Surveys are easy to develop, especially when using the advanced survey software solutions available today. Many researchers are tempted to do much of their data collection online; however, it is not always the preferred mode of data collection, especially if respondents are in hard-to-reach areas. Whether a researcher uses an online survey, mobile survey, paper survey, or a combination of all modes, the mode should depend on the type of study and the demographics of respondents.
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Online surveys and mobile surveys tend to be the most cost-effective modes of survey research, yet they may not reach those respondents that can only respond using alternate modes. Results of online surveys and mobile surveys may suffer and differ greatly if important respondents are left out of the research. Hard-to-reach respondents may be easier to reach using more traditional methods such as paper surveys or face-to-face interviews.
Advanced survey software platforms have multi-mode capabilities for online surveys, mobile surveys, surveys, paper surveys, kiosk surveys, and more, giving researchers the ability to survey even the hardest-to reach consumers, and analyze data from all survey modes collectively.
The ability to reach respondents is one challenge of surveys. However, surveys have several advantages and disadvantages. They are as follows:
The reliability of survey data may depend on the following factors:
If you&#;re looking to create a survey, Snap Survey Software is a flexible and secure platform for data collection and analysis. You can create advanced surveys that collect reliable data, and use advanced data analysis and reporting features to obtain the insights you need.
It goes without saying that a smaller area requires fewer resources or inputs. Growing on a quarter acre means that you&#;ll use a quarter of what you would need for a full acre of growing.
What this means in the long run is that the amount and quantity of these resources is less, and is more manageable. Getting enough compost to supply a full acre of flowers can be a bit complicated - and unless you have a compost spreader can be complicated to apply as well.
I honestly also don&#;t miss trying to calculate and purchase in the large amounts of fertilizer and amendments required, not to mention the cost of water for irrigating as well. There&#;s something very nice about having a smaller amount of resources - it&#;s much more manageable and the numbers are smaller too, which is easier to wrap one&#;s head around.
The fact of the matter is that we as humans have constraints - we can only use two hands at any one time, we can only (effectively) focus truly on one task at a time, there are so many hours in a day that we can work. And when it comes to growing and harvesting flowers, it is certainly a labor-intensive job that requires time.
Even with a very efficient workflow, the larger the farm, the more time is required to take care of it. In terms of just the sheer number of plants, with each one requiring a set amount of labor, the amount of time that gets spent can skyrocket overall if one has a very large scale operation.
Take for example if you are looking at dahlias - if you had to calculate the time it takes to prep the bed, place irrigation, plant the tubers, pinch, stake, corral, harvest, condition, then dig, divide, and store the tubers, dahlias are a lot of work and take a lot of time. And if you multiply the amount of time it takes to just take care of just one dahlia by a thousand (or more) this time can quickly add up.
Of course you can try and decrease the amount of time that you spend. You can of course hire employees, which come with their own challenges and costs and different skill sets to manage. You can try to add in efficiencies to help cut down on time and labor such as using landscape fabric to cut down on weeds, utilizing a paper pot transplanter to make transplanting easier, even perennializing dahlias so you don&#;t have to dig and store them.
But what if we looked at it a different way? What if instead of you shrank the size of your farm to decrease the amount of time needed in order to take care of it?
You&#;ll know your business best of course, but I&#;ve found it to be incredibly liberating to have downsized the scale of the flower farm. By focusing on becoming more effective and efficient with the space that we do grow on, we can spend less time slogging through the rows and more time doing things like marketing or designing that ultimately is closer to make more sales.
The temptation when growing in a smaller area is to grow more varieties (and fewer plants) - but unless grown intentionally, you&#;re just going to have a handful of random blooms that most likely won&#;t go together and will probably leave you without the types of materials that you need for creating your products.
Instead, what&#;s more effective is selecting crops that are versatile, productive and will have a long harvest window. Take for example annual phlox - Phlox drummondii - that can be grown quite well on a small scale operation, highly productive, and quite versatile (can be used in centerpieces, bouquets, bridal bouquets and so much more) and combines very well with other flowers given their small scale and spray-form.
