I never intended for mine to be a business. It’s still not formally. Just a hobby that got out of control. But 500K in sales from a 1700 sqft greenhouse is a good retirement hobby. And I retired 22 years ago. Time to retire again.
A one man operation is entirely different from hiring help. Once you start hiring help the cost and risk skyrocket and margins shrink dramatically.
Sir, let me suggest hazelnuts. Hard to graft, but easy to start by stooling. Super easy from seed. I like fruit as much as anyone, but when push comes to shove, I like to have protein growing on some of those bushes. Just be sure you work with varieties that are resistant/ immune to Easttern Filbert Blight. Rutgers has some new hybrids, and of course the ones from Oregon.
This country should be planting acres of this crop.
I worked mostly in trades as a younger guy. Good luck finding any younger people interested in that. I hope you can find someone to sell your business to, it sounds like you can teach them how to keep it going.
[quote=“clarkinks, post:16, topic:45127”] The thing is that from a backyard nursery perspective life is a lot simpler, in my case stemming from the fact that it never means to be primary income. Heck as stated the farmers I know with a few acres and tons of work to produce to market do have a day job. Still, there are huge advantages for the backyard hackers:
I don’t know for a fact that I will achieve my business plan (so to speak) but I know for a fact that I don’t want this to be too big to start feeling like work. On retirement I have all sorts of hobbies I would not mind monetizing and they deserve a share of my time.
That’s a good business plan because your not risking everything your more doing what you love. Like @fruitnut said he didn’t mean for that to happen but it did because he loves it hence the alias fruit nut. My orchard now is manageable my rootstocks and scions are free I just get bigger from here but costs don’t go up. My grass lands are passive income I let others bale the hay. $100,000 tractors and $300 000 combines scare me because I’ve got to do 8000 acres to make a profit I’m not doing that.
that was 150K in sales, I take that to mean revenue, not profit - although he did say mostly for labor. I’m assuming because the hobby aspect covers most of the overhead.
“500K in sales from a 1700 sqft greenhouse” that’s net. A grower is one of the best when they can do that.
Yeah, that came later. I’ve got a bad habit of coming late to a thread, and responding to posts as I read them in chronological order 
You always bring a lot to the discussions! Growing fruit and gardens is not easy but when people get it right it’s big business! Heard of a guy once making money lIke that in a couple months raising tomato plants.
My margin, ie return to labor, is about 75%. But then Uncle Sam is on my payroll so that shrinks some…lol
My target is to clear $5k a year through nursery sales. As I said I monetize most of my hobbies; those morels, chaga, king boletes, and a host of other forageable items are not going to pick themselves. Then there is my woodworking and I still need to set aside time to go get enough salmon for the year. A man’s gotta eat.
Part of the allure to this revenue stream is that I’m a systems engineer by trade; I am attracted to building systems and fixing inefficiencies that cost time and money. I enjoy overthinking this in a way to get me to practical applications.
i plan to do the same. i couldnt possibly eat all the cherries from 8 trees so what we dont eat ill sell at the farmers market. eventually when all my hazels are producing, ill do the same with them. many could do stuff like this beside selling rooted cuttings and plants to make some extra coin esp. in our times.
Yes there is lots of work in this field and lots of money. Really you can make all you want that your body can handle.
Getting plants planted, whether we put them in our own soil, sell them, give them away, or guerilla plant them in the wild, is probably one of the most meaningful contributions we can do for our society. Forget politics and changing people’s minds; if you touch somebody and it results in them knowingly or unknowingly picking up the cause of food production you have made a difference.
As Teddy Roosevelt said: “A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless.”
We need more edible trees and bushes as if our lives depended on it because it does.
spot on Don! as soon as i can buy some land i plant to grow acres of sour cherries and hybrid hazels. both in high demand and good for the soil and planet. i have 8 sour cherries and 6 hazels now but want much more.
If i had a good enough local market i would probably get with Vaughn Nursery and buy their trees for $5. Pot them up and let them grow a year then triple or quadruple my money. I bought 5 trees from them for the price of 1 locally.
Do you know for a fact that your local market is not good enough?
As stated I’m currently a systems engineer. You rely a lot on the so called industry best practices; tried and true approaches, as there is no point reinventing the wheel. But you also hit areas where assumptions must be made and that is perfectly fine as long as you test them.
The best thing about backyard nursering is that testing assumptions is a relatively inexpensive proposition. Better yet several assumptions can be tested at once. Next spring spend $100 on 20 on 20 bareroots from them. You’ll find out:
All it takes is to sell 5 to break even. What you really get is the invaluable data of whether it is an economically feasible approach, what you need to fix on your work flow to accommodate it, and whether you want to do it in the first place.
I’m to the point where I’m trying to bump up the volume of plants I’m trying to move. I’m fixing my workflow, baby infrastructure (very limiting for anything much larger but suited for my end goals) and the limits of the market to absorb my goods.
I make about 30 grand a year gross selling my fruit trees, but it is integrated with my orchard care business and half the trees I sell is to customers that have me plant them and then care for them for years and years after. It was an integral element of my business starting off and I lost money on my nursery for the first ten years.
I’ve learned many tricks over the years that help me make this much money on only about 2 acres of my land devoted to it and even if and when I stop managing the 100 or so orchards where most of my income comes from, I will likely be able to extract enough money from my nursery to never have to think about selling my home and moving some place with lower property taxes (mine make it feel like rent).
I buy already grafted trees but usually graft at least one more variety on it, so people don’t get over inundated with fruit at one time and the harvest season can be spread to maximum. This approach has helped gain local recognition- my orchards have the best fruit, etc and real estate agents have told clients that my orchards (she said my name) raise the value of homes, which was probably BS in terms of my name being attached to it, but as least my client believed it, and that says something.
You can make good money with a bearing age fruit tree nursery because it is specialized and requires unusual skills to provide the best product. Over time, the community of rich people who will be your market will appreciate that. But you need to be close enough to such a community to market your product and you have to figure out a way to publicize your nursery. Mine is only through word of mouth but up until this season I’ve always been able to sell the amount of trees I need. Suddenly I have more than I have a market for but let’s see where it stands next fall.
I should mention that I get few days off during the year to make my modest middle class salary (it costs a lot to be middle class less than an hour from NYC). It seems there is always something else needing time and effort, but gardening is something many people do for recreation- as i would if it wasn’t my business. Actually I still do with my orchard and extensive vegetable garden along with flower gardens and so forth.
Alan, I really appreciate you taking the time to chime in.
As I probably mentioned before, I’m attracted to the whole nursery bit because I like to apply my problem solving skills; there are many ways to approach just about any problem and refining the solution to the point that it is highly functional and elegant takes a lot of mental energy (or you can half ass it and are out of business in a few years). I’m slowly testing my way towards finding out what works on my neck of the woods.
im betting with the restrictions to shipping to AK and the lack of competition. you should do well.