Market Farming

[bob111higgins AT comcast.net]

I can completely identify with Lynn's message. I am market gardening a 
quarter acre in central NJ, rocky clay soil, weather went from March to 
August almost overnite, etc., and catching up has been tough. Eventually I 
will go to one acre but stop there.

This is my second real year and I'm slowly building permanent beds, though I 
can't double dig due to my back, to improve soil quality and reduce tillage 
and preparation time. We have no end of manure and organic matter from local 
horses, leaves etc. But when I add a quarter acre next year or so I will be 
planting it mostly to blueberries, with necessary netting setup etc., with a 
little room left for hoope house and for annual crop expansion. Permanent 
crops have to take less time, plus I want a crop I can harvest (mostly), 
especially in my 'golden' years, without bending way over or getting on the 
ground.

Bob
Red Brick Farm
Hopewell, NJ


> From: "JOHN A HENDRICKSON"
> > And the catch is that while it may be possible to till more than an acre
> > and get some crops planted, it is staying on top of the weeds and, even
> > more significantly, being able to harvest everything that might be even
> > more of a challenge.
> 
> Exactly! My market garden is just under a half acre this year, and I'm
> finding it difficult to get everything planted. I'm still building up the
> soil, so in some beds I have elaborate soil preparation to do.
> 
> This year the weather went from cold to 90 degrees in like two weeks at
> the end of May. There aren't enough hours in a day when everything should
> have been in the ground yesterday. I FINALLY got all my tomatoes in and
> FINALLY got the second wave of lettuce planted...the lettuce was so late I
> could have just harvested it from the flats! I was so busy planting that
> the weeds got ahead of me; I just spent an intense week weeding, and
> finally everything is almost under control again.
> 
> My garden is biointensive. My goal is to eventually make deep, double dug,
> raised beds, planted intensively. So far I have maybe 1/4  of the beds
> double dug with tons of organic matter added, and those beds are SO much
> easier to work and more productive.  I want to eliminate the rototiller
> (or just use it for surface cultivation) and use a broadfork to loosen the
> soil every year. It's going to take a few years to get there, but will
> improve the soil structure.
> 
> This year I'm converting a section of pasture into market garden. It would
> have been difficult to till; the soil is rocky clay and the grass forms a
> root mass that the tiller (old Troy-Bilt Horse) has trouble breaking up.
> The grass comes back no matter how many times it's tilled. I have
> livestock and fed the animals their hay on that area last winter, so there
> was a good layer of waste hay on the ground by spring. I have large
> amounts of manure/hay compost, so I dumped piles of it all over that
> pasture area right on top of the waste hay. I went back and planted winter
> squash in the compost piles. My thinking is that the waste hay all over
> the ground will keep the weeds down. I've grown squash in compost piles
> before, so I know they will thrive. Hopefully I won't have to do anything
> more but harvest. In a year or two the hay will kill the grass under it; I
> can then spread the compost piles and till. That will add another 1/4 acre
> to my garden. There's another 1/4 acre next to that I'd like to add after
> that. That will make my market garden almost an acre and, as a solo
> gardener, I think that's about all I can handle.
> 
> Lynn Wigglesworth
> Peasant Farmer
> Tioga County, PA
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