Market Farming

[Carla Maness <manessfarm AT gmail.com>]

We didn't get any lettuce or spinach planted until a few weeks ago. It was 95 degrees and we were still in the drought. We're still weeks away from having anything marketable to sell as far as greens go. We do have lots of broccoli, and cabbage and cauliflower are starting to come on now as well. We have a row of green beans and purple hull peas that survived our early freeze last week.. We've also got more winter squash this year. Butternuts in particular are very popular at our market. I really wish now I had grown more of those and spaghetti squash and a whole let less of the acorns. I don't know if our prices are too high or what, but we aren't moving very many acorn squash. We've also had a lot of interest in the red kabocha squash too. I will certainly grow more of it next fall. We grow pumpkins and all the multicolored ornamental types of pumpkins and winter squashes. People love them for decorating.

We've planted radish, turnips and some other odds and ends, but they are filler on the table. We don't make much money on any of those, but they fill out our tables. We were late getting them in though so we knows? 

After the freeze last week I was worried about what we would have to sell. Our outdoors market goes until Nov. 17th. We had so much stuff Saturday we couldn't get it all on the tables. We use 2 parking spots at our market and we had every inch of it packed with stuff. It's a nice problem to have this time of year.

Carla

Perkins, OK 86 and sunny today

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Richard Moyer <ramoyer AT gmail.com> wrote:

Transition time at our market.  Though some of our growers are done for the season, customers are still coming, willing to buy.  I want vendors at our market to meet that demand as long and seamlessly as possible.  Including me!

Glad I have mushrooms and chard.  Also late green beans.  Could sell more of all those now.

Wish I had lettuce now (an entire planting got washed away).

Wish I had more greens of any type.  They are coming, but not ready yet.

Any tips for harvesting lettuces and spinach in Sept and early Oct?  Or other crops that are good income generators?  Getting them going in late Aug and Sept, despite highly variable air and soil temps, and soil moisture?

How do some of you plan the transition, where you have ample supply of fresh veggies in Sept and October?

Thanks,

Richard 

SW VA

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