Flower farming is scaleable, meaning it can become a full time, living wage generating business or it can be a way to make supplemental income as a side hustle.

There’s a “but” though when it comes to the side hustle game.

Compared to some of the other more common “side hustles” flower farming is more demanding in time and energy. Desiring to make money fast is not a good enough reason to flower farm. Though it can be profitable, you will be working hard and staying diligent to make it so. For the right person who has the love of growing flowers… there is not a side hustle that can beat the fulfillment that flower farming brings.

In case you are unfamiliar with the concept of a side hustle, it is the modern term of a side job or a side gig. I refer flower farming more as a “side hustle” because a job doesn’t do justice to what it takes to flower farm. To be able to make flower farming a viable and profitable side hustle it does need to be able to fit around your existing life demands without completely depleting you.

In this post we are going to share the key areas to manage in order to make your flower farming side hustle successful.

First, walk with me through memory lane.

falling in love with flower farming

When I first started flower farming, I was a stay at home with two toddlers. I had just finished getting my bachelors in accounting but watching the stress of my husband working in accounting made me balk at the idea of going down that path. Yet, the financial and emotional pressure of being a one-income household was stifling. Selling supplements or yoga pants like other mom friends wasn’t enticing to me, sales alone wasn’t necessarily my passion. Though I could have chosen an “easier” side hustle, I wasn’t purely seeking to only make money. I was excited to explore my new found passion of growing specialty cut flowers while making some extra money doing it.

We were in between a rock and a hard place, but it takes pressure to create diamonds, right? With my husband’s support, we dove head first into flower farming.

Here we are on the other side of that decision going into our ninth growing season.

We leapt into flower farming and haven’t looked back.

If you are taking the time to read this blog, I’m guessing you are looking to flower farm as a side hustle. Or maybe you are looking to regain control of your existing flower farming business to bring it to a side hustle status. Whether your intentions are to bring in a bit of extra money to lessen the financial strain you a facing or extra money to be able to pay for a vacation, you are looking to do it in a way that you are passionate about. I get it. I was there.

Flower farming as I said in the beginning is scaleable.

The problem arises in, it can also gobble you up.

If not kept in check, flower farming can become a money pit and a time suck. It can take over. We weren’t looking to keep the flower farming in the side hustle zone but how quickly it grew and how demanding it became was a little out of hand, like we share in our blog More advice for flower farmers. We learned a lot of lessons the hard way. Hindsight is 20/20, so I am going to share what we learned to help you better be aware and manage your flower farming business as a side hustle.

Let’s go over the key areas to heavily manage in order to keep your flower farm as a profitable side hustle!

Managing the demands

Flower farming is demanding, there is no denying it. However, there are some ways to keep the demands at bay and feasible.

Start small

Start out small in how many crops your choose to grow while also limiting your different offerings. For a new grower, this is something I advise even if you are looking take your flower farming business beyond a side hustle.. There is an intense learning curve when it comes to flower farming, even on a small scale. With that said, starting or keeping your flower farm small will allow you to maintain flexibility. Flexibility is necessary to be able to keep flower farming as a side hustle.

Even if you have acres of potential land to work with, I’d recommend putting no more than a quarter acre into production, especially if your focus is growing annuals. You will be surprised at the amount of time, energy and resources even a quarter acre of cut flowers demand. This becomes increasingly true if you are planting them intensely. To give you perspective, we started with 1600 square feet and were able to handle a weekly farmer’s market in the summer, dip our toes into weddings and even offer a bouquet subscription. That 1600 square feet was incredibly profitable for us but still took a lot of effort while we were learning the swing of growing, designing, selling flowers and starting up a new business. The beauty of growing cut flowers is you can pack a lot of plants into a small amount of space while still getting incredible yields.

Keep it simple

Along with space, limiting the amount of varieties you grow will also help keep your flower farm more simple. Growing varieties that are impactful without being complicated or needy to grow such as sunflowers, zinnias and cosmos. The more crops that you can direct sow or start indoors quickly and with ease, the more profitable those crops will be.

Keeping your growing and selling season shorter is another way to keep your flower farming business more flexible. Limiting your varieties to ones that you can grow during the frost-free part of your season will also keep you from losing time and money by fussing with low tunnels or high tunnels.

Determining what is an ideal length of your growing and selling season leads to the second area to manage.

Managing time

Maintaining a flower farming business in the scope of a side hustle first requires you to know how much time you can and are willing to commit to it.

Determine time commitment

Unlike other common side hustles, the flower field will have demands. Even though you have time in January, you don’t get to go out there and weed the field, get what I’m saying? You will have to meet your flower farming business needs as they arise and many of those needs happen during the growing and selling season. The flower farm is still a business, even as a side hustle, and there are needs that will have to be met on that side as well. How much time are you going to commit daily or weekly to your flower farming business?

Set a schedule

Setting a schedule to work around your other demands will allow you to better budget your time. There were many nights when Graham would come home and I would use the last couple hours of sunlight to plant or seed sow, tasks that I would be better able to do more efficiently if he could watch the girls. These days, we are not only running the flower farm but I am also helping at the family’s accounting office all while still maintaining life-work balance. To say there isn’t much free time is a gross understatement. I had to become more intentional with the time I have to be better productive on the task at hand. We have a tentative weekly schedule but we also go over our schedules weekly and each morning because needs shift and events arise. If I don’t plan out my day, I find myself becoming a wanderer or easily distracted. All of a sudden, I’d find myself with several different projects started without finishing any of them. By creating a schedule and then prioritizing the tasks, I am able to getting more accomplished.

