Grow and Sell Seedlings in Spring: A Business for Patient Kids

What you actually do

In early March, while there's still snow on the ground, you plant seeds in small pots on a sunny windowsill or under a cheap grow light. Tomatoes, peppers, basil, cucumbers, marigolds. You water them, you turn them toward the light, and by the middle of May you have sixty small plants that people want to put in their gardens.

Then you sell them, on one weekend, and it's over until next year. That's the odd thing about this business. It's ten weeks of quiet work for one busy Saturday, and it teaches planning better than any other idea on this list.

What it costs to start

• Seeds. A packet of tomato seeds has around 30 seeds and costs about $4. Five packets of different things is about $20.
• Seed-starting soil, one bag, about $10.
• Pots. Reuse yogurt cups with a hole poked in the bottom, or buy a tray of small pots for about $10.
• A grow light, if you don't have a south-facing window. A basic one is about $25 to $40. Skip it the first year if you have the window.

So $30 to $50, and most of it makes far more than sixty plants.

Talk to a parent before you start, because you are borrowing their windowsill for ten weeks and their watering can for longer. It helps to show them the list of people who said they would buy, which is the next section.

Find your first customers in March

You sell in May, but you find your customers in March, before you sow a single seed.

1. Ask every gardener you know, starting with your family, one question: "If I grew tomato and pepper plants this spring, would you buy some at $3 each, and how many?"
2. Write the answers down. If the answers add up to forty plants, grow sixty. If they add up to five, grow ten and try again next year with different plants.
3. In April, send those people a photo of the seedlings. People who've seen the plants growing show up in May.

This is the cheapest market research there is, and it's the difference between a windowsill full of plants nobody wants and a sold-out Saturday.

What to charge

Work out your cost per plant. Sixty plants from $40 of supplies is under 70 cents each. Garden centres in most of Canada sell a single tomato seedling for somewhere around $3 to $5, and a pot of basil for more.

At $3 a plant, sixty plants is $180 from $40 of supplies. At $4 it's $240. Price the popular ones, like cherry tomatoes and basil, a little higher, and sell the rest in bundles: three peppers for $10.

Sell on one day, ideally the Saturday of the May long weekend, which is when most Canadian gardeners plant out. Put a table at the end of your driveway with a sign, and message everyone who said yes in March. Whatever's left after that weekend, give to a neighbour, because a seedling doesn't keep.

Rules and staying safe

Show a parent this list.

• Sell from your own driveway or yard, with a parent around. Some towns have rules about yard sales and roadside stands, so ask a parent to check if you're setting up more than once.
• Label every plant with what it is. "Tomato" isn't enough for a gardener. "Sweet 100 cherry tomato" is.
• A grow light stays on for hours at a time. Plug it into a timer, keep it clear of curtains and paper, and have an adult check the setup before you leave it running overnight.
• Take payment in cash, or by e-transfer to a parent's account.
• Don't dig up plants from anywhere that isn't yours to sell. Wild plants and other people's gardens are off limits.

What Jenny would do

Jenny is 16 and lives in a small town where every second house has a vegetable garden and the nearest garden centre is a forty-minute drive. That drive is her business. She'd grow what the town actually plants, which she'd find out by asking, and she'd add one thing nobody there grows yet, because she's the kind of person who likes to try things.

She'd hand-letter the plant labels, because that's her, and it's also why hers sell out and the ones in plastic tags don't. She'd sell on the long weekend from a table by the road, and take orders for next year from the people who arrived too late.

When it stops being fun

Week six, when the seedlings are leggy and pale and you're sure you've done something wrong. The cat. A late frost the night before your sale. Realising in April that nobody wants the forty cucumbers you sowed.

Most of that is fixed by asking in March and by growing what you were asked for. The rest is gardening, and every gardener you know has a story about the year it all died. They'll still buy your tomatoes.

One more thing worth doing. On the day you sell, write down which plants went first and which ones you were left holding. Next February that note is worth more than any seed catalogue, because it tells you what your own street actually plants.