That's a Wrap! Lessons Learned In Our First Year in Business

By Lise Fracalossi

Welp, that’s it! We officially closed for the season on October 7th. I can’t believe our first year in business is over! It was rocky in a few places, but on the whole I think it went well.

As a capstone of the season I thought I’d share with you some of the lessons I’ve learned.

Seed sowing

As a reminder, I did most (but not all) of my propagation this year as winter sowing, i.e. planting native seeds outdoors in December-February to give them the cold moist temperatures most of them require before they can germinate.

  • Winter sowing means that plants aren’t ready to sell until late May/June! I had almost nothing to sell at the market I did in April, and what I did bring to sell got a lot of “it looks so delicate!” from customers. (See: below as to why that’s bad!)
  • Start annuals early inside in February. No one wants them late in the season, which is when some of them because available this year!
    • Especially Agalinis tenuifolia (slender false-foxglove) — germinate its host plant first inside, stratify Agalinis in the fridge, and then transplant the host (damaging some roots and making it accessible to the seedlings) and plant the Agalinis seeds around it. This is similar to what Prairie Moon recommends for other hemiparasites.
    • Maybe sell in 6-packs? (eg. how marigolds are sold). People generally don’t want to put just 1 or 2 annuals in their garden.
  • The 1 part vermiculite/1 part perlite/1 part coir mix worked well for (most) winter sowing. Might be okay to add fertilizer when sowing outside, too — I had fungus problems when sowing inside with fertilizer in the mix, but outside it didn’t seem to be a problem.
  • Pros and cons of different winter sowing containers. I used three different types: 6 cell plug tray inserts, 1 gallon water/milk jugs (classic winter sowing), and reused ramen takeaway bowls from the local ramen place. Plug tray inserts were put in an reused flat storage container with holes drilled in it for drainage; the others were placed directly on my deck.
    • The plug tray inserts get really compacted. Despite that, I had pretty good germination rates in all of them. It’s also possible I just need to fill them fuller and not push them down as much when sowing.
    • Remember to open jugs/ramen bowls around last frost date! I opened some too late and they fried the seedlings.
    • The ramen bowls didn’t work well. They heated up much too quickly (even quicker than the jugs!) and killed some of the seedlings (eg, my showy tick-trefoil, Desmodium canadense).
      • Might have worked better if a) I removed the lids at an appropriate time, b) didn’t put them in full sun until they were bigger, and c) used a wood burning tool or hot glue gun to melt holes in the lid (using a utility knife cracked the plastic but didn’t aerate well).
  • Put the winter sowing containers in shade (north side of house) but not close to the gutters! I had some of my milkweed get washed away during a rainstorm, and other plants fried in full sun.
  • Critters weren’t as bad as I feared outside. (Inside is a different story!) The hardware cloth I used over the plug trays kept them out without additional effort, and they were never brave enough to try to get in through the mouth of the milk jugs! (And the ramen bowls, which only had tiny holes in the top, were right out). Now, I was dumb and left my one pot with a Carya cordiformis (bitternut hickory) seed uncovered and outside the trays, and I returned one morning to find a critter had made a delicious meal of it.
  • If I can’t identify a plant to species level, don’t bother collecting its seed. This is how I ended up with 50+ mystery goldenrod plants. I may just give away what I have of these seeds.
  • I need better seed flat labeling over all. By spring it was often hard to tell what I planted where!
    • Use Garden Markers! Not Sharpies! Garden Markers use an alcohol-based ink that can stand up to the elements. I was resistant to buying them because I’m always trying to minimize expenses around here (and I hate uni-taskers), but my god they make my life easier. I never again want to hold a faded and cracked ramen bowl lid up to a light to try to read the species name I wrote 3-4 months ago!
    • Also not worth using the colored/numbered stickers — they fall off too easily. Invest in colored reusable six pack cell trays instead?
    • Might want to use the waterproof Avery labels I started using late in the year. Remember they need to be special-ordered!
    • It’s most important to know date sowed, seed source, and species
  • Wear a mask when working with large amounts of vermiculite or perlite. Perlite is basically volcanic glass and it creates a lot of dust that I’d rather not be breathing in. (It has irritated my airways when I have, which is Bad ™️). Vermiculite is less problematic, but it also forms beside asbestos and there have been cases of asbestos contamination in vermiculite! Doesn’t have to be an N-95; even an exam mask helps.

