think about things like snap dragons, they'll cut and come again, and think about your direct sow easy annules that you're just going to put straight into the soil, things like claw and flowers, clary sage, amy, or layer, they're easy, they don't take a lot cosmos, cosmos is so prolific, and you keep cutting it or keep giving sweet peas, all the easy annules that will give you flowers between 10 and 12 weeks. And what a great way to take seeds at £2.50 a packet and then return enormously, if you did a return per seed it would be enormous, so I hope that helps you. Stay with us, we'll be right back. We would love to see you in our best bunch membership, over 250 members all come together and collaborate and talk together and learn from each other. We have weekly Q&As with me and my team, we have experts answering your questions, we have guest speakers every month, the portal already has over 30 trainings in their view to catch up on, from everything from dried flowers, willow growing, pruning, propagation, you name it. And we also have discounts of up to 50% on seeds and plants and clothes, you will make your monthly investment back, of course. And a Facebook group as well to answer questions whenever you want to, it's truly amazing value. All the details can be found here, buildgateflowers.carterah.com, board slash page, board slash the best bunch. And we'll put that in the show notes. Then we, Eleanor Rawlings, just how do you take the leap? How do you take the time to promote your business and grow and harvest the crops? Both just seem full time to me, I'm doing this on a really small scale. AR is the honest answer and it's all about time management and time blocking. It's very easy to get absorbed out in the field and not easy to get back and do your admin and your accounts and your strategy and your planning and your costing and what comes next. It's so important to work on your business, all right, and not in it because that business will never grow. So in order to move forward, you are going to have to get some resource to help you in pixies and students or something to buy yourself some time. You're going to have to time block, you're going to have to say between nine and ten every day, I'm going to sell something, all right, that's what you call your selling time. Because every day you need to sell something, whether that's a course, a workshop, a bucket of blooms, whatever it is, but you are going to have to sell something to make this business viable. All right, there is no use having a field full of flowers and nobody to buy them, okay, so working on your business and not in it, time management, time blocking and also transition, a lot of flower farmers have full time jobs and they're doing this as a side hustle and I say to people with flower farmers on our courses, I say listen, transition very gently, give one day a week up as your full time job if you can, all right, lots of nurses, doctors, most farmers, all sorts of people looking for a different career, give one day up, work out what that day is paid for you. So let's say maths wise, because it's easier, that you are paid £10,000 a day and so your annual salary is £50,000 a year because you work five days a week, something like that. So if you give up one, that day is worth £10,000, so you're down to £40,000 that you're bringing in from your job. So £10,000 is what you are going to have to try and make as a flower farmer and I'd like to see a strategy about how you're going to make that and you've got a plan. How does that plan out for you? How well, what does that £10,000 consist of? That's the way I would do it and I would transition. Flower farming isn't the kind of job that you could give up your day job on a Friday and start flower farming on Monday and make money, I'm afraid. So no, it's the answer. There's one here which is completely not business related, it's all to do with pest control, especially slugs. I'll answer that one quickly because this one is really about business, but slugs we use sluggo because it's environmentally sound and doesn't harm any other wildlife and we also use beer tracks and we also use nematodes. We go on slug attack. So I will probably do a whole, I think there probably is a podcast on pests but we could do another one. But as I asked, how to store different flowers after cutting, temperature, how long have a stage, what flowers store well? We did a webinar quite recently on cutting and conditioning which I will make, we'll put on the website at some point in the next 10 days, let's say. But really storing flowers has to be as cold as you possibly can. If you're lucky enough to have large refrigeration at five degrees, that would be amazing. We don't. We have air conditioning and we try and store them as cool as we can. Honesty, honestly, depends on what type of flower. Most flowers need to be a little bit out but not fully out in order to cut them, but something like a P&E, for instance, need to be marshmallow stage when you squeeze it before you cut it. And flowers store well, it all depends how you've cut and conditioned them, it's vital. So we'll probably do a whole podcast on cutting conditioning because I did a webinar for an hour. So it's not an easy topic to answer. It varies according to the stem, you know, is it milky, is it hardy? Rose's, for instance, like to be seared in boiling hot water. Honestly, I could go on forever, but I will do another podcast on that. So then came Kelly, kill feather. She asked, I wanted to ask you about brutal choices you've made as a grower, like deciding to ditch a flower that everyone grows because financially it's not worth the time, the space, or just wasn't marketable enough to warrant the space. We have been the most controversial goals, what have been the most controversial goals you've made to the farm, plants that people would expect to see on a flower farm, but your experiences moved you away from