How to Cut Flowers on Hot, Stormy Days

The temperature is climbing, the sun’s up at 3.30 ( or earlier if you’re in northern Scotland), there are storms forecast, you have a list of orders and a field full of flowers. How are you going to get it all cut and delivered in peak condition?

This is a time for forward planning and organisation. They key to cutting a lot in a short space of time is preparation. The day before, make sure you have

• All your buckets washed and ready

• Lists made up

• A plan for cutting - follow the sun, if you have any beds in shade cut those last. Cut delicate, wilty things first.

• Snips and secateurs sharpened

• Trolley/trailer set up. This is not the time for running backwards and forwards with single buckets.

• A cool, shady place for your flowers to condition

• a stretch of uninterrupted time

• a personal care pack - cold drinks,(or maybe a water bottle frozen overnight) a hat, sunscreen to reapply, a light shirt, snacks, all re-fridgerated ahead of time if possible

Set your alarm, have breakfast & fill your buckets with fresh tap water. Work methodically, cutting from beds in turn. If you can park your trailer/trolley in the shade, it makes a big difference. If you have a lot to cut, get help, even if it’s just to take the trolley back to your workshop, put the buckets straight into the cool shade and return the trolley to you.

Be aware of the warmth of the sun and know the point at which you’ll have to stop.

If the storms arrive, take shelter in a safe place, not under a tree! If you’re interrupted by weather, use the time to have a rest, drink and snack before continuing.

When delivering, make sure your flowers and foliage have had time to properly condition. Replace the water with fresh, cold tap water, add some ice cubes to the water if you have them. Cool your vehicle before loading, either park in the shade and open the doors or use air conditioning. Avoid traffic, deliver in the coolest part of the day wherever possible. If you have to stop, park in the shade. Once you’re done, head in to the shade, sit down and have a rest, a drink or an ice cream. You’ll need a rest as much as your flowers!

Where are we this week??

Paula, Carol and Claire in warmer days, in the polytunnel at Mill Pond Flower Farm

It’s midwinter and there are no flowers (well, maybe the occasional hellebore). People who don’t grow flowers often assume it’s a quiet time of year and the pace is definitely different, but January and February is a busy time for The Business of Selling Flowers team.

So far this week we’ve done a live Zoom on Pricings and Costings, chatted to flower farmers on the Floral Business Activator in New Zealand about Perennials as Cut Flowers, covered Business Finance Planning with a group of our students on Zoom. We have an online discussion on Record Keeping as part of The Business of Growing Flowers online course scheduled on Thursday.

On Saturday, it’s the highlight of our flower farming year! The Flowers from the Farm annual conference is being held in Bristol and we’re presenting on stage together - talking about 10 Ways to make your Business More Profitable

Our presentation is planned & ready & we’re all doing the last jobs before we head off to the city for the weekend. Very exciting!

We’re all longstanding members of Flowers from the Farm and have played an active part in its development from the early days. Paula was Scottish Co-ordinator for 5 years, then the first Co-chair after founder Gill Hodgson. Claire has been SE England Co-ordinator twice and helped to develop the 2nd website. Carol is currently NW England Co-ordinator. It’s a big part of our business lives and we’re absolutely delighted to be presenting to around 300 fellow members. A hall full of flower growers is a great place to be (if a little noisy!).

If you’re thinking about flower growing as a career, make sure you join, it’s been the best single investment we’ve made in our businesses. And if you’re going to be at the conference, come and say hello!

Cashflow and the Flower Farmer

I’ve been updating my running some live Zoom sessions on pricing and costings this week, and was reminded about the importance of CASHFLOW.

Graph showing turnover v expenses across the year.

This illustration shows how seasonal flower farming is and makes it totally obvious why cashflow is king. In spring and summer the turnover is high, and exceed by quite a way the amount going out in expenses, but by the Autumn, it’s the other way round.

Even the best companies can be caught out by having more money going out of the business than coming in, but as the flower season, slows, and for some, stops completely, there are still costs.

So here’s some of my top tips for ensuring a cashflow deficit doesn’t turn into a cashflow crisis.

1) Send out invoices with payment dates for everything that you’ve sold. This may seem like an obvious one, but the times i’ve had to ask and then remind this year for flower farmers to send me invoices, you’d have thought they were just doing this for fun….. SEND ALL YOUR INVOICES NOW (and this blog post was triggered by someone reminding me to invoice them!)

2) Chase any outstanding invoices. This is something that no-one likes doing, but usually it isn’t because your customers can’t or won’t pay, it’s just that they have forgotten to pay, or maybe you haven’t told them when they have to pay by? Or maybe they didn’t get the invoice.- Tell them, remind them, give them a deadline, remind them again.

So hopefully you’ve now got all the money in the bank that is owed, if cashflow is still an issue and you haven’t still got flowers to sell

3) Check when expenses go out, - can you change them to another time in the year. I started my business in January , so I have insurances and other yearly costs, but i’ve moved all vehicle expenses to the summer.

4) Sell plants / or excess goods, maybe excess Dahlia tubers, or perennials that you are splitting. Facebook groups are excellent for this, turn your clutter into cash.

Large Dahlia Tuber - worth splitting and selling?

5) Hire yourself out as a freelancer / Go back to your old job. If your outgoings are low, then this isn’t needed, but there’s no point getting in debt by spring if you can earn money another way.

6) Slight more risky - but Sell next year’s flowers or workshops in advance.

Any other methods you use? The Flower farming financial low point comes at an expensive time of year, with Christmas and Taxes, and i’ll admit that in the past there was always credit card bills to pay come Spring. Now I’m so much better at working out how much i’ll need to take me through the quiet months.

Turning up the light for your indoor plants

Turning up the light for your indoor plants

Sweet peas in May

Our polytunnels are in constant use, as soon as a bed is finished or productivity drops, it’s cleared and replanted with the next crop. We’re currently planting out hardy annuals, ranunculus and anemones to grow on through the winter. 

As the days shorten and natural light levels fade, it’s really important to get as much light as possible into the tunnels. The health of a plant is determined by its ability to photosynthesise – to turn sunlight into sugars which is used for all the metabolic processes. Light energy is essential to make this happen. Sunlight is made from a spectrum of colours. When you see a rainbow, what you actually see are raindrops splitting sunlight into these different colours. Photosynthesis uses predominantly red and blue parts of this spectrum, and not green light

When we have a polytunnel which is covered with algae we create a green filter which allows more of the green part of the spectrum to go through and reduces the red and blue light available to plants and therefore dramatically reduces the ability of the plants to efficiently photosynthesise.    

This week Ray led the charge in cleaning the tunnels. He made a flossing tool (nothing to do with dancing!) from a long length of rope covered in foam pipe insulation and felt, secured with duct tape. We mixed up a cleaning solution to remove the algae that has built up over the summer. We’ve bought a proprietary algae removal solution in the past but when we looked at the ingredients it was basically vinegar, so now make our own using 

Half cup vinegar

Gallon water

Egg cup of washing up liquid

This was brushed onto the cleaner and then we gently pulled the rope on at each side to rub off the algae. A quick rinse with the hose and it was like someone had turned on a light in the polytunnel. Our days are short in Scotland during the winter, only 6 hours of daylight in December and January and cloud cover reduces its quality. The more light we can get in for our plants, the healthier they will be and the more flowers we’ll have in the Spring. Definitely time well spent!

Ray’s polytunnel flosser (patent pending|)

Is your email address holding you back?

What does your email address say about you and your Business?

When it comes to physical addresses, we all know the best streets in our towns, and those that are not so good.

.... Anyone had to deliver a bouquet and thought

Oooo, Goody, I get to look down that street......

Or received an address to deliver to and thought  - 

Oh! better lock the car there.....

And then there are all the names and addresses in between..... For them to be easy to deliver to, we want good labelling (numbers in an obvious order, or easy to spot Name plates for named houses) and we want the roads to be easy to find by postcode. The address isn't really the important thing here. It's if it tells us what area we can find it in, and who we're delivering to, that's the important thing.

