How to Grow a Little Side Hustle

Do you like the idea of taking $1 and turning it into $2? Or how about transforming $500 into $1,000? Doing this offers a 100% return on investment! Sound too good to be true, in a world that considers a 10% return to be wondeful? Well, let me assure you that it is easier than you think.

I have always been fascinated at how every fruit or vegetable seed (nonGMO) has the capacity to become a plant, vine, bush, or tree that could yield hundreds of pounds of food over its lifetime. The seed only costs mere pennies, while a hundred pounds of apples, for instance, would cost close somewhere in the ballpark of $400!

But who has the time to wait seven years for an apple seed to start producing a handful of fruit? (We actually plan on planting close to 50 fruit trees this year…leveraging today for tomorrow!) But what if you could plant something today and 90 days from now have a product that is worth two or three times the initial cost? Doubling or tripling your money over the course of 3 months, is pretty awesome in my book! And that’s why we did it!

HERE’S WHAT WE DID

An individual we got to church with mentioned that their father had sold mums (aka chrysanthemums) in years past and had transitioned to growing onions. (To each his own!) Though in the past he had done well with the mums. So, not knowing a single thing about mums, I called him up. He came over to the house and unfolded his experience with growing mums. Sounded easy enough! Again, if I see an idea that one fella is doing, I typically think to myself, “I can do that.”

After hearing of his experiences, I began researching how to grow mums. Typically, mum “plugs” are ordered earlier in the year and planted around mid-June. We ordered 200 plugs of varying colors, ordered the gardening soil to put them in, and ordered standard pots to plant them in. We put them in full sun, and for the next three months my 7-year-old daughter and I spent about 30 minutes each morning watering them together (which is a time I greatly cherished in this fast-paced world). On days that we got rain, we didn’t need to water, which was a nice break from our family “chore.” Additionally, like clockwork, once a week we took a little more time to fertilize them, to help them grow a little bigger.

WHAT WAS OUR RESULT?

By early September we had a beautiful harvest of different colored mums for sale! We took some pics, set a price, put them on Facebook (as described in our FREE eGuide) and the orders began rolling in. Some people came from over 60 miles away for our mums!!!

To be honest, we didn’t sell all of them…but we got real close. We more than doubled our original investment, which is simply an awesome feeling! Any time you can turn what you have into twice as much as you had, that’s a good day!

All it takes is a little planning and a little “seed” money. You don’t have to plant 200 mums…but what about 10? Every little bit helps; and that’s the beauty of a side hustle! Mums aren’t a year round commitment. It’s three months to double or triple your resources.

MY TAKEAWAY

As our mum experiment wrapped up, I soon started noticing other things we could plant in order to make an extra dollar. Along with mum season is pumpkin season. A single $2 packet of pumpkin seeds would produce 30+ pumpkin plants, each potentially yielding an average of five pumpkins. How much do people pay for pumpkins in your area…and would you spend $2 to have 150 pumpkins at that price? We’re talking $2!!! Making an extra dollar doesn’t have to break you. There are opportunities all around, if we’ll simply take a little time to plan.

Right after mum and pumpkin season closes comes poinsettia season, just in time for Christmas. After poinsettia season ends, Easter Lily season is around the corner. Now, do I know anything about pumpkins, poinsettias, or Easter Lillies? Not a clue! But I now know that the profit margin on plants is huge…and seeds are cheap!