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Welcome to Growing for Market!

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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!

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 June-July 2013 issue
The June/July 2013 issue is now available, featuring these articles:

• Chip Planck of Wheatland Vegetable Farms in Virginia explains his 14 rules of managing workers, developed over 31 years of farming 40 acres with 15 college students as employees.

•  Josh Volk of Slow Hand Farm in Oregon writes about what to look for when buying scales for the farm and the market.

•  Andrew Mefferd of One Drop Farm and Johnny’s Selected Seeds Research Farm in Maine explains how to steer tomatoes to a good balance between generative and vegetative growth.

•  Pam Dawling of Twin Oaks in Virginia tells you why, when, and how to grow buckwheat, a fantastic summer cover crop.

•  Chris Blanchard of Rock Spring Farm in Iowa delves into food safety issues caused by animals on the farm and advises on how to avoid problems.

•  Erika Jensen of Fair Field Flowers in Wisconsin provides the details of the group’s cooperative flower marketing program, now 10 years old.



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 June/July 2013 issue.

Or read it now with a downloadable PDF of the June/July 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

  A sensible approach to crop budgets (in: Archive)
May 1, 2013
Truth be told, I don’t like recordkeeping any more than the next farmer.  You may think that is strange coming from someone who is known for advocating recordkeeping repeatedly in workshops and in a book on farm business management. No, I didn’t get struck by lightning or have a brain transplant. I just want to put recordkeeping in its proper place and to stress the importance of the end result of any data collection: making a good living from the work I do on my farm.
  Extending the harvest season for edamame (in: Archive)
May 1, 2013
pam dawlingSince I last wrote about edamame, soybeans that can be eaten as a fresh vegetable, interest in this crop has increased and there is now more information available. Here I focus on providing edamame for a long harvest period. For more basic details see the June 2007 Growing for Market, or my book, Sustainable Market Farming.
  Learning from great designers (in: Archive)
May 1, 2013
bouquetFor the the life of our flower business, we’ve been hunkered down, pushing through, making do with little and solely working with what’s at hand. Limitation has always been the theme. The property we farm is not our own and is a small plot at that. We started with no money, little training and had to find a way for the flowers to turn a profit the first year and beyond. Don’t get me wrong, limitations can be a marvelous thing and we have learned an enormous amount by working around them! Limited resources = creative problem solving and through this process we’ve blown the doors off of what seemed possible both financially and production-wise per acre. But making do and going without is hard over time both on the physical body and morale. So 2013 is going to be different in the very best possible way!
  Food safety: equipment & buildings (in: Archive)
May 1, 2013
toteThe first principle of microbiological food safety is to keep the poop – and the potentially nasty microbes it carries – off of the food in the first place. That means keeping tools, equipment, and facilities from being contaminated by feces from people and animals right from the start. And because poop inevitably does make it onto our produce and into our packing environment, we need to take reasonable steps to ensure that our tools and equipment don’t spread that poop from one item or one place to another.
  Increasing tomato yield (in: Archive)
May 1, 2013
tomatoesIn the March issue of GFM, I talked about a spacing change in my tomato hoophouse, which allowed me to plant 60 percent more plants than the previous year. Yet I was able to increase yield by 100 percent over the previous year. Now, I’m going to report on the improvements that led to the other 40 percent of my yield increase. Many of the principles can be applied to the field as well as the hoophouse, and crops besides tomatoes.
  ‘Lean’ principles applied to a farm (in: Archive)
May 1, 2013
kale harvestThe first few years of any farm are chaotic. They’re filled with high-energy experimentation. Farmers are learning their land, trying out different tools and production methods, and planting everything under the sun to see what grows well and what sells. Tractors are bought, greenhouses and coolers are built, workdays are long, vacations short.  At some point, the chaos needs to settle down if new farms and their farmers are going to survive.
  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!
  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.
 
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