I never price my plants LESS than any of the big box stores. I always go alittle higher.

In my market, your prices are on the low side. Our 3-4" pots of tomatoes are selling for $3. each. Peppers also.

You need to market your seedlings to differentiate them from the mass marketers. For example, make a large sign that says "Home Grown and Pampered" or "Guaranteed Healthy" or "Grown in Organic Starter Soil" or "Varieties Selected for this Region" or "Genuine Heirloom Varieties", etc. Also print up an instruction sheet for "Transplanting and Caring for your Seedlings" and note on the sign that your plants come with free instructions. Your sign should also invite questions - the more personal contact you have with the customer, the better the chances they will buy from you.

Marketed properly you should be able to move them at higher prices than the other outlets.

TomNJ

I grew a variety of heirloom tomatoes, only one of which can be purchased at Home Depot/Lowes and peppers. They are in 3" pots and I sold quite a few last weekend for $3.50 each. Perhaps $3 each would have increased traffic, but the people who came did not have a problem with my price.

I didn't have to pay a market fee since people came to my house.

I think you are not charging enough. I would expect to pay at least $2.50 each, especially for organic plants that haven't been overfed.

I printed out details of each tomato variety, along with a color photo, and taped the info to cardboard; which I then placed near the plants. I am glad I did this. People loved the "heirloom" idea and knowing that the plants do well locally will definitely help sell them.

Printed instructions is a great idea - I should have done that because my chatter may have been lost in the flurry.

Personal I think there all too low. Greenhouses are short selling themselves. They should all make a colloberative effort and inflate the prices to a real price that reflects current day prices, think about all the soil and Electric bill, or employeesm, and to mention time. A 4 inch tomato doesn't appear out of nowhere it takes at like a month for them to get that big.They should sell them for $5 each! Regards

JRS

I sold, very cheaply, the ten extra plants I had through Craig's List for this area, dividing them into two sets of five. They were grabbed the day I posted it.

I can't talk about a fair price, since my aim wasn't to earn money but just get rid of my plants for some pocket change. But I did include the following "plant details". Of course it could have been much more complete, but it included what I thought a novice grower might need to know. Plant Details:

1 New Girl, hybrid, relatively early tomato. Height 6-8 feet. Requires sturdy cage or trellis support unless you give it room to sprawl. Space cages 2 feet from other plants.

2 Big Beef, hybrid, large fruits, delicious taste, Height 8-10 feet. Requires sturdy cage or trellis support unless you give it room to sprawl. Space cages 3-4 feet from other plants.

1 Brandy Boy, hybrid, large fruits, delicious taste, a version of the Brandywine heirloom, beloved because of its taste. Height 6-10 feet. Requires sturdy cage or trellis support unless you give it room to sprawl. Space cages 2-4 feet from other plants.

1 Mortgage Lifter, heirloom tomato, seeds may be rinsed and dried to plant next year. Height 6-8 feet. Requires sturdy cage or trellis support unless you give it room to sprawl. Space cages 2-3 feet from other plants.

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Fertilize planting hole with organic or chemical fertilizer (10-10-10 or 8-8-8 are fine. Use any chemical or organic fertilizer with equal numbers or a lower ratio first number [nitrogen]) according to directions and then fertilize again after small tomatoes appear. You can also use the fertilizers specifically manufactured for tomatoes.

Do NOT use the 4-foot flimsy "tomato cages" sold at the big box stores to try to support these tomato plants. They're beefsteaks and the plants get very large and heavy when the fruit develops. (Those cages are great for supporting pepper plants.) You can let them sprawl if you have the room (but space them farther apart than recommended above if you do). You can put two or three stakes around the plant and surround the plants with string as they grow if you'd like to keep the plant upright. You can make cages out of 5-foot tall CRW fencing available at home improvement centers -- it gets rusty but lasts forever. Make them in circles about 2 feet in diameter if you go this route When the tomatoes get taller than the cages or other supports, they just head down the other side, and that's fine. Otherwise, you'd need a ladder! I use sturdy cattle panel fencing from Tractor Supply, plant the tomatoes next to it, and tie them to it as they grow. Do what best suits you!

Finally, keep the plants watered and mulched. Just put a good-sized circle of leaves or pinestraw or other mulch material around the base of the plants (not touching the stems) to prevent the soil from drying out. Not only will you have to water less, but the plants grow better with a steady supply of moisture.

