Is Lavender Profitable?
Lavender is an easy to grow perennial that has proven its popularity over many thousands of years. It’s known for its peaceful, clean aroma, natural antiseptic properties, attractive flowers, and many uses for ailments ranging from headaches to skin rashes and eczema to anti-anxiety effects that could rival benzodiazepines.
Today, lavender is sold as fresh cut flowers, distilled into essential oil, dried for use in potpourri, or included as a high-end additive in skin care products such as soaps, shampoos, and lotions. It’s used as a culinary herb in drinks from lemonades to cocktails and coffees; in baked goods such as pastries, and cookies; blended in chocolate and even used in savory dishes where its sweet floral tones complement many peppery or herb-filled dishes.
Lavender is grown world-wide, but demand continues to surge as lavender infused luxury skin care products and an endless range of home products, including laundry detergents, carpet deodorizers, and even garbage bags continue to appear. Lavender’s popularity is so high, in fact, suppliers are unable to meet current demand. Since lavender can be sold in so many forms (fresh, dried, distilled), there should be no problem in selling as much lavender as you can produce.
To squeeze even more profit from a veritable cash crop, many producers choose to sell a wide variety of value-added lavender products like bath and body products, food and drink, and household products like cleansers and candles.
Fortunately, lavender is a hardy crop, demanding very little in the way of water and fertilizers, and yet troubled by relatively few pests and diseases. Overall, lavender is a high value crop that offers an excellent return on investment. In 2017, Modern Farmer calculated that it was possible to earn as much as $120,000 per acre just by selling bouquets of dried lavender. The same site touted the success of Purple Haze Farms, in Washington state, which reportedly produces over a million dollars of lavender annually on only seven acres.
It’s important to keep a lid on the hype, of course, when you’re considering any investment decision. Grocycle.com quotes the same potential $120,000 per acre earnings touted by Modern Farmer, but in the very same article, it (more realistically?) calculates a likely yield of $10,000 in fresh or dried lavender per acre in an average year. In a good year, that yield may reach $30,000 per acre.
So, the average farmer may not actually be raking in $120,000 per year in fresh flower sales, but there is always the opportunity to maximize your profits by generating other products or even opening your farm up to agritourism. Still, even these more moderate yields won’t be realized in the first year. It takes time for lavender to grow from a small cutting to a fully mature and productive shrub. Depending on your climate and the cultivar you’ve chosen, you’ll see peak harvests at about 5 years, with a productive lifespan ranging from 8 to 10 years.
Choosing Cultivars
Did you know that not all lavender is... well, lavender? An impressive range of colors are found in cultivars of this plant that literally defines a color, including white, pink, blue-violet and many shades of purple. The US Lavender Growers Association estimates that there are over 45 different species of lavender, with over 450 varieties, while even more have yet to be classified.
With so many possibilities, it’s hard to imagine how you could narrow your choice down to the perfect cultivar for your farm. In fact, the quintessential lavender field photos that you’ll find in print and online all show a variety known as English lavender. (The word is still out on how the Spanish, French, and Portuguese lavenders view this disproportionate media attention.)
The good news is that, with so many varieties of lavender, a commercial grower can choose the specific variety or cultivar that matches their regional growing and market conditions, including heat tolerance, cold hardiness, color, scent, blooming season, mature size, and more. Furthermore, some varieties are clear standouts for specific attributes. If you want to focus on oil production, for example, a French hybrid called Grosso can yield as much as five times more oil than standard English lavender. Among the English cultivars, however, Vera and Hidcote Superior stand above the rest in oil production.
An important consideration, when making your final choice, is how you’ll get new plants when it’s time to expand. Lavender is notoriously difficult to propagate from seed. In fact, you’ll typically need to start seeds indoors as much as three to four months before your predicted planting time. Three to six weeks of that time will be spent bagged up in the fridge, since the seeds need a period of cold dormancy before they’re ready to germinate.
For this reason, nearly all commercial lavender producers (and sane home gardeners) buy established seedlings or simply grow cuttings from existing plants. This is a widely popular approach, since cuttings produce exact clones of the parent plant, so you have the benefit of knowing exactly what you’ll get. A full field of cloned plants gives consistent flower color, aroma, and oil production.
Harvesting Lavender
Like most everything related to living organisms, harvesting lavender is not a cut-and-dried process. The ability to identify the exact date and time to harvest for peak quality must be honed over years of experience and plenty of trials and errors. In general, farmers tend to harvest lavender when the buds have formed but only a few of the flowers have opened, but you may find that with your cultivar and in your specific microclimate, a different indicator produces better results.
Besides watching for buds beginning to open, you need to keep an eye on the weather as well. Lavender can have problems with mold, so you’ll want to harvest when the stalks are as dry as possible from the very start. Heavy dew or rain on the day of harvest, or even rain a few days before can reduce the product’s quality. Extreme heat or strong winds on the day of harvest can likewise cause essential oils to evaporate, reducing your final production volume.
Another rule of thumb depends on the crop’s intended use. Typically, lavender intended for essential oil production is harvested roughly a week earlier than those intended for floral stems. Keep in mind that many factors affect these decisions, and what works for the guy down the road may not be ideal for you. Start at a reasonable middle ground, experiment a little, and take copious notes.
The most appropriate method of harvesting lavender probably depends on the size of your operation. Home gardeners can harvest a few dozen plants using a good pair of gardening scissors, while large scale commercial operations employ specialized harvesters pulled by tractors. The machines trim the stems at a specific length, calculated to encourage new growth.
Small commercial growers with a few acres can find a comfortable, economical middle ground between these extremes. Lightweight electric hedge trimmers can make quick work when there’s only a few thousand plants, for example.