them. Flowers I've been bearish, farmers ditched for different reasons, include dailies, cosmos, acitors, corn flowers, stalks, bells of Ireland, and even some flowers, which might be regarded as absolute musters of smaller grower. Just curious, if you have similar tough choices, yes, we absolutely do. We have ditched, for instance, bells of Ireland, because it's very difficult to germinate. We have ditched you stoma, lazy antus, which I would love to grow, but it's very difficult to germinate and isn't worth all the effort. And probably quite controversial, we've ditched sunflowers, because you can buy sunflowers cheaply elsewhere. They don't fit very easily into bouquets. If we want to use them or we get that one wedding where somebody wants to use it, then we will buy them from another grower that's really good at doing sunflowers. It just isn't worth it on a perstem or a per head basis for sunflowers. We would never ditch dailies, because they can't come again. They're probably the most productive flower, along with cosmos. I wouldn't ditch acitors or corn flowers or stalks, but I have ditched. I wouldn't grow lilies, because I just don't like them. I don't grow pinks or carnations either. It's kind of, I suppose, grow what you love, as well as what's marketable, but it's to understand what your market demands. I don't grow huge amounts of peonies either. I've told you the reason I don't grow huge amounts of peonies. They're fairly expensive, and they're only here for a limited amount of season. And lots of people, you've got mass peony farmers, and I can buy them from other growers, so I don't invest in peonies. It takes too much space for what it gives me. Oh, and the one thing also is ditch wallflowers. Every year we laugh about the fact that we grow wallflowers. I'm not even sure what we do. I don't like them. I don't like the colour of them. I don't like what they give me, so I've ditched wallflowers. So lilies, carnations, wallflowers, sunflowers are definitely off my list. And peonies, we only grow a very limited amount. Hope that helps. Grow what you love. Kelly, you've also asked about workshops. Do you run any farm like reef making, bouquet building, build picker and seasons for sessions? Would you, if you do, does it get in the way of farming, or is it value-added to your brand to build these kinds of want-to-run relationships with local buyers and groups? Is it worth doing, or a colossal headache? Okay, yes, we do. Probably not as many as lots of other flower farmers do. That's because a lot of what we do is online, and your audience online is bigger, and therefore, financially, more viable. But we do farm days three times a year, just a day where, in fact, people have come to learn about propagation, we do a farm tour, we do floristry, and we do a really good fun day. And that's just a farm day. It's quite limited three times a year. We do a business retreat in August here on the farm, which we're doing under the 19th and 20th of August this year, which is all about business in a box, and we're doing sort of a brand photo shoot for people at the same time, and they come along for two days, and be immersed working on their business, not in their business, so we're taking away from their business, and giving them all the skills to build a profitable flower farm. So that's what we do here at Farm. We do reef making at Christmas. Difficult because it has to be viable numbers-wise. So if you're going to do it on your farm, and you can only take six people, the numbers for me don't work out. Just work out the numbers first. If it helps to have people on a subscription basis, so they're going to come and take subscription flowers from you every month, it would be worth having a flower hour once a month at your farm. They come and pick and you make it okay, but be really limited with your time. Work out your value of your time about what you're going to get. I hope that helps. How would you break into a saturated market? I don't believe you are most things are in a saturated market. If you think about your local high street and the amount of Indian restaurants or Chinese restaurants that are in your local high street, I have a very small local high street, and I think there are four Indians and three Chinese, Turkish and a Greek restaurant, and you could argue that the Turkish and Greek restaurant are very similar in their cuisine. However, I make the choice where I choose to go, and I never change it. I buy into the brand, they always deliver. I know the price, I know the food's going to be good. I know there are others, but I don't necessarily try them. It's just easy. When I want to take away, it's just easy. I go and buy it, and I don't want to think about it too much. In the same way, people buy your flowers because of you, you personally, your story, your USB, your brand. The fact you've got beautiful flowers is also lovely, but they're not really buying that. They're buying what flowers give them. Flowers give them joy, and coming to you, and you growing them, and you handing them over, and you being a nice person that they connect with is much more important than a saturated market. I don't think there is a saturated market. I think competition is healthy, because I think it then shows you that actually there is a market. So, I never ever worry about competition. So, Sandy Fletcher, super small scale, quarter of an egg section, is it possible? Do I choose one thing, or a tiny pose is doable? So, okay, Sandy, it goes back to how much you want to earn. Is this a side hustle, or is this a full-time job? Quarter of an egg is viable, but it's fairly small. I normally say to flower farmers, an egg is viable to make a full-time living out of. I also say you don't need five acres. It's fairly intensive farming, but I would choose if you had, for instance, a quarter of an egg, I would choose what my market was, and what I was going to grow for