My Market garden

[shadowwalker]

I grow heirloom veggies. Several different tomato's, straight neck and crookneck squash, pickling, slicing cucumbers, three kinds of okra. These are the main staples of the produce I sell.
I also grow onions, garlic,other squash, peppers, asparagus, herbs, a few melons, cantaloupes. I also grow gourds, flowers of all kinds. If we have any left of the veggies after making sure we have enough. I take it to the produce building to sell . For some odd reason here. Folks are mainly interested in "maters,cukes n' squash". I hardly ever sell much else.
I rely on the main watermelons and cantaloupe sales along with corn and beans. Getting them from the Mennonites. I can buy them cheaper than I can grow them. I make a trip once a week to get these. Last year was my first year with the garden and produce building. I did alittle less than break even. But with this season I hope to do better. I got alot to learn and build a customer base.

[ohiorganic]

I have been doing the market growing thing for 14 years and in 2005 bought a farm of my own after renting for 12 years.

right now we have a 2 acre market garden that is in the process of being expanded to 3 acres of annuals and have another 1/2 acre in perennial crops (berries, aspargus, grapes). We are also putting in nut trees and have about 10 carpathian walnuts started (I believe they are 3 years old this year).

We grow about 110 different crops over a 9 to 11 month season and sell at two farmers' markets in a nearby Unuiversity town (one I manage, both I helped establish), at the farm via our farm store and sometimes to resturants.

Right now we have spring mix, heirloom lettuices, spinach, snow and snap peas, onions, scallions, chives, and some perennial herbs going in the garden.

We have onion, leek, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, chard, shallot, lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini (5 kinds) and some flower seedlings in the seed room. In the next 2 weeks or so the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant will be started.

We do a lot of seed saving and some breeding and used to do this commercially on a tiny scale but stopped selling seeds about 4 years ago because we were looking to move. last year we saved a bunch of lettuce seeds (about 7 kinds, all heirlooms) and some tomato and pepper seeds as well as a lot of flower seeds. but we did not have our isolation up to snuff so we will use them for our own garden. We do have a tomato in its 3rd year of stabilization. It was a cross between opalka and pink brandywine and out of it we have an orange striped mater that is really tasty.

We also do a lot of season extension with unheated hoopphouses (that my husband designed and can be built for under $700) and row covers.