Pricing

Pricing wholesale plants: a working guide

Wholesale plant pricing is not one number; it is a grid. The same cultivar prices differently at a #1, a #3, and a #7, and differently again as B&B. Getting the grid right — and holding it — is the difference between a season that pays and one that just keeps you busy.

This is a working guide to how small growers set and defend wholesale prices, without a spreadsheet that takes an evening to update.

Price by container, then by readiness

Start from the container size: your cost to finish a #7 is not three times a #3, and neither is the price. Build a base price per size for each category, then adjust for the specific cultivar and how far along it is. A finishing lot with a ready date can carry a slightly softer number than the same plant ready to load today.

Use the container math to sanity-check space and yield before you set a number: plants per flat, cans per bed-foot, how many #1s fit a house. A price that ignores how much bench a crop ties up is a price that quietly loses money.

Hold the line across channels

You may sell the same lot to a landscaper, a garden center, and through a marketplace. Keep your wholesale number consistent; discounting per channel by feel is how margin leaks. If a channel needs a different price, make it a deliberate decision you can see, not a habit.

Per-buyer price levels — a standing wholesale-vs-re-wholesale grid — are a real need as you grow, but they come after you have a clean base grid you trust.

Revisit the grid every season, not every order

Inputs move: liners, labor, media, freight. Reprice the grid once a season, deliberately, and publish from it all year. Renegotiating on the fly, order by order, is exhausting and it trains buyers to push. A stable, defensible list is easier to sell than a flexible one.

Check space and yield with the free container-math calculator.

Open the calculator

Run the whole loop with GrowSheet

Walk the crop, publish the list, take login-free orders, and invoice on net-30 — free to start. The founding cohort opens pre-spring.

Start free