Increase efficiency

Being out in the flower field… time can escape you easily. I’m not saying this in a bad way but the more time spent, the less profitable you are being. Turning your passion into a business can be a slippery slope where you may find yourself not being efficient with your time, instead slowing down and drinking in the “dirt therapy.” It is easy to get caught up in the tasks and where you think an hour has gone by but actually three have passed. By giving yourself a set amount of time and utilizing a timer, it will allow you to better focus on what needs to be done while not losing track of time, which will allow you to better stick to your schedule. Investing in tools and infrastructure that can increase efficiency helps. For example, we decided to invest in silage tarps and weed cloth to better help manage the weed suppression that had become a fool’s errand to try and combat by hand. We also needed to get more efficient with planting out transplants so we invested in a auger drill which, I can now have a row planted in an hour where it used to take me three or four times that amount. If you have two people working, the progress is even more impressive! These investments don’t break the bank and it pays back tenfold in time.

Setting a schedule and time isn’t the only area that needs tracking, which goes to the third key are to manage.

Managing finances

The idea behind a “side hustle” is to make some extra cash in between your existing demands in life. This could be another job, children, school- whatever it is, the side hustle needs to mesh with those demands. The best way to do this is by closely managing finances.

Avoid debt

Once you begin going into debt over the side hustle, that abandons the spirit of what you were trying to accomplish.

Flower farming can quickly go from sowing a few packets of zinnias and marigolds into the growing bed, to needing walk in coolers and high tunnels. In keeping with the essence of a side hustle, avoid maximizing output through having to invest in large pieces of infrastructure and equipment. Those big investments can create a run-a-way-train situation. Set a budget for start up costs, stick to it. Do not go into debt to lift your side hustle business off the ground. To put it simply, if you start going into debt you most likely won’t recoup those costs that season or even for a few seasons. The vacation you were working towards just got sidelined by the farm, or even worse, you heaped on even more financial strain on your household.

Focus on profitability

The reason for choosing to flower farm as a side hustle rather than growing flowers as a hobby boils down profit.

Profitability is not the same as sales or gross revenue. If you sell $10,000 in product that doesn’t mean that was your profit. Profit is revenue less your expenses.

If you are overspending, you are not being as profitable as you could be (or perhaps not being profitable at all).

It is a slippery slope to spend money with the idea of simply making sales later, especially if you are flower farming as a side hustle. Creating a budget, keeping track of expenses and sales are all essential in taking your passion for growing flowers and turning it into a profitable business. Having financial goals will aide in you better sticking to your budget and making the sales you need to. Being able to analyze your profitability will help you to make or continue to make good business decisions that should ultimately lead, not only to that desired vacation, but building a sustainable flower farming side hustle.

On average, side hustles can generate an additional $1,000 per month. Keep in mind, flower farming is also seasonal. Generating profit doesn’t come with capturing the sales alone but with balancing those sales while minimizing expenses. Be realistic with how much sales you want to make and how much you want to profit from those sales. For a starting out side hustle, $10-15,000 sales is realistic. By sticking with a budget for expenses you can have a healthy amount of profit.

This can get tricky for flower farmers since we are typically taking a passion we enjoy and trying to make some extra money with it. We can have a tendency to invest in varieties or other items that we love for ourselves but are not necessary to be profitable or can impede our profitability. Impulse purchasing expensive varieties or other items can sneak up on you. What is it going to take for you to, not only recoup the cost but turn a profit, for a dahlia that you paid $30 for versus $5? Similar form and color but one is the newest and greatest. That is a $25 difference between the two dahlias; a monetary difference for you to make up for being able to profit from that more expensive dahlia variety.

In the beginning you may feel at a disadvantage for not having the shiny new tractor or the latest and hottest variety of flower but going into debt or overspending will put you at a true disadvantage.

Staying well versed on your finances leads us to the last key area to manage.

managing boundaries

Setting boundaries is difficult for people with nurturing spirits, which encompasses a lot of flower farmers. We like to please and make others happy. Saying “no” is not as easy as it sounds.

Well, we need to reconnect with our inner two year old self and rediscover the power of “no”!

Revolving your products and sales outlets around your strengths and the demands of life is a large part of keeping the flower farming business at the side hustle level. Just because someone asks something of you doesn’t mean you have to say yes if it doesn’t fit within your ideals, capability or willingness. Having boundaries not only will help prevent you from becoming overwhelmed, it will also begin to build a community of your ideal customers. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to put together a bridal bouquet but instead wanting to have a farm stand at the end of your driveway, or vice versa.

Boundaries will allow you to adhere to your schedule and ultimate vision for your side hustle. Boundaries will keep the side hustle from bleeding over into the other areas of your life, in turn, creating unbalance and chaos in your life. Saying no is only one part of setting boundaries. At night or while working your other job, turn off notifications that relate to your flower farm that may distract you or vice versa. Try your best to compartmentalize the flower farm, life and other work demands. Be present with the tasks you are prioritizing at that time.

Don’t be afraid to set those boundaries.

A flower farming business can make a great side hustle.

It takes diligence to juggle the needs of the flower farming business with the other demands in life. Having a flower farm as a side hustle is probably one of the more advanced types of side hustles you can have. It is flirting with the danger of it taking over your life rather than conforming to it, but if you stay focused on what you really want from your flower farm and your profitability, it can be manageable.

Flower farming will enrich not only your life but those around you through your gift of growing and sharing the bounty of your field while making some extra cash.

Flower Farming as a Side Hustle

falling in love with flower farming

Managing the demands

Managing time

Managing finances

managing boundaries

Sierra Flower Farm

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