Market Farming

[Pat Meadows <pat AT meadows.pair.com>]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 10:46:22 -0500, you wrote:


>
>Apparently this area used to be a major producer of tobacco and celery.
>There are certain crops that grow
>especially well here, like leeks, onion, garlic, potatoes, probably
>cabbage if I
>could keep the %(&^ bugs out. Corn is everywhere (mostly field corn).
>Grains grow well here. Beans do well, summer and winter squash does
>exceptionally well. I have to baby the tomatoes and melons, and I grow the
>peppers and cucumbers in the greenhouse. But it's certainly doable. If we
>could only convince more people...

Lettuce, mesclun, chard, and all the Asian greens (bok choy,
choy sum, Chinese cabbage, tat soi, kai laan, etc.) do
splendidly here too.  Also broccoli and probably
cauliflower, although I've not grown cauliflower yet.
Anything that grows well in very cool weather does great
here, I find.

Which is yet another problem with the existing market:  it
doesn't open until the cool-weather plants are almost
finished.  If I wanted to sell my Asian greens or salad
greens at the market during April and May:  nope, it doesn't
open until Memorial Day.

I find that I need to cover the cabbage-family plants (the
Asian greens) with floating row cover or use Bt on them. But
this is OK, not really a big deal.

As to greenhouse growing, you can put up a hoophouse fairly
cheaply (we just have) and greenhouse growing could be very
profitable.  There is, in fact, a large greenhouse operation
in the county, growing and selling (at wholesale) flower
seedlings.  

Very frustrating.  We've got to teach people, I suppose.

Pat

--
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, 
since it is the merger of state and corporate power." 
- Benito Mussolini