MARIETTA, Ohio – Farmers with extra space or time on the farm may want to think about something other than adding another crop. Just a thought, but why not sell cut flowers?

Lyndsay Biehl is owner of Wildroot Flower Company in Marietta. Wildroot is a naturally grown cut flower farm located in the rolling hills of southeast Ohio. Biehl is passionate about connecting her community with nature and filling lives with the beauty that flowers bring. She sells her flowers through her seasonal U-Pick on-farm workshops, at farm workshops, local farmer’s markets and grocery stores.

Biehl was a presenter at the recent 2022 Small Farm Conference & Trade Show. Her talk, “Growing & Selling Cut Flowers,” was well attended as farmers are looking at ways to supplement their income. She attends many flower farm workshops throughout the state.

“During my talk most in attendance were established growers while a few had no agricultural background and wanted to start a flower garden,” Biehl said. “The growers were looking to fill the gap between particular crops. For them it was a value-added thing. And, for the established growers, they can start relatively inexpensively as they already have many of the tools they need to get started. This is a way of adding an additional business to your farm to manage within and it can fill in the gaps between existing crops.”

Biehl started Wildroot Flower Company in 2016.

“When I started Wildroot, my dream was to connect people with nature and allow them to experience more of life’s ordinary joys in the quiet outdoors,” Biehl said. “I decided to put my passion before my fears and I planted my first Wildroot seeds. I started this farm on the same land where I spent my childhood days picking strawberries grown by my grandma, running around wild and free. These memories were the inspiration for the same, Wildroot. I started the business six years ago with just $2,000. It can be a small investment in the beginning.”

Biehl currently has three acres of flower production. She has two fulltime employees and three part-timers.

“When I was 16 years old, I started working at a local garden center and fell in love with flowers,” she said. “I caught the flower bug when I was young and still on my parents’ allowance, but the love of flowers never left me. I knew at 16 that horticulture was my heart path, and I wanted to find a way to share my passion with as many people as I could. I believe in the healing rhythms of Mother Nature, and if we tune in a little more often to what she has to say, we will find the answers with our hands in the dirt.”

According to Biehl, customers of cut flowers can be farm stands, local shops, farmer’s markets, restaurants, hotels, florists, grocery stores, U-Cut flower patches and weddings.

“It’s a lot of work and that depends on the scale of the flower garden,” she said. “Simply put, the more you grow the more work it’s going to be. Having a cut flower business is great for attracting new customers. Flowers are extremely productive on less acreage than row crops.”

Biehl’s growing is from March to October. She makes use of greenhouses and high tunnels to get that extensive growing season.

“In creating a plan for success there are five things I wish I had learned my first year in business,” Biehl said. “Doing more does not equal more money, letting go is key to growth, don’t chase trends, prioritize good record keeping and email, email, email. Key to this business is establishing a target market and deciding what to grow. Crop planning, pricing and marketing of the flowers is key as well.”

According to Florists’ Transworld Delivery (FTD), cut flowers are one of the best cash crops for small growers across North America, with profits of up to $30,000 per acre. Most growers start part-time, growing for market at local outlets like the farmer’s market, florists and restaurants.

Cut flowers, FTD said, are a perfect cash crop because they are easy to grow, produce quickly and can supply a good income throughout the growing season. Startup costs are low, as most gardeners and even farmers already have the basic gardening tools needed, and only have to buy seeds to get started.

“Grow what makes you money, not what is trendy,” Biehl said.

She admits to having a “Top 10” list of flowers that are easy to grow: sunflowers, zinnias, ageratum, marigolds, statice, gomphrena, celosia, cosmos, snapdragons and strawflower.

Zinnias are great for filling out a bouquet and offer brilliant colors, shapes and sizes. Snapdragon is best to start indoors. They take 120 days to mature. Cosmos grow easily from seed and can survive in poor soil conditions. Cosmos have colorful, daisy-like flowers that sit atop long, slender stems.

The FTD suggests sticking to proven cut flower varieties when starting out, allowing growers a better chance of selling out on market days. Their best flower choices to ensure profits are ageratum, scabiosa, larkspur, snapdragon, peony, zinnias, sunflowers, verbena bonariensis, salvia and yarrow.

Ageratum has clusters of long-lasting flowers in red, white and blue and produce continuously from early summer to frost. Scabiosa, called the pincushion flower, comes in a variety of colors. Larkspur is a relative of the buttercup and has complex flowers and a variety of colors.

Like Biehl, the FTD suggests that local farmer’s markets are the best place for the beginning flower grower to get started, as most are one or two days a week. This gives the grower more time to devote to growing flowers. And instead of setting up a booth individually, growers should consider sharing a booth with another grower who is selling compatible items, such as vegetables or herbs.

Others have found success with flower farms as well. Old State Farm in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, is operated by Katie and Brad Carothers. Their 25-acre farm is the home to 30 ewes of Katahdin sheep. Their flock is registered with Katahdin Hair Sheep International. They breed rams and ewes that excel in a low input pasture-based management system.

In 2014, Katie Carothers started a garden hoping to sell produce at a weekend farmer’s market, but her wedding-planner friend suggested growing flowers to tap into the booming event industry. To this day, the couple has cultivated wedding staples like bouquets, corsages and boutonnieres as well as table centerpieces and large ceremony installations.

The Carothers have a flower stand at the farm. They stock the stand with mixed bouquets, bunches of sunflowers and other special flowers for the table and home.

At the P&D Flower farm in Johnson County in Indiana, co-owner Dawn VanBlarcum wanted to give Hoosiers a way to relax and find peace when she started the flower-picking farm 10 years ago.

“No one’s ever upset when they come to pick flowers,” VanBlarcum said. The farm offers patrons a “you-pick” experience with more than 20 different varieties of flowers and prides itself on bringing people back to the basics.

“We moved out there 10 years ago and loved it,” VanBlarcum said. “It felt very relaxed, very peaceful. We didn’t want to do something everyone was already doing. We didn’t want to do pumpkins and strawberries and apples.

“One of the things we’ve learned is what grows in Indiana, what doesn’t grow in Indiana. Because we cut them and put them in bouquets and send them home with people, we only grow things that will last in a bouquet.”

The farm was closed for the 2021 season but will be open this June.

Jessica and Ryan Broyles, of Rockfield, Ky., have pastured pigs, wool sheep, chickens and ducks on their 10-acre farm, but they also grow cut flowers on two-thirds of an acre.

“When we’re not farming, we enjoy enriching our community by growing beautiful flowers and proving learning opportunities through our on-farm workshops,” Jessica Broyles said.