Top-of-the-line methods for small specialty crop growers to increase their earnings is by adding value to their vegetation by taking an additional step past just promoting their unprocessed harvest. Utilizing simple value-added techniques can improve your profits by a hundred to 1,000 p.c!

For example, my neighbor has grown sedums for years, selling them on the native Saturday market in the standard four-inch plastic pot. She has executed well, but her sales – and her earnings took off like a rocket after her husband urged selling the crops in ornamental hypertufa pots.

Each winter, using the standard hypertufa mixture of perlite, peat, sand and portland cement, they make lots of of small and huge pots in a wide range of shapes, using outdated tupperware from the thrift shop and scrap plywood and styrofoam for molds. Carol makes fused glass art, and makes use of the rejects and scraps, that are embedded within the outdoors of the pots, to add a little bit of color. Virtually any colorful materials – “penny” tiles, for example – may be added to the pots as well.

When the hypertufa pots have cured for a month, they are full of potting soil and sedums, which are grown out till the first Saturday market within the spring. Now, instead of a $three plant, she is able to promote her plants in hypertufa decorator pots for $25, selling thousands of dollars value each spring and summer.