Tomatoes do not produce well when summer temperatures are high. They don't produce much if any fruit if night-time temps are much higher than 65 or 70. If this happens, just keep them watered, and wait for cooler nights. They'll pick up production again then if the plants are healthy.

Thank you for all the comments. I couldn't agree with you all more. I have more time invested in the seedlings than anything. I have about 300-400 seedlings to sell. I was wanting to earn some more $$ to pay for my hoop buildings. I have flats of tomatoes all over. Someone posted this along time ago, "How much would you pay for this?" Well with that, I am leaning towards the $2.50 range. I guess I can always go down, but not up!

Just an FYI, here are the varieties I am going to be selling. Some hybrids, mostly heirlooms.

Early Season -Red

Belii Naliv
Early Girl VFF Hybrid

Mid Season-Red

Ball's Beefsteak VFFT Hybrid
Big Beef VFFNTA Hybrid
First Prize VFFNT Hybrid
Sioux

Late Season- Red

Druzba (heirloom)
Mule Team (heirloom)
Oxheart (heirloom)
German Pink (heirloom)
Marianna's Peace (heirloom)

Paste/ Roma Type- Red
San Marzano

Yellow
Lemon Boy VFN Hybrid

Heirloom

Pineapple Tomato
Black From Tula
Cherokee Purple
Aunt Gertie's Gold
Limmony
Dads Sunset

Small Fruited/Cherry Tomato

Yellow Pear
Red Pear
Sweet Million FNT Hybrid
Sun Gold Hybrid
Black Cherry

10 Inch Hanging Baskets
Red and Yellow Tumbling Tom Hybrid

Thanks for the advice and for telling me to be Prouder of all my hard work!

Jay

jr - our first market was last Saturday. Wished I had taken a ton more peppers but figured next week would be the really big week!! 100 pepper plants (mixed hot and sweet) in 4" pots went for $2.50 each and no one even blinked at the price.

200 tomatoes - heirlooms and hybrids all sold too. Larger individuals in 4" pots went for $2.50 and 6 packs of smaller plants for 4.50. You are low on prices. ;)

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

Dave

I'm a home grower, not a pro, but I sold my large seedlings out of my driveway, mostly, at 3.00 (4/$10)for large (16-20 oz cups)and 2.00 for the 6 oz. size. No one complained about the prices, a few commented they seemed low, and this from people who watch their pennies closely!

I wanted people to feel like they could afford to be adventurous with their varieties. Which is why I also gave away lots of plants to "the deserving" who seemed either really knowledgeable about gardening, or really interested in growing heirlooms.

Dave, given my luck at starting peppers from seed, I'd say those prices are an absolute bargain!

jan

JRS

Let us know how it goes.

I will say this ....
Local grocery store has 1 gallon Celebrity plants 2/$5.
In the past couple of years, with folks knowing that I have lost control, they have asked for specific plants and I have grown them. Problem is, in the past I always given my extras away ....
So it now seems that some folks ( around here at least) expect you to plant seeds ( some of this years were 50 cents each for seed alone) and give them away ... despite all the costs. $1.50-$2 is a FAVOR!
No ranting intended but just a note/thought that if you intend to sell plants, do not get into the most common of gardening habits and give out free plants ( unless to a food bank etc ...). I have run perhaps 500+ plants through the chipper/shredder this year upon this premise. Folks will take advantage of you.
My goodwill this year will be the resulting fruits of what I have planted in excess to those less fortunate ... not plants to $70k/yr "friends" ;)
It is your time/expense and you should be rewarded if you so choose. Having specific requests made and then awaiting for you to give them away is ... beyond reasoning. Mom, No problem. Best friend, no problem but .... there must be a line drawn somewhere!

hi jrslick,
i know you asked for advice from experienced growers and sellers, but i thought i'd jump in on the consumer side of things.

i certainly can't speak for the masses, but i think this is a great time to be doing this. there seems to be a momentum toward people growing their own food and buying local. my first thought on seeing your prices was too good of a bargain. I didn't look around too much here in phoenix, and decided to go with seed, but you just can't find anything like that at the box stores or most of the nurseries either. if i had seen cherokee purples here i'd probably forked over $5 :)

be fair to yourself. like cozy said your doing a favor. i think bringing diversity into the community is definitely worth extra and there are certainly people who will appreciate this and pay a little more for it.

as the season goes on you can certainly move bigger plants with discounts i would suspect. and before i venture into territory i'm not well versed in I will say good luck!
Rob

I like that idea of printing out pictures and descriptions of the tomatoes to go along with them. I got into the heirloom end of things specifically because I was attracted to the romance of the descriptions in the catalogs.

