Market Farming

[Jeanine4 AT aol.com]

I started receiving and reading this e-mail list, last July and I finally got the nerve to post a question a few days ago. I thought I might need to introduce myself. I started selling veggies at my local farmers market (Biloxi, MS) last June. I started very small, just to test the water. I visited this farmers market several times and the one in New Orleans, LA a few times, just to see how things worked. I grew and sold Calabash gourds (edible) one of my biggest sellers, lemon grass, yardlong beans, okra, squash, tomatoes, peppers, basil, baby corn, and Japanese eggplant, and oriental melon. I planted one pack of soybeans, made only a few hills, so the family just ate them. Planted broad beans, waited to late in the season to plant these, so they didn't make, and azuki beans, deer ate them. I lean more toward the oriental vegetables, because there is a large Asian community in Biloxi, and I see that there is a good market for them. Also this market has been there for about 18 years and the customers are pretty loyal to the longtime farmers, and it would be hard to break in just selling the usual veggies, I think. Also, I like to grow different things. This year I will be including Hyacinth beans, winged beans, bitter gourd, edible amaranth, perilla and several other different veggies. For Christmas, my husband and daughter bought me issues from the Growing for Market newsletter, the special package for beginners, Volumes 1999, 2000, 2001 and a current subscription and the practical advisers 1996, 1997 and 1998. And Marketing Your Produce book compiled of articles form 1992 to 1995 from Growing for Market newsletters. I have been reading them till my eyes are getting very blurry. All this is leading up to my question that I posted a few days ago, in the Marketing Your Produce book is an article about fingerling potatoes, but the articles are from 1992-1995, and I was wondering if there is still a market for them. Also, there was an article in the Washington Post Online, Market Watch 4/11/01 about fingerling potatoes, it was very favorable. I order a big percentage of my seeds from Johnny's Selected Seed catalog and they have the fingerling potatoes, but I will need to order them before January 18th, (times running out) because I live in the deep south, we plant earlier than most folks, because it gets so hot here. I don't plan on growing and selling just Asian vegetables and would like to have a variety of different things. I plan on also growing some cut flowers, last year I planted flamingo feather celosia, pampas plume celosia and chief mix celosia, I mixed a bundle of them together and took them to the market last year, with no sleeves on them, just a rubber band holding them together and they sold within 30 minutes. No one sells cut flowers at this market, but this year I will properly make a bouquet with the sleeves and filler, not just flower stems. I don't want to give a bad name to cut flower growers, by having sloppy looking bouquets. I have purchased several cut flower books, so maybe with their help I will be able to make them properly. I will stop rambling on now, and look forward to any response about my post, even if its just a quick, "I don't grow those potatoes."

Thanks for reading,
Jeanine Fore
The Veggie Nook
Perkinston, MS