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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!

cover of May 2012 issueThe May 2012 issue is now available, featuring these articles to help your farm be more profitable this year:

 

  • Food safety oversight is expanding to farmers markets, on-farm markets, and CSAs.
  • Don't confuse the Leaffooted bug (a bad pest of vegetables and fruits) with assassin bugs, which are beneficial.
  • Book review: The Essential Urban Farmer
  • Designs and tools to make the most of limited growing space.
  • Reasons and tools for making raised beds.
  • Tools and supplies that make flower farming more profitable.
  • Succession planting summer squash for a long season of harvest.

 


Join as a Full Access member and get the current issue right now, plus get access to our searchable archive of more than 1,300 practical, how-to articles published from 2001 to the present.

Click here to start a print subscription.

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Click here to buy a print copy of the May 2012 issue.

Or read it now with a downloadable PDF of the May 2012 issue.

New: The Holistic Orchard — Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way

A comprehensive introduction to growing fruit without pesticides.

Occasionally a book comes along that bowls you over with its depth and breadth and authenticity. Michael Phillips' new work The Holistic Orchard is such a book. The author, a longtime fruit grower, shares a vast store of experience about growing tree fruits and berries. The excerpt beginning on the next page is a good example of his approach. He explains in detail how to choose and plant fruit trees, and he also explains the reasons behind his instructions. He is like a patient teacher who wants his students to understand his topic on a deep level, so he takes the time to be thorough and answer all questions.

The Holistic Orchard provides all the basic instruction required to grow fruit, and Phillips has an uncommon ability to also explain the interrelationships that exist in the ecological system of an orchard. He invites readers to listen to what the trees teach, to observe carefully what is going on not just with the fruit but with all the life in the orchard. He provides a calendar of events for fruit growing — what tasks to do when — that only an expert could provide. The book also contains in-depth profiles of many fruits: the pome fruits (apples, pears, Asian pears, quinces); the stone fruits (cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums); and berries (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, gooseberries, currants, and elderberries.)

The Chinese Medicinal Herb Farm

Chinese Medicinal HerbA 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.


An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers

Small Scale Poultry FlockThe 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:

Covers of two hoophouse booksHoophouse 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!


Cover of Local Color book                cover of The Flower Farmer             Specialty Cut Flowers cover

Crop Planning on Organic Vegetable Farms

Crop Planning Book

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



 

 

These articles have recently been added to Growing for Market Online

  USDA seeks reviewers for Farmers Market grants (in: News Update)
May 16, 2012

WASHINGTON, May 16, 2012 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture invites individuals to share their expertise in reviewing project proposals for the 2012 Farmers Market Promotion Program grants.
  The return of the larkspur (in: Flower Farming)
May 8, 2012
For many years, larkspur was a top-producing crop on our farm. Then, mysteriously, it stopped growing here. For the past several years, we haven't even bothered to plant it because it just wouldn't grow. So why do we have a full bed of volunteer larkspur this spring?
  Improve your soil, improve your flowers (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2012
With our last frost date fast approaching, we’ve kicked it into high gear in order to have our soil ready for spring planting. While most vegetable farmers understand the importance of healthy soil, I’m often surprised by how little most flower growers know and invest in their soils’ health.  I believe the old adage “it starts with the soil” always applies, regardless of the crop.
  To spend or not? How to decide (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2012
DibblerI love working with good tools, but I don’t love buying them. Making the decision to lay out the big bucks is hard for me and it only gets harder the higher the price tag. To help myself make the decision to buy a tool I go through the following mental check list. If the decision is hard enough I actually write all of this out on paper. I don’t have a set formula that I can use to make go/no-go decisions, but the following categories help me limit buyers remorse.
  Get your watermelons when it’s hot (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2012
WatermelonNothing beats a big slice of watermelon during a break from working in the fields. It’s a good cure for dehydration, especially if lightly salted to balance the electrolytes, and helps improve heat tolerance. Watermelon is easily digested, and adds fiber to the diet. Second only to tomatoes as a source of lycopene (said to prevent some cancers), watermelons are also an excellent source of vitamin C, beta carotene, folic acid, biotin, potassium, magnesium and citrulline (an amino acid important for healing wounds and removing toxins from the body). The seeds, if well chewed to break up the indigestible seed-coat, can provide amino acids, fatty acids, vitamin E, potassium and phosphorus. It’s good to know watermelons are nutritious, but frankly, their main claim to fame is that they are delicious, and just about everyone wants one when the weather is hot.
  A riveting memoir of an organic farmer (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2012
Atina and Martin Turn hereDiffley were early on the organic vegetable farming scene. Martin started Gardens of Eagan in the 1970s and when he met Atina, they began farming in earnest. They produced bountiful crops for the next 33 years, despite losing their first farm to development and then facing the threat of losing their second farm to a pipeline.
That’s the outline of Atina Diffley’s new book, Turn Here Sweet Corn, and even the bare bones of her history are remarkable. The great pleasure of this book, though, is the way she has filled in the details and created a real page-turner of a memoir.
  Advice on apprenticeships from a grower who has been on both sides (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2012
MefferdsIn 2004, my wife Ann and I had moved across the country from our previous apprenticeship in Pennsylvania to work on a farm in California. It seemed like the perfect situation for two young people learning how to start their own farm. The farmers knew everything we wanted to know. We had visited the farm and several others in advance and, after weighing the options, we settled on this one. Due to the Mediterranean climate in that part of California, we could start right away in January, pruning the organic olive orchard on the farm. What better way could there be to spend the rest of the winter?
  Warm weather and insect pests (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2012
spotted cucumber beetleFarmers are always talking about the weather, moreso this year than usual. The mild winter, lack of snow cover, and record-breaking March temperatures across most of the U.S. have generated a lot of talk and worry that insect pressure will be worse than usual this season.

Entomologists say that’s not necessarily true. Insect pressure will be different, for sure, but it may not be worse and might even be less for some crops. A lot depends on the overwintering biology of specific pests, populations last year, and the weather going forward this spring and summer.
  Salt buildup in high tunnels (in: Archive)
Mar 1, 2012
High tunnel growers should be aware that keeping the plastic on tunnels year-round can result in a buildup of salt in the soil that can damage some salt-sensitive crops. Seedlings are especially susceptible to salt.
  Succession planting is the key to having flowers all season long (in: Archive)
Mar 1, 2012
Flower VanThere is an Old Russian saying taped above my desk that reads, “The worst disaster is a full harvest.” This simple statement helps me stay present to the fact that too much of anything can be a curse, and the more I can plan, spread things out, and aim for a steady balance, the better outcome I’m likely to have.
 
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