Elena and I are planning a plant sale next spring, and one question is how much to charge.
So who better to ask than our gardening friends - what's the going rate for "typical" perennials in 4" pots in your neck of the woods?
A quick glance back through my receipts tells me I paid anywhere from $1.49 to $4.99 for 4" pots last spring. Sale prices in summer and fall were about 50-75% off those prices.
Is that about the right range? Or not?
What's your typical price for 4" perennial pots?
Here in Ontario they are between 2.50 and 3.00 prime season but go donw to 'almost free' around September
Around here, 2.99, or 4/10 at my local nurseries.
I pay $1.00 per . Shipping is also a deal... ALWAYS happy with what I recieve.
will send the link if anyone is interested.
Hugs,
NOWeedSZ
any where from 2.50 to 5.25 here in mich. I depends on the type of plant to vols.
Id pay the 5.25 for something I've been looking for and cant find-but not for say a lupine or something common.
I've had a several spring sales in the past. I find the cheaper you can go - the better. You don't want to be left with a ton of plants after the sale is over. I priced my plants from 25¢ to $4.00 max for a big perennial. It would depend what the plants were, - how much of it I had to pot up, and how hard the plant was to propigate. I usually had several sizes of the same plant to choose from varying in prices - $1 for the little one, - $2 for the med size - $3 for a big one. Most of the plants were grown by direct seeding the year before in my veggie garden. I would pot them up as early in the spring as I could. The sooner you pot them the better off the plant is. They suffer less shock if they're just coming out of dormancy.
Word of a good sale really gets around by word of mouth. I would put an add in a local freebie paper and put a couple of signs out the week before the sale. The same people always come back - with mothers & sisters, neighbors and cousins. It got to be quite hectic and a lot of work! In fact, the last sale I had my husband, mother, my 2 step sons, 2 nieces and a nephew all working the sale with me.
Another thing I did was to print out signs for all the plants I had. I did this with a program called PrintShop that came with my printer. I put a picture, the common & Latin name, height, sun tolerence, and soil preference for each plant. I worked on this through the winter so they were all ready at sale time. I put each sign in a plastic notebook page - the type used for book reports and kept them all in a big note book. they can be used for years to come. It really helps if people can see a picture & have information to go by - we all know how hard the names can be for some. And the signs saved me from answering a zillion questions about the plants. I arranged the plants as close as could to the mother plants that were growing in the garden so their growing habits could be seen.
Oh yes - anything that's blooming during the sale - will be your biggest seller! I have a picture somewhere of one of my sales - I'll see if I can find it. It's a lot of fun. You meet ALL kinds of people!
when is the best time to have one? did annuals do well?? what about things like brugs and passionflowers? I won't have too many perennials, didn't sow them early enough.
Plant sales are fun, work, but fun. I have met some of my best friends that way. Our Garden club has one every spring and I have them in my driveway 4-5 times a year. The price really depends a lot on the type of plant and the quantity that you have. For fast spreaders like sedums & ground covers, I charge $1.00 - $1.50. I was told that "rule #1, is to "never buy pots" to put them in!! Most nurseries or landscapers will give you their empty used pots, more profit for you. Ask your friends to save them for you. I always have a "Plant list" and a "seed list" (with prices)that I give out to intrested folks so they can call me or come back later, many do.
Good luck.