Author Bio

Michelle Wallace is an Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension Educator with Central State University Extension and covers northwest Ohio. Michelle primarily works with beginning small and urban farmers, specialty crop growers, and alternative agriculture. Michelle grew up on a cooperatively owned farm overseas. She worked with her dad in the kiwifruit vineyard and apple orchards. She returned to the United States to study horticulture at North Carolina State University. She has spent most of her career working in Extension helping people learn to grow plants. Presentation: How FlowersInSeason.com Can Help Cut Flower Growers Market and Sell Flowers: Local cut flower growers often struggle to communicate cut flower availability to buyers. Cut flower buyers have grown accustomed to on-demand purchases of flowers, most of which are shipped in from South and Central America. In an effort to improve communication between buyers and local growers, a group of Ohio cut flower growers partnered with Central State University Extension on a NCR SARE partnership grant. The outcome was a new MarketMaker application called FlowersInSeason.com. The application was developed to create a platform for cut flower growers to share real-time availability of cut flowers. In addition, growers can link their farm website to the application, use the buy-sell platform to push products, and increase buyer awareness of the availability of locally grown flowers.