Before venturing into any venture, you should consider the cost.  Growing mums can be a very good investment for a scout unit to raise mums for sale as a fund raiser.  The main requirements are a plot of land and people dedicated to stay with the project until completed.  There is a lot of forethought that goes into establishing a mum field and then maintaining that field.  There is a significant financial investment also.  There are startup costs for the first year that will be around $1,600.  The maintenance cost of operating a mum field for 1,000 mums will average $4.20 per mum, or $4,200.  Total investment for the first year will be around $6,000.  This is cash money up front before any sales.  In the event of a bad crop, most of the investment could be lost. 

On the other hand, we find growing mums to be a richly rewarding experience and are quite pleased with the outcome.  We love the fact that we can provide mums to scout units and they can sell those mums to their friends and families at the same price as the big box stores (and with a better looking product).  This fundraising for our unit has allowed the scouts to pay for their dues, books, and Class B uniforms from the sale of only 10 mums apiece.

The purpose of this website is to provide the knowledge to a scout unit to help them make the decision to raise chrysanthemums as a fund raiser.  This section will allow the unit to consider the cost of growing mums and decide if they want to grow mums or buy them from someone like us and sell them.  We believe our prices are reasonable and we would love to support your unit by answering questions about growing, this website, or even selling you some of our mums this yea  Send us a note at info@ourmumsgarden.com

Initial Expenses

The initial expenses are those that should only be required the first year.  The table below identifies the items, the current cost, and a website that provides the product.  If one of the links is bad, let us know so we can correct the error and not force people to wonder what we are talking about.  A pdf of these worksheets is provided for the unit to determine their own local expenses.  We did not provide an excel file as they tend to carry viruses and we all know that “A scout is clean…”.

Irrigation Network

Fertilizer Injection System

Operating Expenses

The operating expenses occur every year.  They are calculated based on the whole year’s operation.  As much as is possible, we have all of the materials on hand for the entire year before the start of the growing season.  This is a pretty significant layout of capital.

Growing medium

Feeding

Below are two PDF files you might want to use to calculate your own expenses: