Anyone make money on the side selling cuttings/seedlings?

Davesnave

SailorSam wrote: »

unless they were unusual things you had, i don'tthink it would pay off.

Sold a few things at the garden gate this morning: aquilegias and foxgloves. Now you can't get more bog standard than that!

People passed over more esoteric offerings, including a fabulous geranium from Bob Brown, old fashioned perennial stocks and a couple of plants with latin names.

Some folks like the familiar and others enjoy taking risks, though you get more of the latter at plant fairs and open days.

duchy

There seem to be a lot of local facebook local sites for this now (usually under a bigger selling group like clothes or furniture etc as a sub group)
Local market and collection so might suit better than ebay.

rebeccaj

I also give my excess seedlings away to neighbours, friends or on freecycle. Can't think there'd be much success trying to sell them around here and it seems a lot of bother for little reward.

nancypearl

I always buy plugs/seedlings online for my garden. Ebay and the big name garden websites. I just can't seem to grow from seed. There is definately a market. Just pop them in the post on a Monday/Tuesday so there is less chance of them hanging around the post office drying out over a weekend. Customer gets them in time for potting on at the weekend.

Former_MSE_Andrea

Great question, we've tweeted it for #nationalgardeningweek

Davesnave

Garden gate sales = about £35 this week so far, and a good village market last Saturday was also pleasing.

There's a culture where we live of produce being sold at the side of the road, which probably helps. Like others, we sell eggs too, but there's no way the chickens will make us money. I doubt if we break even with them.

Trixi

I gave away a few excess chilli plants through a local Facebook selling groups last year - one or two of the recipients said that I should have been selling them! If you join a few of your local groups it won't cost you anything to try...

Orange_King

I have been doing this on Ebay for going on for 2 years now and am hoping to pack in work now and set up properly as a business.

If sent bareroot or in a little soil, many varieties can be send first class as a large letter from 95p for up to 100g or £1.26 for 250g.

Important thing is to ensure the packaging is right and the plants will get there as good as they left.

Most things I sell are surplus stock or cuttings or things brought on myself from seed but will be widening the choice I have in the coming year.

Davesnave

Orange_King wrote: »

I have been doing this on Ebay for going on for 2 years now and am hoping to pack in work now and set up properly as a business.

Have you enough space? That's a potential difficulty, though you seem to have your market sector well-understood and small plants = more per m2.

I found that when we went full-time, we could sell everything produced, but there wasn't enough room for all the stock we wanted. Consequently, we were turning-down invites to big shows, as we couldn't service a 3 day event and still have something left for the local trade.

Some ladies I knew had a very good business model, not dissimilar to yours: i.e. lots of small plants in modules, raised quickly early season, sold cheaply at large events and everything done & dusted by the summer holidays.

Not my thing, but they were smart!

Farway

Bit late now maybe, but I notice Waitrose are sell in F1 tomaoto plants for £4

Nice work if you can get it