Growing for Market is America's most respected trade publication for local food producers. GFM keeps you informed about the business of growing and selling vegetables, fruits, cut flowers, plants, herbs, and other food products. If you are market gardening or farming, whatever your scale, we guarantee you'll find valuable information that will help make your business more profitable and enjoyable. Please join us today!
Happy New Year! The January 2012 issue is now available, featuring articles from growers across the United States sharing valuable experience:
- Growers from New York and Indiana with long experience selling at winter farmers markets describe the pros and cons of working year-round.
- NRCS announces that its High Tunnel program expands to all 50 states with new deadlines for applying.
- An Oregon grower writes about appropriate tools for a very small urban farm.
- An Illinois grower reflects on her late husband’s parting gift to her.
- CSA farmers in Maine and Illinois describe their models: Winter Shares Only and U-Pick
- A new online tool helps you untangle the process of getting food safety certified.
- A New York grower explains how to build an old-fashioned hotbed for free heat in the greenhouse.
- A Virginia grower writes about Integrated Pest Management for organic and sustainable farmers.
- A Washington flower farmer writes about building inexpensive caterpillar tunnels to extend the cut flower season.
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Click here to buy a print copy of the January 2012 issue.
Or read it now with a downloadable PDF of the January 2012 issue.
FREE GIFT! Subscribe to Growing for Market and get Farm-Fresh Recipes on CD or download it as a PDF. 300 recipes, chosen because they use a lot of fresh produce, are arranged three to a page, so you can print them out or photocopy them and cut them into recipe cards for your customers. You also can copy and paste the recipes into your own newsletters. This is a $20 value, and it's good only while supplies last. See all subscription options.
New: The Chinese Medicinal Herb Farm
A solid book about a potential new crop for small-scale farmers.
The
Chinese Medicinal Herb Farm by Peg Schafer has just been published by
Chelsea Green. The author makes a good argument in favor of learning
more about Chinese herbs and possibly getting involved in commercial
production of them. As a commercial herb grower herself for 15 years,
she sees a growing demand for domestic production of herbs. Alternative
medicine is increasing in popularity, yet consumers are wary of
products from China. So it stands to reason that the demand for
U.S.-grown herbs will expand.
The most comprehensive and definitive guide to date on raising all-natural poultry, for homesteaders or farmers seeking to close their loop, The Small-Scale Poultry Flockoffers a practical and integrative model for working with chickens and other domestic fowl, based entirely on natural systems. No other book on raising poultry takes an entirely whole-systems approach, nor discusses producing homegrown feed and breeding in such detail. This is a truly invaluable and groundbreaking guide that will lead farmers and homesteaders into a new world of self-reliance and enjoyment. Click here to order
Time for spring planting! We have the resources you need to learn about extending the season in high tunnels:
Hoophouse Bundle: A special price for our bestselling Hoophouse Handbook plus the 2011 Hoophouse Update.
Year-Round Vegetable Production Box Set:
Includes Winter Harvest Handbook and a DVD of a workshop presented by
Eliot Coleman about his year-round production of vegetables in hoophouses and low tunnels.
Walking to Spring: Paul and Alison Wiediger explain their year-round use of hoophouses at their farm in Kentucky.
Interested in growing flowers? Start here!
Growing for Market is Information Central for Cut Flowers. Our editor and publisher, Lynn Byczynski, wrote the book on small-scale commercial cut flower production: The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower's Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers. To purchase a signed copy, Click here.
Every issue of GFM has a column by the best flower growers in the U.S. Erin Benzakein, who is both a grower and a talented floral designer, is our current columnist. You can read her by becoming a subscriber.
Frank and Pamela Arnosky wrote a regular flower column for Growing for Market for more than a decade. Their columns are collected in the book Local Color, available in print from the GFM bookstore. Or read it right now by downloading the E-book! We also sell Specialty Cut Flowers by Allan Armitage and Judy Laushman, which is the essential reference work on every kind of cut flower. You will open it every day in spring!
Crop Planning on Organic Vegetable Farms
This book gives you a field-tested eleven step planning approach that will take some of the chaos out of your business and help you move towards profitability. In steps one and two, you’ll learn how to set realistic financial goals and figure out how to meet them through your marketing outlets. In steps three to eight, you will learn how to develop an actual crop plan. In step nine, you’ll learn how to implement your crop plan and record what actually happens in the field. In steps ten and eleven, you will analyze how your crop plan fared and start planning for next year.
Click here to order
