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Selling Palms


coco305

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I love working with palms, finding exotic species and generally everything related to them. 

I am thinking of starting a business wholesale growing palms. 

How much do you think I would be able to sell a canary island date with 10 feet of trunk for. 

Is anyone else here a wholesale grower, at what size tree is it most profitable to sell. 

I imagine selling seeds is most profitable since it produces hundreds and they can be sold for like $8 on ebay. 

I want to have a palm reserve and invest into palms. then say once I have 100 of them sell 10 per year and replace them.  It doesn't have to be super profitable just cover the property tax on the land.

Which palm do you think would be easiest to grow in a farm setting.  I imagine once I get my field setup not much needs to be done in a daily basis except watch them grow.

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36 minutes ago, coco305 said:

I love working with palms, finding exotic species and generally everything related to them. 

I am thinking of starting a business wholesale growing palms. 

How much do you think I would be able to sell a canary island date with 10 feet of trunk for. 

Is anyone else here a wholesale grower, at what size tree is it most profitable to sell. 

I imagine selling seeds is most profitable since it produces hundreds and they can be sold for like $8 on ebay. 

I want to have a palm reserve and invest into palms. then say once I have 100 of them sell 10 per year and replace them.  It doesn't have to be super profitable just cover the property tax on the land.

Which palm do you think would be easiest to grow in a farm setting.  I imagine once I get my field setup not much needs to be done in a daily basis except watch them grow.

Much will depend on where you're located, and what you want to grow.. There have been some other threads regarding selling palms you might try and find / read through, and some great advise shared regarding going forth w/ the effort / how profitable it might ( or might not ) be.. < Still rewarding if you love growing palms, other stuff regardless, imo >  

In a similar situation?,  i'd focus on more of the rarer of things available in a given area, vs. growing what 10, 20, 50 other places within 100 miles might be growing / what is already common / over- planted..  IE:  Someone in say San Diego County growing JUST  palms from Cuba / the Caribbean ..that will grow in S. Cal.. ( and / or other parts of the state,  AZ ) 

Imagine being able to head to a grower growing several thousand Pesudophoenix,  Copernicia sp., etc  ( or all the Brahea of Mexico / 1000's of Sabal Uresana ).. Those might add up to some decent $$ out here.   Queen Palms / Washingtonia robusta, Dates / other common Phoenix sp.?.. meh.. Common and over used here. 

If you live somewhere where those palms are rare, could be worth the effort.

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I would suggest Sylvester palms, they fetch a good price and are way faster than CIDP if you want to wholesale 6-10’ trunk specimens. Plus that orange fresh diamond cut lures people right to the palm. I live in FL, don’t know if CA location would effect growth rate.  

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There's a lot of things you'd want to consider, here's just a couple assuming you can grow 100 that look nice enough to sell without loosing them to drought, insects, disease, fire, floods etc.  

So you have a hundred  CIDP with 10' trunks and you want to sell 10 this year. How will you dig them up? How will you move them to an area where they can be watered, stored, and kept healthy till transport? Equipment costs money and if you don't own it you'll need to pay someone else to come to your place and do it. Is it worth it for 10 trees? How much of the gross sale will digging cost? Once you've got the 10 trees dug up & bagged do you have a wholesale buyer who would purchase only 10 trees? Would they want them delivered or pick them up? Who/how would they be loaded for transport?

 

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15 hours ago, coco305 said:

 

Which palm do you think would be easiest to grow in a farm setting.  I imagine once I get my field setup not much needs to be done in a daily basis except watch them grow.

I hate to be redundant however, the first question is where do you plan on doing this.  What is the land cost, what is your water cost, what can grow where you are located and if you are planning on growing plants to larger sizes, what's the market for them in your region?  How much land do you have available, and as NOT A TA points, out do you have access to get in and dig large specimens easily if that's what you plan to grow.  If you want to sell seed, consider how long it takes to get specimens to seeding size, or purchasing larger specimens.  What is the competition for seed, as in is that market already saturated?  Many people on this portal are throwing away seed because they have so much.  In order to get more input, you would need to share more information.   What are the weather risks where you are located that could destroy your entire crop or set it back significantly?

I think if it were as simple as asking, what species of palm gives the best return in profit, everyone would be planting that species, the market would be saturated and hence the profits would go down.  So a large part of this is doing your own research on your market and really understanding the costs (land, water, labor, starter plants or seeds) and understanding the timeline.  Can you afford to wait for plants to grow a decade before your first sale or do you need to invest more money in larger plants to start with.

33.0782 North -117.305 West  at 72 feet elevation

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3 minutes ago, 96720 said:

It would take years to grow a CIDP with 10’ of trunk. 

Even in the most favourable climate, you are looking at the best part of a decade going from seed to 10 foot of trunk on a CIDP. Just going from seed to 1 foot of trunk will take at least 3-4 years as they are so slow early on. It will probably take 5-6 years to get just 1 foot of trunk and thats in a perfect Med climate where they grow best. I have no idea where the OP is located.

@coco305 Without a shadow of a doubt, Washingtonia Robusta's will give the best financial return in the quickest time. They can go from seed to 10 foot in height in 10 years here in the south of England. Robusta's may be able to go from seed to 20 foot in height in 10 years in SoCal and Med regions. They're relatively cheap to maintain and grow too and take up less room than CIDP's, which have enormous spreads. In the space that it takes to grow on one decent sized CIDP, you can probably squeeze in 4 decent sized Robusta's. So they are far more efficient, as well as quicker growing. 

Stay away from stuff like Sabals, Brahea and Livistona if you plan on making a decent financial return during the next 10-20 years. Each unit may earn you more money, but you will be spending 10-20 years nurturing them from seed to get them to a decent size, when you could have sold 3 generations of washies in that time, for instance. Far less maintenance as well. I may actually start up a Washingtonia farm here in the UK for that reason. I currently have about 200 specimens, all at relatively small sizes.

Dry-summer Oceanic climate (9a)

Average annual precipitation - 18.7 inches : Average annual sunshine hours - 1725

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This thread is effectively a continuation of the discussion we had on the Pine Island thread:

https://www.palmtalk.org/forum/index.php?/topic/67638-pine-island/&page=3&tab=comments#comment-1015137

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Lakeland, FL

USDA Zone 1990: 9a  2012: 9b  2023: 10a | Sunset Zone: 26 | Record Low: 20F/-6.67C (Jan. 1985, Dec.1962) | Record Low USDA Zone: 9a

30-Year Avg. Low: 30F | 30-year Min: 24F

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