Topic: Plant Sale - help, please!

[Trevor_D]

We've been approached by our local Primary School to have a stand at their Summer Fete, advertising ourselves and selling plants.

So - all you good folk who've done this sort of thing for years - HELP!!

What sells? It's at the end of June, so we're a bit late for a lot of the summer stuff, although we thought that tomatoes and chillies might go down well. And herbs, because everyone wants a pot of basil or parsley on their kitchen window-sill. Beans? Courgettes? Bedding plants?

And what about pricing? Undercut the local garden centres? Charge the same?

And that's before we get on to the question of how much stuff to take....

(When I took on the job of Secretary, I thought it was going to mainly involve letting plots and writing the odd letter! I now find you also have to be an expert on land drainage, hormone weed killer damage, Defra regulations, allotment law, chicken welfare, composting toilets, and now this.... Keeps the little grey cells working, I suppose!)

So folks, all contributions gratefully received.

[landimad]

If as you say the little ones are there, I would also use up any easy to grow and quick growing annuals.
Cosmos, African and French marigolds, sweet peas, sunflowers, and the like always do well.
If you have a glass tank, then set a wormery inside to show the little ones and some of the biguns what goes on under the soil and how it is turned from poo to soil.
Just a few ideas that we did for our school of uneducated teachers.

[Wilder]

You need to think like a lazy non-gardener to be honest!

We tend to expect things in school fairs to be cheaper than the garden centres, so I would definitely aim for a price point about 25% below, at least.
For the lazy non-gardener:
Anything in bloom will sell quickly, people notice the bare spots around then that could be brightened up by the flash of some marigolds for example. People are also thinking of starting to BBQ and they haven't had a moment to get into their garden.

A friend of mine (to raise money for a local charity) asked for supplies on her local freecycle of pots, compost, and even plants and put together some pots in May of "instant summer BBQ pots" which by June had filled out beautifully. Sold like hotcakes at £5 each.
good luck

[Borlotti]

Hanging baskets sold well at one school fete.  I was too late to buy one and I think they were charging between £10 - £20.  They were well filled and flowering well.  Just an idea.

[Mortality]

I'm guessing herbs, like Basil, Mint etc
Maybe Tomato plants too.

[lincsyokel2]

Just a few ideas that we did for our school of uneducated teachers.

I was closely involved with schools offices for 20 years, the level  of ineducation  and ignorance of some 'teachers' left me very depressed. Ive met primary school teacher who cant spell, cant do mental arithmetic, have no idea about the kings of england and havent a clue where Goa or Indonesia is. However, they could rattle off home made paper xmas decorations like a chinese child sweatshop. A fabulously useful skill for the first half of the 21st Century  :(

[Jeannine]

Definitely Minature Pumpkins, especially if you give then a picture and a how to chart..I did an adopt a pumpkin with a form that kids filled in and sent to the school office with their chosen name, then later in the year they could bring a little pumpkin to school for show and tell. You can use just one type,I would suggest Jack be Little which is orange or give them a choice say with Baby Boo which is white Jack could represent a boy and Boo a girl..actually give me a minute while I check I think I have one called Pam,,They can change theire names themselves.  I will be back  
 NO ... Baby Pam is bigger, stick with Jack or Boo or both. Good Luck.XX Jeannine

[SMP1704]

Trevor, you beat me to it.  I had planned to post a siimilar question.  We are holding our first plant sale on site in Mid May.

I have started sowing, based on the spare seeds in my box.  so far I have

Broad beans
French Beans
Pumpkins
tomatoes

Ran out of space, but also planning sweet peas, cosmos, calendula and outdoor cucumbers.  Also thinking about doing some salad buckets using the famous black bukkits, which I think are breeding in my shed :o

We haven't discussed pricing yet, but I favour round sums £1, £2 etc.  If we sold single tomato plants at £1 each, it would still be cheaper by 49p than the GC across the road.

[dtw]

Chillies will sell well, I've sold them at car boot sales.

Bolivian Rainbow do well, as they look nice too.

People were surprised that they had chillies on them.  ::)

[Sparkly]

Just a few ideas that we did for our school of uneducated teachers.

I was closely involved with schools offices for 20 years, the level  of ineducation  and ignorance of some 'teachers' left me very depressed. Ive met primary school teacher who cant spell, cant do mental arithmetic, have no idea about the kings of england and havent a clue where Goa or Indonesia is. However, they could rattle off home made paper xmas decorations like a chinese child sweatshop. A fabulously useful skill for the first half of the 21st Century  :(

Good job I don't work in primary or else I might have taken offence!

[:(]

My local school has an annual PTA plant sale at the beginning of May, the plants are provided by a nursery. Its like the vultures descending when it opens. People dont come with a shjopping list like going to a garden centre so its impulse type buys so prices have to be a bit of a bargain. They sell allsorts - bedding, perennials, veg, herbs, they all seem to go. Tip - take along loads and loads of cardboard boxes for people to take awy their purchases.