that market. I would definitely do productive crops, like dailies, two lips. I would do some annuals and presents, and I would try and cover the whole season. I wouldn't try and do too much. Remember that one bouquet, if you're doing bouquets, for instance, or a layer can go in every bouquet, a dailies can go in every bouquet. It doesn't have to be too different, just because you only see what's in your plot, doesn't mean everyone else does. Choose cutting, come again, really productive flowers. Stay away from pioneers and loopings, or anything that can have any problems, pest control with it, and make it really intensive. Grow those plants really close together. Gabriella Baker harvesting and choosing which way to sell your flowers as a first-year flower farmer. How do I preserve my flowers without a cooler, or would it not be an option? Would I only be able to sell to market at the same morning that I cut them? It would be hectic but doable. What if the farmer's market you're looking at happens to already have other vendors selling flowers, would you still try to sell them or choose different farmer's markets? Can you contact a seller to a florist in the middle of a season, or should you only do that at the beginning? Do you ever come in cold-calling or meeting them in person first, or calling to set up an appointment? Really as I ask in regards to florist questions, because I've got a late start, and I won't have anything producing until mid to late summer. Okay, Gabriella, and ask if your question is never too late to start. Absolutely not. So in that situation, you've got stock, you need to sell it. So you need to find a market. So for instance, how true lips 33,000? We were doing really well, and one week we had a glut of them because some came earlier and some were later than we had predicted. So we cut them because they were ready, and we put them in the van, and we took them into central London. And I had sort of a list of five or six florists that I wanted to call on. I'd looked at them. I knew what the style was. I thought they'd be interested. I popped to the first florist, who's very well known in North London, and opened the back of the van, and I sold everything. I sold it all to one florist. Lots of reasons. I knew she was a big florist. I knew she employed lots of florists within her store. And I knew that, therefore, there was a market for my florist, for my flowers. And I have continued now to trade with her, and take my flowers to her. It's a big order and it's worth doing. So in answer to your question, turn up, just turn up. Getting hold of florists on the phone is very difficult, because you call them, and they tend to not, to personally owns a shop tent or makes decisions, tends not to be there. They're certainly not there all the time. Try and show up. Try and find out who they are. Follow them on Instagram. Try and make contact with them. Try, we send out a florist sheet every week of our availability. We've got high availability of this, low availability of this. This is the price for STEM. These are the minimum orders. And this is a delivery. So you can do that every week, but gosh, no, it's never too late. You've got stock that you need to get rid of. Should you try and sell in different flower markets? Do not worry that some other competition is there. I don't know of a really good market that doesn't sell, that doesn't have other people selling, the same as you. Yours has just got to be different. So we sell on a London farmer's market. And in that, there are probably four people selling vegetables. A few food stores. Lots and lots of cheese stores. Lots and lots of produce stores. There's one other store selling flowers. And the same as us. So we've got to be different. You've got to be different. And you've got to be different. And your brand has got to be different. And we sell ourselves on there. So they were just last week was a classic. They're cell pianists, and they'll sell them at two pound a stem. And they'll sell five of their pianists for 10 pounds and they're wrapped in cellophane and they look pretty awful. So if you're going to compete with that, you've got to be a lot better. So I wasn't going to sell our pianists for two pounds a stem to consumers in London. So we wrapped three pianists with all layer and beautifully wrapped it in brown paper and twine. And they looked lovely. And all they had to do was take the whole thing home and put it in their vase. And we were selling those three pianists and a little bit of all layer for way above what he was selling his five pianists for 10 pounds. So think about the market. Really, really, but don't be put off by doing it. I mean, look at Chizic flower market in the UK. Everyone there is a flower seller. Everybody there is selling flowers. And that doesn't put them off. They just got to be different. So in answer to all of your questions. Oh, and go back to the one about cutting. We always cut our flowers. First thing in the last thing at night or first thing in the morning. They are the two times they are the best hydrated. Better to do it last thing at night and store them overnight. And then we do whatever we need to do with them next day. Make sure they're hydrated. Store them cool and dark is the main thing. We don't have a cooler. Store them cool and dark. If it's boiling hot, they'll be ruined. All right, just think about that. So next question by Kelly Taylor Mayov. How do you develop cooperative systems in the busier markets? Not so one person has some monopoly. But so one guy that really knows how to grow carrots better than someone else isn't driven mad by everyone else selling inferior products and discount prices and driving him out of the business. I'm a diversity person. But how can we learn to cooperate so everyone gets a fair share of the high value cash crops at the market and doesn't stop on everybody else's toes? Well, Kelly, the people are