Caritos Garden

TODO

The task list for the backyard edible landscape project. Diary entries and photo reviews are on the Log page.

Do This Week

Do Soon (This Month)

Do This Season

Do Before Winter

Ongoing Rules (Never Forget)

Ideas / Someday

Sell flowers instead of food? (2026-07-09)

Claude's take: Lean toward flowers/plant starts over food for a first selling experiment — the existing nursery/staging area already has sellable ornamental stock sitting idle (hydrangea cuttings, rose cuttings, blanket flower/coreopsis divisions, butterfly bush), so this is testing demand on inventory that already exists rather than a new production commitment. A nearby Miller Place listing (~15 min away, screenshotted 2026-07-09) sells "Limelight" perennial hydrangea starters in 6" pots at $10 each, rising with plant size — a direct, local pricing comp for exactly the kind of stock already on hand.

Food crops (vegetables, berries) carry harder constraints for casual selling: short shelf life, lower price per unit of effort, and more competition from actual farm stands/farmers markets. Potted plant starts don't spoil on a clock, and the local comp suggests real demand.

One thing worth checking before scaling past occasional Craigslist sales: New York requires a Nursery Dealer Certificate of Registration (NYS Ag & Markets) to sell live plants commercially, even at modest volume — cut flowers don't carry the same requirement. Worth a quick check with Suffolk County before this grows beyond a one-off listing.

The landscaper-career angle also fits well here: propagating and selling starts builds real, demonstrable horticultural skill (propagation, container culture, plant ID) at low stakes, and a personal nursery stock is a genuine asset if landscaping installs are ever part of that future — plants grown on-site instead of bought wholesale.

Worth revisiting once the book review reaches Chapter 21, "Markets and Outreach" — good chapter to test this decision against.

Update (Chapter 7, "Land — Scales and Strategies"): Independent confirmation from the book itself. Bane classifies garden farms by lot size, and a property this size (~0.43 acre) sits right at the boundary of his "Tiny City Lot" (up to ~¼ acre) and "Multi-Lot/Microfarm" (¼–¾ acre) tiers. For the Tiny City Lot tier specifically, he writes that cash income "would come mostly from adding value (e.g., berry jams and jellies or botanicals), through sale of seed, herbs, nursery plants or breeding animals or perhaps from flowers" — naming flowers explicitly as a fitting cash crop at exactly this scale, independent of the Craigslist comp.

Update (Chapter 12, "Plants, Crops and Seeds"): More encouragement, plus a real caveat. Bane calls the nursery trade "the most profitable form of horticulture per square foot," citing cuttings turning "a half hour of work" into a "$1,000 crop two years out." But the chapter never addresses plant patents — many named cultivars (including "Limelight" hydrangea, the exact variety in the Miller Place comp) are patented, which can legally restrict propagating for sale even though growing one for personal use is fine. Worth checking patent status before selling named cultivars specifically, as opposed to unnamed/unpatented stock.

Update (Chapter 13, "Setting Plant Priorities"): A third independent citation. In Bane's explicit priority order for small plots, flowers rank third overall (after herbs and salad greens) specifically because they "represent a good potential cash crop and are important for sowing goodwill among your neighbors and passersby" — on top of the Chapter 7 and Chapter 12 mentions, the book consistently treats flowers as a fitting small-lot cash crop, not just a hobby.

Final verdict (Chapter 21, "Markets and Outreach"): This is the chapter that was supposed to test the decision, and it comes down decisively in favor. Bane's core marketing principle is to sell "small things of high value... to which you have added your services and your intelligence" — his own ranked list of the most profitable surplus categories puts plants and seed at the very top, above fruits, vegetables, and herbs. His worked example is almost identical to this situation: "Dividing perennials, selling off surplus trees and shrubs, we add value to the work. If your echinaceas are crowding something nearby and someone wants echinacea plants — boom, you have a crop." That's the hydrangea/rose/blanket-flower staging area, described almost exactly. He also frames a backyard nursery as the single best complementary micro-business specifically because "you'll obviously need to plant thousands of plants... it's easy to create more than you need," so surplus starts are close to free to generate. Practical tactics worth using if a stand or listing goes beyond Craigslist: price in round dollar amounts ($1/$2/$3), keep a cash jar rather than staffing it, and add a small unpriced extra to every sale ("lagniappe" — an extra cutting, a growing tip) to build repeat customers. Net: four independent chapters (7, 12, 13, 21) all point the same direction — flowers/plant starts are a better first product than food, using inventory that already exists. This thread is resolved; no more citations needed unless the plan changes.

From Book Notes

Tasks pulled from Books as each chapter is reviewed, tagged with source. Kept here as the single task list — see the book notes pages for the reasoning behind each one.