The new super customers

There is a significant identity shift going on amongst some of your customers. Are you paying attention? Did you know that for a new generation of green thumbs, gardening isn’t just gardening anymore? It’s farming. In the January 2014 issue of Garden Center magazine, I wrote about the backyard chicken keeping trend and how garden centers can take advantage of this growing market. Chicken keeping, however, is only one component of the urban farming movement.

As more importance is placed on growing our own food and eco-friendly lifestyles, customers are looking for more ways to green up their homes and landscapes. As the urbanization trend continues, residents have to find ways to do more with less space. City dwellers can turn their yards into productive urban mini-farms if they can find the local resources they need. If you haven’t recently asked your customers how they identify themselves, it’s probably a good time to check in with them. Do your customers identify themselves as gardeners, urban farmers or homesteaders? Their answers could help you better take advantage of the urban farming movement.

I teach a variety of “Backyard Urban Farming” programs. In these classes I break down the main components, as I see them, of what I called my close-looped garden system. I employ this system and practices in my own city yard in the middle of Dallas, Texas.

These components include:

• Organic soil management
• Vegetable gardening
• Fruit production
• Composting
• Rainwater collection
• Backyard chicken keeping
• Beekeeping
   

From the outside, someone like me would probably still be referred to as just a “gardener.” I do continue to grow a lot of ornamentals; but if you look at how I manage my space, you’ll see that I expect just as much food production as I do beauty. Many of your customers are after the same thing. There are big business opportunities with urban farmers. Our shopping lists are widely varied, very long and in action year-round. We will shop all your categories in both green and hardlines. In essence, urban farmers are super customers.

When we go to our local garden center, we’re not just looking for annuals, perennials and shrubs. We’re looking for a plethora of organic amendments and fertilizers, a continual supply of seeds and vegetable transplants, pollinator-friendly plants, composting supplies, equipment for harvesting rainwater, food for our backyard chickens and some basic supplies for the upkeep of our beehives. From a conceptual standpoint, what urban farmers really need is a fusion between a true garden center and a progressive feed store. A one-stop shop if you will. If you can already supply goods in all of these categories, I salute you!

To highlight specific category and product opportunities, let me break down each of the categories in my list:
 

Organic Soil Management. Pre-sell the season with soils. If you’re growing for production then you know your main focus needs to be on soil health. Most veggie gardeners prefer to use organic practices and so they look for quality organic compost, humus, enriched topsoil, mulch, expanded shale, greensand, lava sand, worm castings and any number of other amendments year-round. When plant sales traffic wanes in the slower months, you can boost sales of these hardgoods by reminding urban farmers to prep their beds prior to the planting season. These soils were always my top sellers during the coldest and hottest months of the year.

Vegetable gardening. Extend the season with shoulder crops. If you can provide shoulder crops for niche season growers, you can get their feet in the door when most homeowners are armchair gardening. Urban farmers want production as many months out of the year as possible. Cool season salad greens, herbs and other vegetables that can be planted in late fall, winter and early spring will keep your urban farmers coming back to the garden center year-round. (Read more about this in the July issue of sister publication Greenhouse Management magazine.)

Veggies also allow you to pull in sales early and push them late. For example, experienced tomato growers in the south know that the earlier they can plant their spring transplants, the better. In Dallas, we started bringing in our first crop of tomato transplants the third week of February. Along with those early transplants, we sold our urban farmers frost cloth and water wall protectors. They came back in 100 degree heat to buy their fall tomato transplants; we added floating row covers to those sales. There’s nothing like tomato plants to inspire an early wave of customer traffic, no matter the weather.
 

Don’t forget the hard goods. Along with all those veggie plants, your urban farmer will need to pick up a bevy of organic fertilizers and pest controls, not to mention tomato cages and many other gadgets. Newbie urban farmers are looking for a quick fix. Be sure to have raised bed kits and self-watering containers on hand so they can get their project up and running in a weekend. Don’t forget to sell them a drip-watering kit for their new beds. For those who want to start all their own transplants from seed, indoor growing supplies are a nice $100 to $200 add-on sale to that $1.99 seed packet.
 

Fruit production. Extend the season with bare root fruit. Fall and winter (depending on your region) is typically the best planting season for fruit trees and berry plants, especially bare root. In Dallas, we boosted November and December sales with fruit trees and February sales with bare root strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and grapes. Your urban farmers know that they must plant the right crop at the right time. They’re willing to get outside and plant in conditions a casual gardener will avoid.
 

Composting. Drive off-seasons sales with big-ticket items. Once your customers start farming, they’re going to end up with a lot of refuse from the garden and the chicken coop.

There’s no sense in letting that organic matter go to waste. Remember, urban farmers are looking for ways to green-up their lifestyle; composting is pretty much mandatory. There are many great composting systems available for you to sell your customers at a healthy price-tag, year-round.

Rainwater collection. While some of you around the country may be getting more rain that you’d like, those of us in the southern half of the country have been in serious drought conditions for many years.

Homeowners are subject to tight watering restrictions and need all the help they can get. When it rains, they need a way to capture some of that water for use in their edible gardens. Again, rainwater collection systems offer you a big average sale.

Backyard Chicken keeping. Chickens have to eat year-round, right? I’ll let you refer to my previous article for more on this topic, but just as with the pet care categories, chicken keepers need a lot of supplies to maintain the health of their flock year-round. You’ll see them just as often in January as you will in April!

Beekeeping. Are you listening to the buzz? I keep bees in the city and so are more and more urban farmers these days. Before I left North Haven Gardens in Dallas, beekeeping supplies was one of the on-the-rise requests from our customers. Sure, we beekeepers can order products online; but just as with plants, our target customers would rather visit a local business where they can get advice and help. If you have beekeepers in your area, consider stocking a few basic supplies. Don’t forget the pollinator plants: Urban farmers always need to attract more pollinators to their edible landscape. Ornamental gardeners who don’t keep bees are also much more sensitive these days to planting for pollinators.

Options for small-space farming are a must. Remember that we’re most often talking about city-dwellers when we profile “urban farmers” so you need to scale small for them. Some urban dwellers may be doing all their farming on a patio, balcony or very small yard space. Education is also key to these super customers.

Classes on backyard urban farming, or any of these individual categories will pull farmers in all year and help drive traffic during slower seasons.

Leslie owns Halleck Horticultural, LLC, through which she provides horticultural content marketing, social media management and strategy consulting for green industry businesses. www.lesliehalleck.com