[chriscross1966]

I used to sell at carboots to cover the costs of my seeds and heating the GH....
If you have a Wyevales handy they have a recycling scheme for pots, you'll find loads of smaller ones in  there and usefully the trays for carrying pots too....

Stuff that used to be easy to shift:
Basil... 4 or 5 6" tall plants in a 3" pot, remember they like rather more sand in the compost than some....
Chilli's.... especially if you've got some hot ones, Habanero (this is a few years ago mind) I could sell every one I took at prices similar to the GC just cos it was "The Hottest Chilli"... good luck with hatching a load of N|aga or Jolokia though....
Aubergines... the standard purple ones
Courgettes....
Outdoor cukes
Parsley
Cherry and beefsteak toms, especially Sungold and Marmande.
Chives
Spring Onions... I used to do them in a strip of ten modules, about 10 plants to a module
Mixed baby salad as above but 4-5 to a module
Runner beans, 6 in a 5" pot.


These days there's a lot more folks into gyo so you might find more "oddball" stuff sells, strange herbs, offbeat tomatoes, tree onions etc....

One tip is to use mostly garden soil mixed with growbag ..... cheap if nothing else, also, offer a deal and try and make everything the same price... if you decide it's going to be a quid a pot (if you're etting the pots free and use freecycle to get some soil....) then "6 for a fiver" will go down well, and if you've got a good variety of stuff you'll be shifting a lot of 12 for a tenner, if it's a quid fifty then 4 for a fiver etc... it pulls them in and makes the change easier....

I also used to sell huge quantities of F2 self-saved geraniums... I'd be upfront about them being saved seed but most of them would be orange/red with the odd white or purple one in...  a strip of ten small plants in modules, I seem to remember 10 seed trays (40 strips) going in less than an hour .... it was the only flower I used to bother with

Change... make sure you have 40 quid in pound coins and 20 in fifty pences (if you'll be using a "fifty" in your pricing.) Try to make it simple for pricing, "everything on this table is the same price, the big pots at the back are marked " etc...."
chrisc

[Squash64]

That's a very helpful reply chriscross, thank you for posting it.

Our plant sale (and Cream Tea  :D) will be on May 15th and I'm always looking for ideas of what will sell.

[saddad]

A lot of sound advice there... don't overdo the toms though... by mid June you will have missed most of the market as anybody with a greenhouse will have therirs "in" by then... our Start of June Sale always had some left over... you will sell some but not loads. Buying in some cheap plug plants and growing them on... lots of seed cats start to sell them off cheaply at the end of May... if they don't all sell you can use them to brighten up the site..  :)

[Trevor_D]

Many thanks, one and all. Lots of ideas there.

My thoughts were to keep it fairly low-key, as it's the first time we've done anything like this and it's a bit late in the season. But herbs, tomatoes, chillies and marigolds all have several votes. And i hadn't thought about pumpkins. I suppose it's a bit late for sunflowers?

[chriscross1966]

A lot of sound advice there... don't overdo the toms though... by mid June you will have missed most of the market as anybody with a greenhouse will have therirs "in" by then... our Start of June Sale always had some left over... you will sell some but not loads. Buying in some cheap plug plants and growing them on... lots of seed cats start to sell them off cheaply at the end of May... if they don't all sell you can use them to brighten up the site..  :)

Yeah... good point.... I didn't used to bother with standard tomatoes much, plus if the sale is Mid-May round here you'd be looking to have at least started the hardening off process.... I was always trying to make my stuff for selling as close to free to me (barring time) as I could, so it was always seeds I already had or had saved myself in secondhand pots :D.... also by doing that you get to chose the best three or four plants you want from say 25 then sell the rest, if you only grow five you're stuck with the ones you get.....

chrisc

[Squash64]

We had lots of tomato plants left over last year, mainly because people had donated them but forgotten to put what variety they were!

[Trevor_D]

I always grow a couple of dozen varieties of tomato and always have loads left over to give away. I might try selling them. Good point about not going for the ordinary varieties - you can buy those at the garden centre.

[Spudbash]

I love the adopt a pumpkin idea!

From my several years of buying from school fetes, as well as couple of years of selling, I'd suggest that you set up a plant creche, ie have a large area at the back of the stall where people can leave their cardboard boxes of plants while they make merry. You'll need to write their name on the boxes with a marker pen and tell them to collect before they leave the fete. The advantage is that they can buy far more plants than they would otherwise.

At my parish fete in May, herbaceous perennials sell very well - they're always beautifully and accurately labelled. They're priced higher than the annuals and veg plants.

One more thought: Have you considered what to do with any plants left unsold at the end of the day? Would you be happy to take them away again? After a school event, I was once left saddled with three large boxes of unwanted plants - inevitably, the worst ones. I think I just composted them, in the end (having checked them for pests and diseases).

Good luck with your stall. So many families are now making the effort to introduce their childen to gardening, I'm sure your efforts will be much appreciated.  ;D

[lincsyokel2]

Radishes in 3 inch pots would work as well.