Have you ever wondered if you could make money selling pumpkins?
Good news! You CAN make money selling pumpkins! We do every year and I’m here today to help you learn how.
For about 5 months in late summer/early Fall, we are selling pumpkins to our community. Yes, we are competing with the pumpkin patches, however, we are selling them still. Even though there’s tons of pumpkin patches around, it’s actually kind of fun. We enjoy going out and picking them from the patch. And we enjoy delivering them to our people.
In this post, I’m going to share different ways to sell pumpkins that you need to know about. If you’re wanting to get into this business, I’m going to share:
- Which pumpkins are in the best demand,
- What target market is ideal to sell to.
- Some ways to know if you’re making good money.
At the end of this post, I’m going to share something special that I’ve made, especially for you. It’s going to help you know if you can make money with pumpkins. You’ll definitely want to get your hands on it! So let’s dive in.
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Why Do You Want To Sell Pumpkins?
You have to decide: “Yes, this is what I want to do! I want to sell pumpkins to people in my community.” Buy why?
Maybe you are from a community that doesn’t really have pumpkin patches. In a previous episode of the Rural Women Inspired Podcast, I sat down with my friend Amy. She talked about why her family started growing and selling pumpkins from their farm. It was because they didn’t really have pumpkin patches around. That’s a really good reason to fill a gap to start providing pumpkins for your community. And I know that they had great success.
Let’s talk about some ways you can sell your pumpkins.
All the Ways You Can Sell Pumpkins
The first option is to use Farmers Markets. I know many farmers markets around here are going through October. So perfect opportunity to sell pumpkins at market.
Another way is to just sell them from the farm. This is what we do for most of the season. After getting them from the patch, we bring them to our front door, set them up in a decorative way around our house. We advertise that we have pumpkins on social media and then people can just come in and pick out the ones they want. We share pictures on Facebook and put prices on the photos if people just want to pick them out that way and then we will deliver them. And we’ve sold a good number of pumpkins that way as well.
You can also have a you pick patch where people come in and pick their own pumpkin out of their patch. This is basically what the pumpkin patches do.
Another way to sell them is if you have the luxury of a produce auction near you. You can take your pumpkins in bulk to this auction, and they’ll sell them as a lot. Usually the buyer buys per pumpkin. So if so the auction off the lot. And whoever wins the lot, say they won the lot at $1 a pumpkin they pay per doll $1 per pumpkin. So if you had 55 pumpkins in the slot, then that lot would bring $55. So there’s usually a commission fee to that. Just be aware of that and follow all the rules of the auction house to make sure that it’s the right fit for you.
Finally, the last one I’m going to talk briefly about is to sell bulk direct to a buyer. There’s a wholesale buyer that comes in with semis and actually comes to their patch and loads up pumpkins. They like to have similar sizes with that. Then they’ll deliver to different stores and things like that. The pumpkins you see in the stores, typically is how they are sold bulk direct to a buyer.
Types of Pumpkins to Sell
Alright, so those are five different ways to sell your pumpkins. There’s quite a few different ways to do it. There should be a way that might fit you and I’m sure there’s more ways you can do it. But these are the ways that I know many people in our area or our state do it. All of these ways work for different people.
It just depends on where you are and how you can best meet your customer demand. So let’s talk about what different sizes of pumpkins are the best demand. They are:
- Mini pumpkins
- Decorative pumpkins: For example White pumpkins, your warty pumpkins, all of those ones that are just kind of cool to look at.
- Standard orange pie pumpkins
- Medium to large Jack-o-lanterns
- Huge pumpkins that you need a forklift to move
And honestly, those have not really been and demand. People really don’t want them because they’re hard to lug around. Okay, people want easy they want convenient. And so those huge pumpkins, the bigger you grow them, the harder it is to sell them is what I found. So just keep that one in mind. That is a smart tip from me to you.
So which pumpkins are in the best demand?
Which sizes and types of pumpkins you grow really depends on who you’re targeting. And that’s what we’re going to talk about next.
I’ve mentioned the different categories of pumpkins above. Let’s talk about what target market each one kind of meets.
So for the mini pumpkins – kids love the minis. I take mini pumpkins to my Farmers Market stand and set them out. Kids just come by and they go crazy for those mini pumpkins. And of course they’re really cheap. So moms are like, “Oh yeah, we’ll give you 50 cents for that one.” So mini pumpkins sell like hotcakes at my Farmers Market stands when the kids kids come by. I bring them for the kids.
For the decorative pumpkins, women who love to decorate would be be a great target person. My mother is a great example of someone who would love to buy decorative pumpkins because she just loves to decorate for the holidays. And she loves unique decorations. So any of the decorative, unique looking pumpkins would fit that target market very well. You definitely want to try to reach out to those types of people who love decorations.