Well it's like that with Email addresses too.

Does your email address say who the email is going to?
Does your email address say what the address of your business is? And does it give the impression of being at the smart end of town, or on the less expensive estate?
Does your email address say what you do as a business?

Email addresses have only been around for the last 30 years or so, - whereas physical addresses have been developing over hundreds of years. 25 years ago, my husband's 1st email address was Ashley@btinternet.com.
He was working on the first big BT website and web shop, and BT wanted everyone to equate the names of important staff with the site that they were working on. Good idea, but it was such early days of emails that they hadn't worked out there might be more than 1 person with each first name working at a multinational company.

So then they invented Info @ email addresses (e.g. info@btinternet.com), which could be directed to whoever was working on that project at a time, and that meant that if someone left the company, or was on holiday the email still got answered.

But thing was that they were impersonal, and people didn't know who they were contacting, and people buy from people. So then they invented redirects and autoresponders and tried using first name and initials. My first email address at the RHS was Claireb@rhs.org.uk (in 1998) but even in the 6 years I was working there, we had 2 more Claire's with a surname beginning B arrive, So now most corporate email addresses are firstname.surname@companyname.co.uk. If someone leaves, the email is taken out of commission and the address bounces back. If someone is on holiday, then there is an autoresponder to tell you who you should be contacting instead, and when you can expect a response.  

Now we're small businesses, so i'm not suggesting that we copy the Corporates exactly, BUT

• Having your name in your email address means that your customers know who they are contacting

• Having your Website address in your email address means that the customer can see which end of town you live at (i.e they can look at your "Real estate" and work out for themselves how good and professional you are likely to be by the state of your website).

• If your email address starts with "intheshed@" or "smiles@" or "hello@" then you are missing out on a way of getting a customer to connect with you by using your name

• If your email address ends in "Virgin.net"  or "gmail.com" or "hotmail.co.uk" you are telling your customer that you're using a free email address.  Does that equate with a professional business?

This is one of the cheapest ways of marketing your business, - you need a website domain that reflects your business address, and an email address attached to it. If you've already got a website, email addresses will almost certainly be part of the package, and you can probably set up redirects, so that you can use your normal email package. Changing to a new improved email address will be FREE if you can follow the online help from your service provider, or the cost of half an hour of your IT support.  

 

Why you should save your own seed (and will it grow the same?)

I’ve been sowing some new plants ready for next season. I walked to the bed where the current plants are flowering, found seed at the right stage, picked it, sowed it & by Saturday it had germinated. The plants are now growing away nicely. Seed miles = 0

We're sold the idea that big companies can do everything better than we can, that seed in packets with cheery photos or stylish line drawings is better than what we can produce in our gardens or plots. It's just not true. The best, freshest seed is that grown nearby and sown when it's ready on the plant. Our own seed has been grown in our particular soil and environment. Each new crop grown is minutely adapted to its growing conditions and can bring with it strength and diversity.

There are no mysteries to saving your own seed, it’s just common sense.

• Take seed from the best, healthiest plants you have. You want the very best characteristics to be passed on.

• Pick a dry airy day. If there’s been a dew, wait till it’s all dried off

• Take something to put your seed into. Paper bags or boxes are good, just make sure the seed can’t drop through

• Collect the seed from the plant into your container. Label it - don’t think you’ll remember!

• Place in a cool, dry space to dry off a little more. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dark place. Or sow straight away, particularly for perennials.

Will your own seed produce plants the same as the parent? If it’s what is called a straight species, with a two-word Latin name and no cultivar name eg Orlaya grandiflora, Scabiosa ochreleuca, then it will almost certainly be identical, with only occasional variants.

If it has a variety or cultivar name eg Phlox drummondii Creme Brulee or Calendula Snow Princess, then what you get from your own seed can vary. If it’s been open pollinated (bees and other insects can pollinate, plus the wind can get to the plants) it might grow as a mix of the shapes and colours of that plant you have growing. Over the years, the dominant form of the plant is likely to eventually come through. A good example of this is poppy seed, which gradually reverts to red, but goes through all sorts of lovely combinations on the way. If you hand pollinate the plant and protect it from other pollinators, there’s a chance it is more likely to keep the characteristics you want.

