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  • From: Dean Mullis <demullis AT InfoAve.Net>
  • To: market farming <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: displaying Zinnias
  • Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 02:13:58 -0500


We started displaying in cheap, dark green, plastic waste baskets. The kind
you would put
in a guest bathroom. We grow the State Fair mix from Johnny's. An ounce
($8.30) will
direct sow 750' row feet with some left over. I use an earthway seeder and
the cucumber
plate and don't thin. I plant 2 rows in a 375' 50-inch wide bed. I
cultivate till they
are about 12" high and then lay down drip tape and much with straw from round
bales. Takes
time to mulch but then I am down with weed control for the zinnias.
We bunch as we pick, 15+ to a bunch. We used to try and "arrange" in the
field, but the
State Fair variety is so varied, 15 randomly picked flowers always makes a
nice bunch.
We used to strip most of the leaves off, but one Friday evening, we were in a
hurry and
didn't, and it has doubled our sales from 20 to 40 bunches a market. We can
sell between 35
and 40 bunches per Saturday @$4/bunch.
We have had minor success with sunflowers and dismal failures with other
species such as
statice and celosia. The zinnias are pretty trouble-free and profitable in
our situation
and will last around a week for the customer. We like to tell our customers
that they are
programmed to die on Fridays.
We do not use a preservative, we tell the customers to trim the ends every
day or two and we
do use well water.
Hope this helps.





  • displaying Zinnias, Dean Mullis, 02/18/2000

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