How small can you sell seedlings?

Question

I can start any seed but don't have room for it to grow to maturity. I would like to sell seeds in bulk but as soon as they germinate. Do you thing the seeds would be too little would people buy? I could also sell at cheaper prices to people buying in bulk. I have already found a way to securely, safely ship them without being damaged. Please let me know your thoughts on this.

Answer 1

I'm confused by "sell seeds in bulk but as soon as they germinate." Are you meaning that you want to sell your seedlings as soon as they have sprouted?

If so, who are you going to sell these seedlings or plugs to? If to the general public, then you would have to atleast pot them up into a liner, 2 3/4" pot, 4" pot or 6-packs. Unless you have a customer that wants a ton of something, these are about the only size that they would be able to reasonably use. The plants would have to be of some size before you could sell them. Be sure they are rooted in nicely and could handle being transplanted.

If you are trying to wholesale them (provide them to a landscape firm, wholesale nursery, retail nursery), then you would have to sell them in plug trays. There are various sizes of plug trays available and the size of the overall plant would be directly related to it's cell size. For example, a plant coming out of a 272 plug tray would be a lot smaller than one coming out of a 144 plug tray, etc. The sizes of the trays are pretty much the same, the size of the cells vary.

You can also grow them in liner pots or rose pots and sell them that way too. If they are in those pots, they again would have to be of a decent size and nicely rooted in. If a plants not rooted in, it's not ethical to sell it on. If you want to grow them in these sizes, you would research and see if there is a market for this.

I would advise you to do a little research and find out your ultimate goal, who you are selling to and what size would be best and what plants they would be interested in. You would probably want to try more unusual things as they common ones are readily and easily available.

Now, are you looking to mail order these to the general public? If so, seedlings are not the best choice. With the cost of shipping, customers want lush, full plants. Liners would be the smallest you would want to go.

You can visit your local nurseries and begin asking around. You can always find a niche to fill and if you have unusual things, people will always look. There are a zillion nurseries that supply plugs, not that there isn't room for another but there are A LOT.

Good luck.

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EDIT: Liners are a type of "starter" pot, it's similar to a 2 3/4" pot. If there are in a 16" x 16" flat, the liners come 49 per flat. To compare, in a 16" x 16" flat, you can fit 16 4" plants in there.

So, for your plug trays. Here is a general way to go about size. You have to think of each cell as a pot and when they plants are filling out their "pot" then they are large enough to sell.

Another consideration is that if you are selling through Ebay, and you are shipping out of state you may run into problems if you do not have a grower's or nursery license. Ag. Departments are getting more strict on their policies. I'm in CA and there are a few states that require an inspection before shipping out. I know that shipping in to CA is very difficult because of all the regulations. We even have certain counties within our state that require inspections before shipping in to them.

To get that information, you can contact your local Cooperative Extension office and ask advice on getting certified to ship out of state and if there are any requirements for shipping within your state. (I'm assuming you are in the US.) I don't want to scare you off, just sharing what I know and perhaps you didn't think of these things and I don't want your plants to get held up and die on you.

What plants are you planning on growing?