10 Flowers to Grow Your First Season as a Flower Farmer—Plus, a Field Plan!
You’ve been bitten by the flower farming bug and are ready to dip your toes in the soil. But what the heck do you grow? The options are overwhelming and the pretty seed catalogs just keep coming!
Your goal is simple — you want to grow a good mix of easy to grow flowers that’ll allow you to make gorgeous bouquets. But how many do you plant? How do you plant your field? Should you grow just as much statice as you do zinnias? The questions just keep coming.
This article will answer all of that!
Over the years, I've grown all the flowers and I'm aware of the challenges that come with the first season. If I were to start over again, armed with the knowledge and experience I have now, this is the plan I would use my first season. And to be honest, it wouldn’t look much different in subsequent years.
You want to think of your first field as a minimally viable product. The goal here is to grow just enough, with as minimal cost as possible, to test the waters of flower farming. It’s not about investing $20,000 in year one. It's about validating your business plan and making sure it’s something you truly want to pursue. Once you've confirmed that it works, that’s when you consider investing in things like irrigation and landscape fabric.
Your first field is essentially your testing ground – it’s about gauging demand, discovering what resonates with your customers, gathering feedback, iterations and even figuring out if you even enjoy this scale of growing. Your initial season is all about learning and laying the foundation for future success.
How to Plan Your Field
In this plan, the field measures 50 feet by 80 feet. This is the same size I started with and found it to be an ideal starting point – it's manageable in scale but still offers ample space to grow plenty of flowers.
With rows 4’ wide and pathways 2’ wide, you can fit 8 rows of flowers, each stretching 80 feet in length. This layout strikes a balance between efficient use of space and ease of access for maintenance and harvesting.
How to Choose Flower Varieties
In the sample field plan, we'll use 9 annuals, plus dahlias. You certainly don’t have to start with dahlias your first season because they are an investment, but they do have their perks. Customers love them and they have great income potential during season and in the off season. Plus, it's never too early to start building your dahlia collection.
If you don't have dahlias just yet, no worries — you can substitute the space allocated for dahlias with sunflowers or zinnias. Here's the breakdown of the flowers:
Focal flowers: Dahlias, sunflowers, zinnias
Accent flowers: Statice, strawflower, celosia, cosmos, marigolds
Foliage: Basil, amaranth
You'll notice that in this plan, we focus on just 10 different types of flowers. Why such a limited selection? Simply put, you don't need a lot of varieties to create gorgeous arrangements.
The trick is to choose different colors and styles within each type of flower. Take zinnias, for example. While they count as one variety, I recommend growing a mix like Benary’s Giants, the Queen series, or Oklahoma zinnias. Each offers a distinct style, yet they all share the same growing requirements. This approach allows for plenty of variety in your bouquets but a streamlined and manageable growing process.
A collection of Celosia.
The varieties chosen here, apart from sunflowers, are all 'cut-and-come-again' types. With just one sowing and very diligent deadheading, these plants can bloom for several months, potentially covering the entire summer season, depending on your location.
What does this mean? For your initial field, you won't need to worry about succession planting. It's not necessary in this case. Keep in mind, this is essentially a 'trial field' for you – a practical way to test and learn the ropes of flower farming. Succession planting can come down the road. Along with perennials. Peonies. Hoop houses and all the other fun stuff!
Example Field Plan
Notice that the taller varieties are listed at the top, with the height of the plants decreasing as you move down the field. This layout is strategic, ensuring that every flower gets enough sunlight. For instance, you wouldn't want to plant your sunflowers in front of the basil, as they would overshadow and block sunlight from reaching the shorter basil plants. Proper positioning is key to making sure each variety receives the sun exposure it needs to thrive.
How Many Seeds Will You Need?
With rows 80’ long and 4’ wide:
4” spacing will give you 2,880 plants per row
9” spacing will give you 530 plants per row.
12” spacing will give you 320 plants per row.
If you want to get fancy, you can plant on an angle allowing you to squeeze in more plants. For this field we will keep it simple and use square spacing.
Generally, you will want to plant 2 seeds to yield one plant. Why? Not every seed will germinate. If both do, you can transplant the extra into an empty hole or toss. For sunflowers, I usually just do 1 seed per hole because they have great germination but since it’s our first field, let’s go with 2.
The flower varieties I’ve come to love:
Sunflowers: ProCut Series (pollenless), especially the ProCut Plum and White Lite.
Zinnias: I generally do 30% Benary’s Giant, 30% Oklahoma series and 40% Queen series.
Celosia: Floret takes the cake on this one. Her mixes are to die for! (Especially Coral Reef)
Cosmos: Afternoon White is my favorite with Double Clicks and Versailles Mix coming in next.
Marigolds: Giant Marigolds in all the colors!
Statice: The Apricot shade is gorgeous, but the blue and purple Seeker varieties look great in bouquets.
Amaranth: Red Spike, Hot Biscuits and Emerald Tassles are all gems.
Basil: The scent of Mrs. Burns Lemon is intoxicating! Aromatto is another popular one.
Strawflower: I can never grow enough Apricot Strawflower! GAH!
There you have it! If I were to go back to year one and do it all over again, this is the field I would grow. What would I do different down the road?
I would definitely add in Lisianthus, but this stunner is not necessary in year one.
I would add in some globe amaranth because I love to use her and Statice as fun accents in bouquets.
Hardy annuals (feverfew, snaps, larkspur, rudbeckia, etc) would come into the mix but they aren’t really what you want to deal with your first season.
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