Up-potting and further propagation

  • Just buy the damn pots. It’s too much work to continually be repurposing containers or punching holes in Solo cups. Greenhouse Megastore is happy to sell me 1,000 co-extruded pint pots for a very reasonable price.
    • Might experiment with pulp pots or soil blocks next year, because honestly I hate using plastic, especially new plastic. Unfortunately there’s evidence that recycled plastic leaches poisons, and pulp pots did not work with my marketing and labeling strategy last year. Co-extruded pots were a good compromise, as a less wasteful way of manufacturing plastic pots.
  • It’s easier and better to use Fox Farms’ Coco Loco for potting up than a homemade mix. Then I don’t have to worry about sterilizing compost, weed seeds, jumping worms, etc. (Or about making enough compost!) And, as we all know, the local marijuana dispensary and grower’s supply has the best prices on Coco Loco!
  • I need to fertilize more often. Especially since I was using a winter sowing mix that (in most cases) had no nutrients in it. Also my pots were outside and subjected to rain, which will wash away nutrients, too. Next year, add a slow-release fertilizer to my winter sowing mix, and make sure to fertilize every 2 weeks per outdoor fertilization instructions.
  • I can’t be up-potting all season! By the time I was potting up some plants it was late September, and they were already going dormant! This also meant that many species weren’t available to sell as soon as I would like. After talking to other nursery owners, I think I need:
    • Fewer pot sizes. This means up-potting from winter sowing containers to quarts to trade gallons. (And stuff probably won’t get to gallon size in the first year).
    • More plants per pot. The consensus among the nursery owners I spoke to was to put a lot of plant mass in one pot, if only to look healthier and more abundant.
    • Skip the pints. Vigorous plants outgrow them too fast. That said, I still have a bunch that I’m sure I’ll find a use for.

Sales, Marketing, and Audience

  • Don’t bother with growing garden veg/herbs to sell. The local market is saturated and other, bigger nurseries can charge less. I am still drowning in habanero plants.
  • When a customer says “your plants look so delicate,” it means they think the plants are too small to survive in the ground! Be aware of this when deciding which plants are ready to sell.
  • Customers were confused by the stickers with the red trillium logo. I lost count of how many times I’ve had customers think the plant in the pot is a red trillium instead of the actual species! 🤣 Rethink labeling next year to make the logo less prominent.
  • Speaking of labeling, Blue Stem Natives uses MACore for pre-printed labels in bulk. Might be worth the expense in terms of time saved. And with Blue Stem using them, that means a lot of native species are already in their inventory!
  • Vendor insurance will allow me to do a wider range of markets (eg. Groton, Newton). I did $500 at the Newton pop-up market with Grow Native Massachusetts (where insurance was covered), which would more than cover the cost of my own insurance.
  • Fitchburg Farmers’ Market was a total waste of time. It’s just not the right audience for my product.
  • Investigate Gardner Farmers’ Market. Also run by Growing Places; might or might not be worth it.
  • As nice as the Ashby Farmers’ Market folks are, I don’t think it’s going to be worth doing next year. There’s not a lot of foot traffic, and I never did more than $40 per market.
  • Montuori Fleamarket was more profitable than expected, but I have to do SO MUCH more education. Also people sometimes balked at the prices there.
    • If the Lunenburg Artisan Market runs there again next year, that might be a better use of my time

I haven’t done an in-depth analysis of how many plants I sold relative to the stock I had, but I have an informal sense of what was popular or not. I plan to use this to inform what and how much I grow next year (and what I don’t want to invest in!)

  • People seem to really love hummingbirds, so “hummingbird food” plants really did well, eg.:
    • Penstemon spp. (foxglove and Northern/hairy beardtongue)
    • Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
    • Red Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)
  • Wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana). I sold out of this before I could even bring it to markets!
  • Goat’s rue (Tephrosia virginiana)
  • Clematis virginiana (Virgin’s-bower clematis)
  • Sundial lupine (Lupinus perennis). People love the story of the Karner blue butterfly!
  • Grass/sedges. Although I did sell out of most of them by the end of the season! They’re just not very showy?
  • Kalm St. John’s Wort. I honestly couldn’t speak much to the benefits of this one, which probably didn’t help.
  • Yarrow (Achillea millefolium). Maybe because it was a cultivar?
  • Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis). I think so many people think of this as a weed that it’s hard to get people interested. But Onagraceae is such an interesting family, and the primrose moth is beautiful!
  • Eastern black nightshade (Solanum ptycanthum). Especially since it’s an annual! I did better once I started talking about the benefit to birds, though.

