Market Farming

["Lion Kuntz" <lionkuntz AT email.com>]

It is only fair that I share some ideas about high-value crops after others 
have shared with me through my online survey:
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/survey01.htm
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/survey01_results.html

Reishi mushrooms are selling retail in my area (Olympia, Washington, USA) at 
$72 per pound at three different locations. They take five months to mature 
from spawning, similar time-range to shiitake mushrooms, and require warm 
summer conditions for production outdoors in shadecloth or shaded production 
areas.

Containers such as 3.5 gallon buckets or plastic growbags can be packed in 
beds (since no access to individual containers is required until harvest, 
access pathways are not needed into the bedding areas).

A harvestable density of a fresh wet-weight one pound per square foot is 
possible. Dried reishi takes seven fresh-hydrated pounds to produce one dry 
pound, so $10/sq.ft is possible. One 10'x10' bed could produce $1,000.oo in 
five months. The dried form is the normal market commodity, so they have a 
long shelf-life marketing term of a year to find buyers.

For CSA/subscription/membership farmers, oyster mushrooms (Pleuratus 
Ostreatus, P.Floridii, P.pulmanarius, P.d'jamour) can transform 100 pounds of 
straw into as much as 20 pounds of mushrooms in five weeks.

Here in this area supermarket chains are buying in these mushrooms from as 
far away as Tennessee, which are NOT fresh on the shelves. Local growers have 
a freshness niche to compete. Prices of $1.99 for 3 ounce foam tray pre-packs 
give a price of $10.61 retail per pound, or $200 per four-square-feet of 
growing space in a growroom.

The crops can be repeated 3 or 4 times each spring and again in the fall, and 
can be grown year round in air conditioned/heated garage, shed, barn, 
greenhouse (shadecloth required) or utility building. Outdoor growing is 
possible during ideal weather in screened and shaded semi-protected gazebos 
or patio screen-tent.

Earth worms multiply their population every 90 days. The retail sacked value 
of earthworm castings is five dollars per cubic foot (every 90 days) and 
$20.oo per pound (two pounds harvestable mixed sizes increase in population 
every 90 days.

At $45 per square foot (actually cubic foot) this is $135 for three harvests 
per year per foot of growing land. A bin made from one sheet of plywood 
(4'x8'x16") with another sheet for a lid can produce 42.5 cubic feet of 
castings and 64 pounds of earthworms on a footprint the size of a sheet of 
plywood.

This is about 1.5 cubic yards per 90 days. Gardeners love this stuff. Five 
bucks per 5 gallon pot is retail income of $7.50 per foot. If you have 
chickens, 64 pounds of earthworms grows 20 pounds of chicken meat, which 
free-range organic retails up to $80 (20# x $4) if you can't find buyers for 
earthworms. At the lowest prices you ought to be able to get $10 per foot per 
year out of earthworm bins.

Basil has been grown in stacked pot cultures in university greenhouse trials. 
20.8 ounces average production per plant was measured. 24 plants were stacked 
on a single square footprint of land.

That is 500 ounces per stack, or 31.2 pounds. The actual ground space 
required is about 8 square feet per tower for access of light, air 
circulation, inspection and harvesting, so the productivity is averaged down 
to 4 pounds per square foot.

It need not be grown in greenhouses -- the university happened to be testing 
for wintertime productivity in northern Florida. Anywhere basil (or many 
other high-value herbs) can be grown outdoors they can be grown in vertical 
culture.

Strawberries are highest value just before the season, and 1,000 pounds have 
been produced ripening in April/May using unheated poly-skinned tunnel 
growhouses in raised beds near Branson, Missouri.

Tunnel floorspace was 10'x50' or 500 square feet. At prices of $2/pint this 
is $4/sq.ft. in five months, leaving the tunnel free for a heat-loving 
high-value crop of trellised melons, cucumbers or tomatoes planted in May. 
Easily another $5/square foot can be produced.

Zinnas at 25 cents per flower stem will produce $6 to $10 worth of $3/dozen 
bouquet flowers in the same time and space that it takes to grow one or two 
ears of sweet corn. Repeat customers will be back next week.

African Daisies will produce the same number of stems for cut flowers, but 
all the imperfect ones and unsold ones can be dried down into pyrthrum 
insecticide which will only lose 20% potency in one year of proper storage. 
Calendula is an edible flower, a medicinal herb, poor-man's saffron food 
coloring, a cut flower of similar value to zinnia or african daisy, and can 
be dried for crafts use as an everlasting.

While CSA customers bolt to the supermarket if insufficient variety is 
offered by the market farmer, CSAs sell out their capacity when offering 
nothing more than 1/3rd the variety of the supermarket green grocery section. 
Few CSAs and farmstands or farmers market stands offer fresh eating mushrooms 
and valuable dried medicinal ones, herb teas and cooking blends (like salad 
dressing herbs for the salad greens you sell), cut flowers and edible 
flowerheads, organic free-range chickens and high grade potting soil and 
amendments.

While you have to produce a volume of low-value bulk vegetables of a high 
grade of taste, freshness and appearance, the high-value crops can add 
sufficient extra value to justify raising basic prices and offering 
extra-cost options. There is just as much hard work and risks in raising 
high-value crops as there is in raising the bulk commodities, so this is not 
a get-rich-quick pitch.
Anybody who wants more information on these things ought to follow the links 
found on the following webpages:
http://homepages.msn.com/VolunteerSt/lifesaviors/MarketGarden.html
http://www.imok.ufl.edu/LIV/groups/cultural/trial/basil.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/1444/berry-b.htm
http://www.vertigro.com/images/h2-wide.jpeg
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/low_tech_mushrooms01.htm
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/growing_earthworms.htm
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/earthworms_01.htm
http://lionkuntz.mybravenet.com/castings_01.htm
http://homepages.msn.com/VolunteerSt/lifesaviors/synergy1.html

Sincerely, Lion Kuntz
Tenino, Washington, USA

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