really good at this. I don't know where your base are in the base in the US. They have cooperatives. Now, cooperative can either be a company set up by individuals and so is a profit-making company where everybody joins the cooperative or it can be a true cooperative where everybody benefits from being the cooperative. And basically what they do, they have a web-based app. Everybody, the florist goes on and chooses what they want to buy from HUME and it's all collected from one place. And they buy on quality, you know, the quality of the products rated as well. So true, true cooperatives are working really well in the states. Now, they don't work really well in the UK yet. But I do think there's an absolute market for it. I'm looking at it. I went to the US last year for a conference, because I'm really, really interested in collaboration. Because the truth of the matter is that unless you can get the flowers in the hands of the florist, sort of as an intermediate, unless you can get the flowers easily to the florist, then she's not going to buy from you. Because you might have corn flowers, but she might want roses from someone else and she might want delphiniums from someone else. And unless they're all in one place, she certainly isn't going to go around three or four places, three or four flower farmers, all diverse and all over the place in order to satisfy that order. So I'd be really careful of that. But I am an absolute believer of collaboration. I think there is no such thing as competition. I think there's enough room for us all. There's certainly room for seasonal flowers. Perhaps if you look about where you're living and some collaboration, I know that in the UK and Devon, they're trying some sort of collaboration. But I'm all up for it, and it's definitely on my list. Rebecca Ellis, scaling up. I am on my third season. I feel like I know the basis of growing. I have a large field and have built many beds. I have a good selection of perennials and a plan for adding more. I have a website customers, host workshops and I'm making inroads with wholesale. But how do I get to this next level and take it from a cottage industry to a large solid business? Is it just about investing in staff even just temporary ones? No, it's not about investing in staff. It's about having a full-blown strategy, which says, okay, this is where I am today. This is the revenue I'm making in each of my different channels. This is how much profit I'm making in each of my different channels. That's the most important thing. And this is where I need to focus. So if it's workshops, that's very different to wholesale. And it's about working out where your margins are in each of those areas. And then working out that, okay, if I took some staff, if I took some temporary staff, for instance, to begin with, that's what I'd be more tempted to do. It would allow me to work more on the business, not in the business. So they would be doing the weeding and watering, let's say, on a Wednesday or day, which is a day you would effectively work on the farm. And that Wednesday, I'm going to take myself out. If you need big go away, go and sit in a coffee shop down the road and work on your business, work out how you can expand your business. I'm a great believer in going away and sitting in a coffee shop, because it's very difficult as a flower farmer. For you to be working in the office, working away when your staff want to know, want to come in and say, okay, what we're going to do about this? And we've got a problem with slugs. And what do we do about this? We've got some caterpillars on your verbasca. What should we do about that? That's probably why I've got the moment. You need to take yourself away, go down the road and write a solid plan for the year and make it revenue-based, break it down into product areas and work out where the money is. And that is the area you need to expand it. So, I hope that's helped as a whistle-stop tour on the business of flower farming. I love it. I love the business of flower farming. I'm really fortunate I've come from a marketing background, you know, also marketing director before I got into flower farming. I also ran my own digital agency. So the marketing side and the pricing and the business is easy for me. But that's great. You know, there are other areas of the business that are not so easy for me. We're not all good at everything. So hopefully I can help you build your business. Do join our free Facebook group, the Cut Flower Farmer growth and profit in your business. You can ask your questions in there. We do have a retreat. I've mentioned coming up on the farm in, on the 19th and 20th August. It's all about business in a box. We're going to give you a business to take away. We're going to elevate your business. And that's two days in August. This is aimed at startup flower farmers. Those wanting to be flower farmers and those looking to scale and elevate their business. We'll also be running our Blooming Business online course in October later this year. So please email me if this is of interest to you. And I can let you know all about that. Our email address. My email address is roseroz. At fieldgateflowers.co.uk. Roseroz.co.uk for more information. And you can always follow me on Instagram at fieldgateflowers because we will announce all things we're doing on there. I look forward to next week's episode. Please don't forget to subscribe and raise a review on your podcast app. We do have some wonderful free resources on our website at thecutflowcollective.co.uk. We also have two free Facebook communities which we'd love you to join. For farmers or those who want to be for our farmers, we have cut flower farming, growth and profit in your business. And our other free Facebook group is learn with the cut flower flip tip for those starting out on their flower journey. All of the links are below. I look forward to getting to know you all.