Specific plants that didn’t produce well

  • Eutrochium maculatum (spotted joe-pye weed). (Sown in jug) I only got 2-3 plants out of it. IIRC, this had poor germination, plus it might have been one of the containers that got washed out because it was too close to the gutters. That said, supposedly it likes wet to medium-wet soil. Maybe use a heavier mix? (I think I used the 1/1/1). Try sifted Coco Loco?
  • Zizia aptera (heart-leaved alexanders). I feel like this sprouted and then died; not sure why (removed lid too late?)
  • Antennaria plantaginifolia (plantain-leaved pussytoes) (Sown in plug tray) - didn’t germinate at all? Could be overwatered; these things are dry-loving. But the A. neglecta did fine (until I potted it up!)
  • Schizachyrium scoparium (little bluestem; I mostly used this as a host for the hemiparasitic false-foxglove)
  • Common and poke milkweed (Asclepias syriaca and exaltata). (Only when sown inside in plug trays). I had a problem where these germinated fine, got true leaves, but then the leaves would start dying off one by one until the whole plant died (or went dormant? Some came back). I think it’s an overwatering or light/dormancy issue. I got some good advice on a post on the Propagating Native Plants Facebook group that I can apply. tl;dr I think the best approach is to winter sow them, because the winter sown ones did well (at the cost of not having any ready until later in the season!)
  • Maianthemum canadense (Canada mayflower or false lily of the valley; sown inside in a pot) might require certain mycorrhizal relationships, as they sprouted and then immediately died or went dormant. (It’s also just possible they’re doing the monocot thing of forming a bulblet the first year and then developing into full-sized plants in subsequent years, see: trilliums). Is it possible that deer got to them outside? Last I checked there might have been a leaf or stem there, but it definitely was truncated. Investigate more.
  • Dry loving plants, in particular field pussytoes (Antennaria neglecta) and pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea). These germinated and grew fine in the very light 1/1/1 sowing mix in plug tray inserts, but once I potted them up, they almost all died. The Coco Loco is very absorbent and I think they just got too wet at that point. So I will definitely need a lighter mix that incorporates sand for up-potting with dry plants like these. (Cactus mix?)

Organization, Time Management, and General Observations

  • Rethink how I organized my sowing record and schedule. There was a lot of repetition, and yet somehow I never had the info I needed when and where I needed it.
  • I should keep my propagation protocol document separate from my sowing record. There’s a lot of info from a lot of sources to organize there, and it’s confusing to have it grouped together. I also need to continue to build this out.
  • Prairie Moon knows more about germination than Wild Seed Project; defer to them when possible. (No, you can’t plant wild cucumber seeds without stratification, my dude).
  • Need to think of ways to be more efficient with time. Labeling and mixing soil are some of the most time consuming.
    • Can purchase commercial labels (see: MACore, above), mix in larger quantities, or purchase commercial mixes
    • Mixing the 1/1/1 mix in large garbage barrels might work. I can always roll the barrels to mix, and then I’ll have enough to last me awhile. I’ve also heard about mixing in a cement mixer.
    • Pot filling is also time consuming, but short of getting a machine to do it, I’m not sure what to do about that.
    • Cell trays vs jugs: as already mentioned, jugs are more rodent proof and standalone, but can be harder/more time consuming to transplant. The jugs are probably best for smaller seeds that need to be surface-sown and/or ones we want a lot of.
    • Do I actually need to cover the soil with vermiculite when potting up? I think that’s mostly a “when sowing” thing. Not sure why I got into the habit of it…
    • Don’t be afraid to ask for help from friends. Having Kristina S help me with markets made my life so much easier, and even having Rikibeth S help with potting up for a single day was invaluable

Well, that was very helpful for me to write! I hope it was helpful for you, too – if you’re considering winter sowing, or are interested in the business of running a native plant nursery.

Did anything here surprise you? Any thoughts on addressing some of the challenges?

And of course: thank you all for your patience support through our first year! We couldn’t have done it without you.

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Featured image: Nabalus altissimus (tall rattlesnake root) with (sadly) a backdrop of Japanese barberry. Photographed by me, Lise Fracalossi, at YMCA Camp Woodstock, Woodstock, CT, September 2024.