This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking to Michelle Elston, who owns Roots Cut Flower Farm in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Elston sells most of her flowers wholesale to grocery stores and local shops. She also offers bulk flower buckets and has a bouquet club flower CSA.
Her 10-acre farm produces more than 25,000 bouquets for stores and 450 party buckets for events.
"I really truly never imagined Roots to be the farm that it is today," Elston said.
Elston's journey to Roots started when she studied plant science at Cornell University. She and her husband later moved to Massachusetts where they ended up buying a garden center.
But after having their first child, they decided to move back to Elston's hometown, where she soon after started her own flower farm and grew Roots to the successful business it is today.
"That's sort of been the fun part of my path is pairing business with ag or horticulture," Elston said.
Most of the flowers grown at Roots are hot summer annuals like sunflowers, marigolds and celosias. Elston focuses on variety selection that will work the best with the climate and will yield the best production.
"I really believe the best sustainability practice is choosing the right plant to begin with," Elston said. "We get super nerdy here on our farm with variety selection."
She does a lot of trials to find out what works best.
"Farming is like, there are a million variables all the time," Elston said. "And so if you can pay attention to that, it's like the whole process is a giant experiment where things are changing all the time and you're always learning."
When Elston first started flower farming, she sold bouquets at a local farmers market. However, she realized that wholesale works better for her. She didn't want to cut her market customers off completely, which is why she began her CSA bouquet club, which has over 100 members.
"A lot of our (CSA) sales are gifts," Elston said. "Flowers are a luxury, so it makes just a wonderful, wonderful gift because it is a slight indulgence."
In addition to flower farming, Elston is the treasurer of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers.
She also offer consulting services to flower growers who are a few years into their farming journeys.