This thread is helping me to make my plans for next year, since so many of my seedlings were wiped out by fungal infection this time. I was only going to charge $1 each plant for heirloom tomatoes, and then some of the more common varieties of eggplant and peppers. I think I will lean more toward the $2. price or better next year, and I don't see why I cannot produce 400 to 500 plants even in my small suburban setup here. I have definitely made the mistake of giving plants away, and people from all over the place, even some I have not met, are contacting me now to see what they will get this time. I am explaining to them that I will likely have nothing to share (other than with my own family and a friend or two) due to the losses this year. They are not happy to hear it. But if I can interject (to them) next season that they are welcome to attend my plant sale, maybe that will turn things around.

I have a feeling that a search for heirloom tomatoes on craig's list would bring up all sorts of creative marketing approaches. Personally, I think there is an untapped niche market for small plants that can be grown indoors year 'round under lights.

Plants in permanent containers sell well, generally. I put two or three Tiny Tims in dollar store pots and several extra Sprites in grow bags just to "enhance" the appearance of my merchandise table, and they all went quickly at $5.00 each. Grower prices on those start at $12.00 for 1-2 gallon pot size.

After having success with my windowsill garden in last winter's natural light, I could see a whole gimmickyy marketing business built around indoor tomatoes. Put a plant in a bag, add a high power cfc bulb in a clamp-on light and voila! A GROW TASTY TOMATOES YEAR ROUND kit!

But without that kind of mass merchandising, developing that niche will be a slow process. You have to educate customers to the idea of buying tomato plants in September-January. Even here in a two-season area, most people plant only once. A lot of them don't even know that more than one gardening season exists.

Another marketing idea that came to me was that of the tomato membership club, where every three months a customer gets a new variety of small almost-blooming patio or indoor plant in a decorative container. The subscriber would get all the joy of parenting, with none of the hassles of getting the child through puberty. And they get to sample lots of varieties of tomatoes.

That sort of operation could really take off, as many of the new cross-bred dwarfs started to stabilize. Every household needs at least one tomato plant!

I went to the flea market last weekend with about 300 plants in 3" pots. I sold them for $1 each 6 for $5. Other than my time I really didn't have any money in them. So I walked away with a few hundred bucks and boy was I happy! it was a pleasure sharing some of my favorite varieties with others.

Last Saturday, a vendor at my farmers market was cutting apart their plug trays and selling the tomato plants that barely had true leaves. I think their price was either $1 or $2 each. I want to sell my tomatoes in 4" deep pots for $3. Maybe my prices are too low. I don't have a heated greenhouse, just a plastic covered canopy, which I have found out is WAY too small.

I agree that your prices should be a little higher. We have a nice place here that is open during May and sells heirloom organic seedlings. The 3" toms are $2.50, gallon toms are $6. 2.5" pots of things like bunching onions and mint are $2 and she is getting more and more business each year. I went opening day and her greenhouses were swamped.

Prices can vary greatly. My local Home Depot and Lowes sell the Bonny brand plants in 3" peat pots for $2.98 each.

On the other hand, a local upscale boutique gourmet food and garden center who normally sell everything at very high prices was selling plants for only $1.50 each - including Cherokee Purple and Brandywine! Their plants were also healthier looking and in 3.5" square plastic reusable pots as well.

Go figure.

TomNJ

I sold quite a few 3"-sized potted tomatoes I grew for $2 each for the gargantuan tall ones and then $1 when people stopped buying and only the smaller ones were left. This was at a friend's community yard sale a few weeks ago. They were selling like hot cakes the first hour. I had Brandywines, Brandy Boy Hybrids, Early Girl hybrids, better boy hybrids, romas, rutgers and golden jubilee varieties.

I think I will do it again next year. I did find myself giving out ALOT of tomato plants free to neighbors and friends.. easily 20 plants! Growing space is at a premium so if I have learned anything.. it is to not give out so many free plants if I want to try to better pay for the materials and time used to grow 50-something plants again (especially if I start growing them on February 2nd again.