Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

There's snow on the ground and freezing wind so I have time to write about 
market growing. This is mainly about things books and extension "experts" 
don't cover. I can tell what works for us and others have to figure what 
works for them where they are. Market growing large or small (us) is a whole 
different ball game from growing for home use. Some don't like to call it a 
business but if you don't treat it as a business you won't be in business 
long.

We don't normally sell greens, tho we may grow some baby beets for greens 
and/or arugula this season. Cooked beet greens are a delicacy for me (with a 
dash of balsamic!), better than chard definitely. Sell some cooking greens, 
maybe. Salad greens are labor intensive as you know, and cheap in the store, 
and we just don't do salads. Transplanting and harvesting greens constantly 
may be ok if you have plenty of cheap help. I garden alone.  Plus any 
leftovers to take home would go bad before next market. We don't have a lot 
of extra refrigeration space. I like Eliot Coleman's accounting system of net 
per square foot.

Few sources explain about growing what sells for the best return on 
investment. So our strategies in general are:
1. grow what brings a good net for the labor and time in bed space,
2. plan to have a wide variety of produce constantly thru the season (harder 
than it sounds), to make it worth the time at markets,
3. grow mostly things that will keep and don't have to be harvested 
constantly (winter squash, shallots, garlic, onions) plus root crops to 
harvest as they sell (no waste), and
4. grow mostly better varieties of  things people normally buy, rather than 
exotics that take up bed space and won't sell much.

Instead of ordinary potatoes, onions and red beets we do Yukon Gold, red 
candy onions, and golden beets, carrots strictly Scarlet Nantes. Snap beans 
are the large flat yellow Marvel of Venice and green Romano. Butternut & 
Delicata sell well for winter squash. Tomatoes & peppers we talked about. And 
we don't offer just one thing. Local honey or free range eggs is great, but 
if that's it then you have nothing else for the vast majority of customers. 
We make mistakes along the way, but we've learned to mostly limit our produce 
to things that fit all those constraints.

There's good standard tips on websites for effective selling, but also we 
find it helps enormously to stand up, smile at everybody, be proud of what 
you grow, and offer samples and tips on cooking your items (Barb is great on 
this, me not so much). Heat chard in a little olive oil, only till it's limp, 
no more. It's amazing how many people ask what can you do with squash. They 
can't talk to the store. All this draws customers when they can get things 
cheaper in the store. Bingo. It's called relationship marketing.

We suspect some growers never figure whether they're breaking even. Their 
large unripe beefsteak tomatoes don't sell enough. Leeks have a limited 
market. Everybody else has zuchinni. And what sells can vary greatly from one 
area to the next, even within cities. Demographics. You have to watch what's 
selling and then compete on quality. Undercutting is worse than a skunk in 
church - if they want cheap the store has it. Cheap stuff does not help the 
market - it helps China-Mart. Better, fresher produce grown right (and other 
local agriculture products) is the main reason people show up in the first 
place.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net