GTOTM (Garden Tip Of The Month) Having a plant sale at your home

Here a just a few things to consider before you have a plant sale at your home.

One should decide what the purpose of the sale is. To get rid of excess plants, dabble in the commercial aspects of plant sales, or to make a little money to reinvest in new plants.

Take inventory of your plants and decide what plants should be thinned out and offerred for sale.   Hostas make a great first choice.  A large plant can be separated into anywhere from 6 to 12 new plants.  Just take a large knife and have at it.

Next you will need some pots and potting soil, along with a type of plant tag (cut up miniblinds make great plant markers).

When I had my first plant sales at the house I would co-ordinate it with the city wide garage sale weekend and pick up a ton of customers that were out and about looking for bargins.  You can use flyers and signs at your descretion and never under estimate word of mouth.

It is a good idea to have a second person help you with the sale, that way one person is always taking the money and bagging plants while the other is answering plant questions for browsing customers. Customers love to see the plants growing in your gardens, another good reason to have a second person to serve as a tour guide.

I use plastic bags (yeah the ones that your groceries come home in, do the words 'recycle' and 'free' come to mind) to bag up potted plants for my customers.  One bag holds 2 one gallon potted plants comfortably and the handles make it easy to carry.

Remember the saying 'a picture is worth a thousand words'?  Unless you are selling a plant like a hosta you are going to need a picture of the plant in bloom.  People definately want to see what it looks like when it is blooming and since different perennials bloom at different times through out the growing season, you are never going to have them all blooming at sale time.  I take my digital camera and get pictures during the season as they are blooming;  then transfer them to my computer,  upload them to an oline photo developer (usually as cheap as .06 a print) and then laminate them and use them over and over again.  The laminating helps protect the picture from a rainy sale date.  These pictures are place in front of each group of a specific plant where they are the first thing a customer sees.  One more tip on pictures - they don't have to be professional, as you can see from some of my pictures there is occasionally a hand or boot or onion patch in the picture.  To an experienced gardener this will give them warm fuzzies - it will tell them that this is an actual picture of the plant growing and thriving (hardy) in this plant zone.