Search the site
Events Calendar
« 
March 2012
 »
SMTWTFS
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Welcome to Growing for Market!

Print

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!

Eliot Coleman"The best way to learn farming is from other farmers. The best ideas from other farmers can be found in each month's issue of Growing for Market. It is a resource that no aspiring farmer should be without."— Eliot Coleman, Four Season Farm, author of Winter Harvest Handbook and The New Organic Grower



Richard Wiswall"Growing for Market nails it in addressing concerns of market farmers everywhere. Each issue is full of innovative ideas, thoughtful analysis and breaking news in agriculture not found elsewhere. I know, because I've been a subscriber for 20 years!" — Richard Wiswall, Cate Farm, author of The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook


scoop.it logoNew! Visit our news aggregation site to find out what's happening in market farming around the web. We update regularly, so bookmark it and visit often!
 

cover of May 2013 issue
The May 2013 issue is now available, featuring these articles:

When a local business owner offered to help an Indiana market farm apply "lean" principles as used in manufacturing, the farmer was skeptical. But "leaning up" the farm turned out to be a revolution in efficiency.

A Maine grower continues his series about how he increased yield dramatically in his high tunnel tomatoes.

A Virginia grower explains how to choose the right edamame (edible soybean) varieties for the longest season of harvest.

A Vermont grower renowned for promoting recordkeeping on the farm writes about how to keep minimal records that are still useful.

An Iowa farmer continues his five-part series on how to improve food safety practices for fresh produce; this time, he covers equipment, tools, and buildings.
A Washington flower farmer reports on a wedding design workshop she recently attended, with advice on the latest trends for brides. 

Join as a Full Access member and get the current issue right now, plus get access to our searchable archive of 1,500 practical, how-to articles published from 2001 to the present.

Click here to start a print subscription.

Click here to start an online subscription.

Click here to buy a print copy of the May 2013 issue.

Or read it now with a downloadable PDF of the May 2013 issue.

NEW BOOKS — GFM subscribers get 20% off these and all books. Log in first to get the discount. Or phone us at 1-800-307-8949.

cover of The Organic Seed GrowerThe Organic Seed Grower by John Navazio

A comprehensive manual for organic vegetable growers who would like to grow high-quality seed for their own use or to sell to seed companies. Clear instruction in growing vegetables for seed, selecting the best plants for local conditions, harvesting and processing seeds.


cover of Art of FermentationThe Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz

Everything you need to know to start fermenting foods at home, whether it's as simple as yogurt and sauerkraut or as complex as cheese and wine. This is a huge book covering every aspect of this ancient method of food preservations. Many growers are developing value-added products that cater to the popularity of fermented foods. There may be a market niche there for you!





Getting a high tunnel? We have the resources you need to succeed year-round.

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

  Facebook group for flower farmers (in: Flower Farming)
Apr 23, 2013
Check out the lively conversation on the Flower Farmer Facebook group.
  Do you sell flowers for weddings? (in: Flower Farming)
Apr 23, 2013
bridal bouquetGet your farm listed in an upcoming book about local wedding flowers.
  A visit to Texas Specialty Cut Flowers (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2013
ArnoskyI have been following the flower farming adventures of  Pamela and Frank Arnosky, owners of Texas Specialty Cut Flowers, from the start. Their wonderful monthly column here in Growing For Market spanned more than 15 years and eventually became two fabulous books, We’re Gonna Be Rich (out of print) and Local Color (still available from GFM).  When I got wind that the ASCFG was hosting one of their four conferences at the Arnoskys’ farm this winter, I flipped a gasket. Visiting their famous operation has long been a dream so with a little nudging from Lynn, my husband Chris and I hopped a plane and ventured deep into Texas hill country to learn the secrets of successful flower farming from two of the finest masters in the biz!
  The human element of food safety (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2013
Chris BlanchardOn the market farm, almost every crop is harvested and handled by human hands at some point between harvest and sale. People bunch kale, pick up carrots, sort tomatoes, and dump rutabagas into the barrel washer. Even the most automated salad mix washing line still gets cleaned and maintained by people.
  Growing fennel — bulb, herb, pollen (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2013
FennelMany people grow fennel as the herb, for leaves and seeds, for salads, soups, fish dishes and teas. The seeds are also used in desserts, breads, other baked goods and drinks. Or they are chewed after a meal to help the digestion. A newer crop in the U.S. is bulb fennel, with a vaguely licorice-like flavor. The crunchy white “bulb” consists of the swollen stem bases of the leaves. Fennel is also used in the seedling stage as a microgreen or baby salad mix ingredient. And even newer and more “exotic” is fennel pollen. Although this crop is used in so many forms, the basic details are the same for all types, so I’ll start with those.
  A simpler way to use round bales (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2013
hay unrollwerWe like mulching the aisles between rows of plastic on our 8 acres of vegetables, and after trying different methods we’ve settled on rolling the smaller 4’ x 5’ round bales down the aisles by hand. Compared to square bales they cost half as much per pound of hay, which is nice. More importantly, though, round bales are much easier and faster to move around and distribute.  One person with a tractor and wagon can bring and distribute all the round bales for one of our 1/5-acre blocks in 15 minutes, without actually touching any hay or sweating, and if a bale’s in the wrong place it’s easy to move.  Distributing the same amount of square bales takes three people 20 minutes of dirty work, for four times as many people-minutes, and if you get the distribution off you have to move a lot of bales twice.
  Qliprs for hoophouse tomatoes, cukes (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2013
As I mentioned in my March 2013 article in Growing for Market, I tried a new trellising method in the hoophouse last year, which I ended up loving for cucumbers and hating for tomatoes. For some people, it works well for both, and in that case it saves time, money and materials in the lowering and leaning of the crop.
  New head lettuces are designed for salad mix (in: Archive)
Apr 1, 2013
Green LettuceThere is a new kind of lettuce that could change the way you grow salad mix. You may have noticed it while looking through seed catalogs this winter. It goes by several trade names including Eazyleaf, Multileaf and Salanova. Available to the large-scale bagged salad mix industry for a few years, it is available to smaller growers for the first time this year. I don’t think it will ever completely replace densely sown baby leaves, but for many growers, it may have advantages. It is an innovation that offers benefits both for the grower and the eater over the traditional salad mix.
  Straight talk about food safety (in: Archive)
Mar 1, 2013
BlanchardWith all of the focus on the implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act, it’s easy to forget that it’s not all about log sheets, audits, and bureaucrats: it’s about keeping the food we grow safe from microbiological and other dangerous contamination.
  New flowers worth a look this year (in: Archive)
Mar 1, 2013
papaverIt’s hard to believe that March is already under way and another flower season is right around the corner. We’ve been super busy this past month, working hard to stay ahead of the game. There are three new 140-foot ‘Kerr Hoophouses’ in the works and a dozen 150-foot caterpillars set to be erected by the middle of the month. Grand plans and big dreams are the theme of 2013!  Our greenhouse is already brimming with thousands of little seedlings and every day more are being sown. While many of our standard field crops are in the mix, I’ve added in a whole ton of new varieties to the list as well. Some were past favorites that we haven’t grown in a while and others are part of a series of trials I’m conducting this season. Abundance is all around and it feels absolutely amazing!
 
more articles >>
Free E-mail Updates
Free Farmers Market Issue
E-Commerce Solutions