As well as having seed for your own uses, you can share it around, give it to a pal, take some to a seed swap. There’s nothing like the joy of planting out a whole batch of plants grown from your own or gifted seed!

The Business of Growing Flowers course : Why should you join us?

In a couple of week’s time, the 5th year of our flagship online learning programme, The Business of Growing Flowers will begin.

Hosted by Claire Brown, Carol Siddorn and Paula Baxter, this online programme is designed by us, three flower farmers who are constantly evolving their businesses to provide a sustainable income and to suit their lives. Flower farming is hard work and over the years we’ve worked together sharing techniques and strategies to help our productivity, efficiency and quality, without sacrificing our quality of life. We’re keen to help other growers to work in a thoughtful way, developing businesses that grow quality flowers, and also sell them at a profit!

Have you ever thought any of the following?

• I can’t work any more hours

• I’ll never get all the jobs done

• I'm working all the time but I’m not making much money

• I don't seem to have the right flowers for my orders.

• I don't have a life beyond flowers!

• How can I sell every flower I grow?

• I need more plants, how can I get them without major investment?

• I’m muddling along but really don’t feel I know what I’m doing

• I love what I do but I’m utterly exhausted

• I don’t know how to work out how many plants/bulbs/seeds I need

• I’ve walked up and down this path 20 times today, is this really necessary?

If you’ve thought any of the above, The Business of Growing Flowers is for you! It will provide you with the tools, techniques and support to go into the 2023 season knowing how to get the most from your farm and yourself without working more hours., to make a profitable business, and also have time to have a life.

So what do we cover?

The course consists of 10 modules, each focusing on a different element of running a flower farm.:

Module 1 is all about Autumn preparation - It will help you think about the work that you can do in the Autumn that will save you time when the season is underway, giving you earlier, stronger and better flowers.

Module 2 is about planning for your market. Who will you be selling to next year? and what does that mean for what you’re going to grow. We’ll get you thinking about what and how many flowers to grow.

Module 3 is growing more flowers for less work. Yes it is the dream scenario, but what work can you put in to make your growing and you more productive and less wasteful in time and inputs.

Module 4 is what to grow? To ensure you get an edge on your competitors and thrill your customers you need to be on the cutting edge of trends, and know the minds of those who haven’t yet come to you. We’ll help you out.

Module 5 is about managing customers and suppliers. How do you make sure that everyone is happy, and stress levels stay low. How do you deal with feedback (both good and bad).

Module 6 is about making yourself more productive, how can you take care of yourself and yet get more out of what you do?

Module 7 is about record keeping. How do you know what you’ve done, and how that will effect what you do in the future. How and where do you keep records.

Module 8 is growing techniques to make you profitable. Even if you grow all the “right” stuff, is it going to make you money.

Module 9 is about planning for the future. What are you aiming for in the next 2/5/10 years. Do you still want to be flower farming? We’ll talk about contingencies, succession planning and work / life balance (we’re even adding in a bit about our Pandemic experiences!)

Module 10 is a standalone cutting, conditioning and presentation course. Just ahead of the start of the spring season, we’ll cover this so important topic to ensure you are confident about how you are going to cut and present your flowers at top quality to your customers. .

We are all based in the UK, but grow in very different conditions - Claire is in the South, on chalk soil, Carol is in the West growing on sandy soil, and Paula is in Scotland on the east coast working with heavy clay.

We do some things differently and the options we consider, plus the thought processes we use to make decisions are built in to the course. We don’t consider there’s a right or wrong way to grow flowers, but we can explain how we do it and why.

We all spend a lot of time and energy growing our flowers. To be successful, we also need to nurture our businesses and ourselves. If you want flower farming to be more than a hobby, invest some time, effort and a bit of hard earned cash in learning this autumn/winter, and set off into 2023 more confident, focused and organised!