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How much would you pay for seedlings?
- Thread starter juanitos
- Start date
I've started extra seeds this year, and i think I'm going to try and sell off the extras to cut the cost of the grow, my question is, how do you guys package the plants to be shipped?
I seen your prices in your blog and I think you were right on the money. Homedepot and other places all have the same plants. People will not have a problem with shipping cost for more rare varieties. Your prices are reasonable.
I've ordered live plants from CCN for years and paid $4.25 for supers and $3.75 for all other plants (reapers were $6.00 each) and have been satisfied with the prices mostly. Shipping worked out to be about a buck per plant up to 12 plants and then a bit cheaper above 12 plants. The way they shipped and packed was great and I never had any damage. Their policy for replacing damaged plants was excellent as well. One drawback is they have a limited selection of super hots which are my main grow. They have many of the big names though like brain strain, bubblegum and reaper. I can't use them for 2015 since I'm increasing the size of my grow greatly and would be much too expensive. So 4 or 5 bucks per seems good to me for the size seedlings they sell. Now they're a huge nursery so they can afford to have lower prices that smaller seedling sellers could have a hard time matching. If a smaller grower was selling larger or stronger seedlings or had some rare seedlings I wouldn't mind paying a bit more say 6 or maybe 7 bucks each for something really rare but I'd still grow my own mostly just because costs add up quick for large grows.
The "value added" angle might be an approach for a smaller supplier to look into, Juanito. I'm not suggesting you attempt to jump through all the OMRI hoops to achieve organic certification. But if a grower were to start seedlings in a living soil - full of healthy compost and the plant-friendly food web contained within, and inoculate seeds/seedlings with micorrhizal fungi and other beneficial microbes, you could conceivably charge a higher price for a little extra work.
Speaking as someone who has absolutely HAD IT with sterile seedlingstunting starting mixes and salt fertilizers, I will be planting inoculated seeds directly into a living soil this season. I figure that as a gardener, my goal is to do my best to convince my plants that they are growing not merely as a specimen, but as one strand of many in a soil food web that I'm doing my best to put together. The less time my seedlings spend suckling the sugar tit of salt fertilizers in the cultural ghetto of sterile mix, the easier time they'll have forming microbial symbioses at plant-out.
It's like feeding pellet food to fingerling trout. When it comes time to stock a stream, those dumb fish are so used to waiting for pellet food (Miracle-Gro) that they have a rough time before they realize they have to hunt for their food (team up with soil microbiota) to survive.
Just something to think about. If I were to purchase seedlings for my garden, that would be a huge selling point for me. I think paying a dollar or two extra per plant (as well as the several billion microbes in the soil) would feel like money well spent for a lot of gardeners.
Good luck!
Speaking as someone who has absolutely HAD IT with sterile seedling
It's like feeding pellet food to fingerling trout. When it comes time to stock a stream, those dumb fish are so used to waiting for pellet food (Miracle-Gro) that they have a rough time before they realize they have to hunt for their food (team up with soil microbiota) to survive.
Just something to think about. If I were to purchase seedlings for my garden, that would be a huge selling point for me. I think paying a dollar or two extra per plant (as well as the several billion microbes in the soil) would feel like money well spent for a lot of gardeners.
Good luck!
My Extras go to whoever wants to come get them.
I gave away well over one hundred mature producing plants this year and all I asked for in return was to bring back my root pouches at the end of the season. So far I have received only a couple of my pouches back.smokemaster said:
I think buying plants from members is cool if you don't want to take the time propagating them yourself, but I think that is half the fun of it. Now if you had a plant I could not get seed for and I really wanted it this season, price would be of little consequences.
SL3 said:
+1 That's where I am on this, too. If I'm only buying like six plants I can manage to invest a little more into ensuring I'm getting a really awesome product - similar to what I'd start for myself. ( Wow! look at that big head!
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