Or the pie pumpkins you want to reach out to you the bakers in your life. Generally, they will buy a large amount because they’re wanting to put some up for winter.
Everyone loves the carving pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns. Generally kids go for the medium ones that they can carry. I found that you can grow and sell jack o’ lantern pumpkins to pretty much any target market. And you could meet almost any audience that you could ever imagine. So that is good because with these medium to large pumpkins, I never get consistent sizes with pumpkins. They don’t really grow consistently. So I have a number of mediums and a number of larges already at the same time. It’s a good thing that this group meets numerous audiences.
All right, so let’s talk about the ways some of the ways to make good money selling your pumpkins.
Timing
First, let’s talk about timing. It’s important to have good timing when planning out your pumpkin season. So what I’m talking about is timing of when they’re going to be ready for harvest and selling.
I have learned that people start wanting to buy pumpkins in mid September. So that is when we like to start having our pumpkins ready to sell. In order to do that in our area, most pumpkins need to be planted about the middle to end of June, right before Fourth of July. That will ensure that we have pumpkins ready for that time.
Good timing helps with competition. Usually, because we have so much so much competition with the pumpkin patches now in October, we as growers and sellers try to have our pumpkins ready to go by mid to end September.
Right now (late October) there’s so much competition around us that we do still have pumpkins sitting on our porch. So if we would have offered these pumpkins earlier on, we didn’t have as big of a problem selling them because we had some ready early. That’s the thing with pumpkins. Some just take longer to mature than others so you end up having some later. But that’s okay because there are ways to use them up later on even if you don’t sell them. Read here for what to do with those pumpkins.
Keep Great Records
The other another way to know if you’re making good money selling your pumpkins is to keep good records. You want to keep track of your income and expenses on every aspect of your pumpkin business. You want to keep track of your time. Keep track of your your gas that you spend in your vehicle driving back and forth the patch and you want to keep track of your income coming in, of course.
Along with that, you want to make more money than you spend. Pricing your pumpkins can be a chore. Normally, most places price pumpkins by size, but it really all depends on your market and what they’re willing to spend. So you really need to know your customer and what they’re they’re willing to do.
Typically what we do is we price them by the size. So we have our large jacks, about five to $6 apiece, mini pumpkins 50 cents to $1 pie pumpkins two to $3 really depending on sizes and those seem to go over really well.
So making good money selling your pumpkins really depends on timing and the records that you keep. And with that said, I want to now introduce my very special thing for you. If you want to dabble into this and know if you if it is worth it.
Vegetable Business Binder
To find out if it you’re going to make money selling pumpkins, I have something special for you. It’s called the vegetable business binder, but you can definitely use it for pumpkins. You can track income and expenses you can plan out your season and you can keep track of contacts and customers as well as any sales so that later on down the line if you need to reach out to somebody, you will have all their contact information right in there. And I might include some other surprises on there too. That will be helpful.
Again, this is all based upon my experience selling pumpkin selling vegetables. I’ve been doing it for over five years now. Full time. I’ve been doing it longer. I’ve been a gardener for over 35 years now believe it or not and and I never knew that I could make this into a business. I never had the confidence in myself until five years ago when I decided to stay home on the farm full time and I had an overabundance of zucchini And that’s where it all got started from there. So I want to help you get started too, is a really great way to make some extra income. And this will be available for purchase for you starting tomorrow through Sunday only. So it is a very limited time it will come it will come around again. But for now it’s going to be it’s a very, it’s for a very limited time that this will be available. So you definitely want to go, you definitely want to make sure that you get your hands on it, I will leave a link in the show notes. It’ll also be if you’re on my email list, you’ll get it in in my email newsletter as well.
So but you definitely want to make sure that you grab it. If you’re listening to this after Sunday, just know that there will be another opportunity to get it, don’t worry, but it’ll be much later. It’ll be later on this quarter, possibly before the end of the year, you’ll be able to get it again. So friend, I hope that these tips for how to make money selling pumpkins has helped you. If you’ve been thinking about it, wondering how you could maybe you’ve gone to some pumpkin patches with family and wondered, you know, maybe I could do this on my land. Well, guess what you can. I have several posts on on several more posts on diversifying your space with pumpkins. I have another podcast with Amy France on how they did it. I will link up to all of those in the show notes. So definitely go to formfit living.com. Type in, make money with pumpkins in the show notes and this page will pop up and the show notes page will pop up with all of the links all of the goods that I’ve talked about today. All of my secrets, good selling for your pumpkins. It’s it’ll be all in there. And if you love this episode, feel free to share it with a friend. hop on over to Apple podcast which is the purple icon on your iPhone, or anywhere that you listen to podcasts. We’re on Spotify. We’re on Stitcher, it’s the rural women inspire podcast. Go ahead and share the episode. leave us a review and subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already.
