How to Make Money Selling Hanging Plants
In this article, you will learn how to make money selling hanging plants. From seed to sale, you will learn everything you need to know about this profitable endeavor right here! When done correctly, these beautiful hanging pieces of art can net you a nice profit for only a little bit of work.
Hanging Plants are a Great Income Stream for Your Homestead
Growing hanging plants is a great way to make a little extra income around the homestead, or at least save yourself a lot of money each spring. If you like hanging baskets as much as us, you’ll probably have a bunch. We have hanging plants on the front porch, out on the back deck, and pretty much any place that we can hang one.
Unfortunately, buying hanging plants from your local nursery or garden center can get expensive. Around here for a nice sized, well-developed hanging petunia in a 12 inch pot, you can pay $40.00 each. We usually buy 10 hanging baskets over the course of the springtime. This means we pay almost $430.00 with tax. At these prices, it’s easy to see why you can make money selling hanging plants!
Why Buy Them When You Can Grow Them?
After a little thought, the solution to buying expensive hanging baskets was simple. This year we’ve decided to grow our own, and while we’re at it, we are going to grow a bunch more to sell. We are going to make our usual 10 baskets to keep, gift some to our close friends and family, and the rest we will sell at a reasonable price.
Supplies & Cost
Barone Gardens 51 liner strips $20.15 each x 4 ($80.60)
(4 different colors of wavy petunias)
BX pro mix $40.56 x 1 ($40.56)
Osmocote slow release $5.48 each x 1 ($ 5.48)
12” pots from greenhouse megastore $2.25 each x 40 ($90.00)
(save your pots from last year!)
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Total Cost of Supplies ( $216.64)
If we sold the extra 30 for $20.00 each + $600.00
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Net Profit $383.36
This may not seem like a ton of money, but when you consider what we would have paid to buy them, this will take us from $428.00 out of our pocket to a positive $383.36.
This is a $811.36 swing!
Let Make Our Hanging Baskets
STEP 1-Order Your Plants/ Start Your Seeds
You will want to order your plants about 8 weeks ahead of time. If you are starting your plants from seeds, you should start them about 8 weeks ahead of time also.
If you are ordering plants I highly recommend ordering Barone Gardens products through Harris Seeds (No affiliation, just great service). We bought four different colors of wavy petunias in 51 liner strips. All this means is that each plastic tray has 51 plants. (see Picture below)
They are a bit more expensive than seeds, so depending upon your time constraints, size of your facility, and money situation, you may just want to start them from seeds. Harris Seeds has just about any type of annual seed that you could imagine, so you can really get creative.
If you need help starting seeds, see our article Starting Herb Seeds in Paper Pots, March 7, 2019.
STEP 2- Condition your soil.
We bought a bale of the BX Pro-Mix General Purpose Growing Medium and dumped it a little at a time into a wheelbarrow. We broke up the clumps and added in moisture to soften it up and make it workable. This soil is a great medium to work with and I will definitely use it again.
STEP 3- Fill Your Pots
Fill your pots with the soil mix to about 1 inch from the top. We chose the 12 inch pots from Greenhouse Megastore because they were very reasonably priced and have a tray inside to let excess water out without losing soil. (see picture) These pots are another great product and can be used again year after year.
STEP 4- Plant Your Baby Plants
After filling your pots with the conditioned soil, it’s time to transplant your babies into their new home. We thought that five plants per pot would be plenty. We planted one in the middle, and four more around, trying not to get too close to the edge of the pot. This will give their roots plenty of room to grow and stretch out.
Step 5- Give Your Hanging Plants Some Sunshine
Now that they are all transplanted, find your hanging plants some sunshine or grow lights. Up here in the north country we have to use artificial light if we want our plants to be ready by May.
The baskets will need about 6-8 weeks to look respectable. You will need to keep the dead blooms pinched off and they will stay beautiful deep into autumn.
Check Out these Progression Pics!
(Pinched off but ready to bloom again)
SUMMARY
Learning how to make money selling hanging plants is easy. With a little up-front investment and a bit of patience, you will be in business in no time! This is an excellent springtime income stream to add to your gardening or homesteading business.
This project is a great example of what homesteading is really like. It is a lot of small profitable projects like this, that collectively make us a sustainable living. You can do this again in the summer with chrysanthemum plants, or in the spring with bedding flowers and vegetable starts as well.
This thinking is absolutely nothing new, the old-timers used to raise an extra pig, an extra cow, hatch extra chicks, make extra butter, make extra maple syrup, grow extra plants, and they even dug perennials out of the garden to trade or sell. These were all in addition to the crops that they primarily harvested and sold. If you apply the same principles to your own homestead, you will become even more sustainable.
Thanks for sticking around, and hopefully you are inspired to start making some of your own hanging baskets. So get your hands dirty, and grow something beautiful!
Thank you for spending some time with me.
Love, Peace, and Light.
About the Author
Terry has a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. He has taught in the New York State School system for 18 years, where he teaches Career and Financial Management, Agricultural Business, Marketing and Distribution, Sports Management, Wildlife Conservation Management, and Resort and Recreation Management. His time has also been spent as an FFA advisor for 12 years and he has been farming his 100-acre family farm since 1991. Terry has a deep love of all types of agriculture and takes every opportunity to promote agricultural education.