Instead of trying to grow a hundred different varieties of flowers, I can focus on growing a dozen varieties really well. And while this does mean that I end up buying fewer seeds (or at least attempt to buy fewer seeds) it does pay off when things are running smoothly and I don&#;t have to worry about finding enough focals or enough filler.
My goal is always to grow only the flowers we need, and grow less (or none) of the flowers that we don&#;t need (and I could also extrapolate this to growing only the flowers we can sell).
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Flowers that you grow that don&#;t perform well, aren&#;t of the correct quality or color, that aren&#;t productive enough or ultimately just don&#;t get used are wasted resources, wasted space, and wasted opportunity.
For example, the year that I grew several hundred snapdragons only to not utilize a single stem in our arrangements and designs (although we regularly had vases of snapdragons around the house) was quite eye-opening: I could have grown any number of other flowers that could have been more useful, but I didn&#;t know how to cut my losses and start a new crop in their place (I&#;ve since become much more pragmatic, and if a flower isn&#;t performing well, I&#;ll put it and replace with another crop or even a cover crop to take care of the soil).
Now, I only grow flowers and materials that I know that we&#;ll use 100% of the time. Part of it is from years of trialing and working with all sorts of flower varieties and knowing exactly what works in our environment, in our hands, and for our customer base down to the color and season and successions.
Like a well-oiled machine, our little flower farm produces the correct amount of the flowers that we need - nothing less, and what little is leftover is either dried or returned back to the earth in the form of compost.
While I would love to be able to say that everyone could move to eco-conscious growing techniques such as cover cropping, no-till farming and integrated pest management, I know it&#;s not always possible due to circumstances of one sort or another.
For us, it was both the scale of economy as well as time. I didn&#;t have time to brew enough compost tea or the ability to create enough compost to even make a difference in what we needed for a large scale flower farm. But now that we&#;ve downsized, I&#;ve been able to have the opportunity to give more time and focus back to using regenerative and eco-conscious growing techniques.
For example, we have been able to devote a larger part of our growing space to a native prairie planting. Not only does it provide native plants for habitat, food, shelter, and nesting space and materials, we also use the spring cutback of native grasses as a natural mulch that can be utilized for our beds as a perennial no-maintenance source.
We&#;ve also been able to fully embrace a no-till approach to growing, continually feeding the soil by being able to produce a prodigious amount of compost and leaf litter and being able to produce enough volume to provide for the flowers that we grow.
I even have time to work on other projects (such as the zinnia breeding project that I have been undertaking) as well as creating habitat and shelter for native bees, trialing native species for cut flowers, and whatever else gains my attention.
Which brings me to my next point&#;
I have to admit that some years, flower farming was a slog. The hot days of August and September were filled with harvesting and weeding and designing until I couldn&#;t even look at another arrangement, and my hands stank of the pungent scent of basil and sage that we used for foliage. There were times that I was just waiting for the first frost to hit so that the whole miserable season would just end.
These days, things are much better. The farm seems to almost run by itself sometimes, and all I have to do is keep up with harvesting and watering, and even those tasks are not as insurmountable because the scale is so much smaller and the number of tasks is far less.
This wouldn&#;t happen of course if there wasn&#;t efficiency and intent built into the way that we run our operation, and while it seems simple in retrospection, the truth is that it took many years and many mistakes and errors for us to get to where we are at today.
But for that, I am happy. Happy with where we are at, and happy with what we are doing. And that is in many ways invaluable in itself, because it allows me to be able to have the capacity for designing and meeting with design clients and sustaining my passion for growing in the long run.
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I hope you found this useful and helps you to feel more confident about growing on a small scale flower farm! Don&#;t be afraid of the disadvantages that growing small scale may incur - there are plenty of advantages and ones that I personally have seen the benefit of.
If you&#;re interested in learning more about growing a small scale flower farm, you should check out some more blog posts here:
Why We Decided to Downsize Our Flower Farm
A Letter to Flower Farmers Growing in Small Spaces
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