Container Gardens – Small and Easy

The past 100 years have seen a drastic change in the way people live and how they work. Gone are the days where most people lived on farms and everyone had a backyard garden. Today a majority of people live in cookie-cutter tract homes with microscopic yards (if they have a yard at all.) Do you live in one of these situations where you just don’t have the space for a garden? Maybe you don’t feel like you have the time. No matter what your situation this post can help you enjoy home-grown fresh produce.

What is a container garden?

Simply put, a container garden involves growing vegetables in a pot, barrel, or other above-ground container. Hanging baskets, whiskey barrels, terra cotta pots, old water troughs or last year’s flower pots all can be turned into beautiful miniature vegetable beds.

Benefits of Container Gardens

The first and most obvious benefit is the space you save. If you don’t have room for a traditional garden in the ground you can simply put a few containers along the fence or on the back patio to grow delicious veggies yourself. Second, container gardens are much easier to maintain. You likely started with a weed-free potting soil, so gone are the countless hours of weeding. Also, watering involves less time because it’s as simple as watering your house plants. Lastly, containers are mobile. If you live in a temperate climate where there’s a couple of frosty nights in the early fall, but the weather is pretty good for another month, all you have to do is pull the containers into the garage and keep your luscious plants alive for weeks longer than your neighbor’s garden.

Caring for Container Gardens

Since you’re putting your garden in a container your plants will be pulling both water and nutrients from a much smaller area. This brings up two major points to follow for container gardening success. First, when the weather gets really hot and your plants are really putting out the fruit you will need to ensure they get enough water. This may mean watering more than once a day. Can’t be there multiple times each day? Consider a drip irrigation system like this. Second, you need to keep the fertilize coming regularly. For tomatoes that are setting fruit this means weekly. For mixed pots I recommend a time release fertilizer such as Osmocote (you’ll find this type of fertilizer at any good nursery.)

Don’t forget that most veggies (peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, etc.) need lots of sunlight, so south and west facing exposures are your best bet for lighting. If you’re going to use a hanging basket, make sure it hangs low enough to get sunlight and that your hook is sturdy enough to handle the plant, fruit, and all the water your soil can hold. For a tomato hanging basket this can very realistically be over 15 lbs.

Best Wishes

I’ve written often about the benefits of locally grown produce and it doesn’t get more local than your own garden. I wish you luck with your gardens and please feel free to email me if you have any questions as you start your container gardens this year. Send emails to farmermarketing “at” gmail.com.

Marketing Farm Products

I admit I haven't written in about a year and a half, but I thought this might help everyone find my past posts. I've listed them from oldest to newest:

The Fitness of American Agriculture

Why Organic Produce?

"Certified" Organic vs. The True Intent of Organic Produce

Selling Organic Produce, Selling Crafts, Heck, Selling Anything

Lessons from an Idaho Farmers' Market

The Oxymoron of Pricing

Farmers' Market Diversity

Organic Vegetable Gardening

Free Publicity

Product Selection vs. Profit Pools

Benefit Selling

Your purpose as a salesperson

Making the Sale, Closing the Deal

The Importance of Publicity in Marketing

Direct Marketing via the Internet

Heirloom Tomatoes

Internet Revenue for Farmers

Organic Farming More Profitable

Government Regulations Part I

Government Regulations Part II

Feel free to drop me a note (farmermarketing "at" gmail dot com) and Good Luck!

Government Regulations Part II

So we continue to have issues with the state about selling our tomatoes by the pound. Let me give you the situation from which this arose.

New Location

The market relocated from a parking lot on a main street to a larger and more accomodating parking lot in Old Town. This move was debated highly, but made because of many factors. Some vendors weren't happy of course and have been attempting to start another market in another part of town. I only mention this because the heavy hand of the Weights and Measures people didn't come down until they received "complaints" about the way things were being sold. Mind you we have been selling tomatoes this way for four years and thousands of people have NOT complained. So as you can see the timing is somewhat suspicious.

Solutions?

Right now the only way to deal with this regulation is to sell tomatoes by weight. That is not what I would like to do as Part I below mentions, but it has to do for now. The only possibility I can think of for next year is to get an amendment passed in the state legislature that will amend the current statute to exempt farmer's markets from regulation. This will require some time and connections, but I think it can be pulled off. However, do any of you readers out there know how you write something like that?

Government Regulations: Part I

Recently I have had a situation arise with government regulations that has really upset me. I hope that I can get some feedback from you, the readers, on how you have handled this in your situation.

How We Sell Tomatoes

About four years ago we changed the way that we sold tomatoes. We found that having a certified scale was difficult for two reasons. One, weighing every customer's tomatoes took a lot of time and led to a long line of people. Two, because the scale was being transported so often it often had to be reinspected so that the calibration was correct. Add in the additional expense of a certified scale and the yearly fee to keep it certified and we decided to find a better way of selling tomatoes.

The idea we developed was to sell our tomatoes on a "Fill the Pot" basis. We had two sizes of flower pots, one of which could be filled for $1 and the larger pot for $2. Customers hadn't used this system before, so we had a learning curve when we first started doing it. However, "Fill the Pot" became very successful for the following reasons:

1.)"Fill the Pot" was unique. We were the only vendor selling tomatoes that way and people remembered us for it.

2.)Customers were able to select exactly the tomatoes they wanted; size, color, ripeness, etc. This meant customers got exactly what they wanted.

3.)"Fill the Pot" was much faster and turned into somewhat of a game for our customers. They would pick tomatoes that were just the right size in order to fit more in the pot and get a better deal. They also learned to stack them up a little (which we were okay with) to get more. It was a fantastic system that worked for us and for the customer.

The "Problem"

Evidently our method violated a state statute regarding the sale of commodities. This past Saturday we had a government inspector come and demand we change. I'll explain the situation in my next post, but I hope to get some comments from you readers on how your state regulates farmer's markets and/or how you would handle this situation.

Organic Farming More Profitable

I was making my usual rounds on the internet the other day and came across a new study done in Minnesota to determine the economic incentives to switch to organic farming over methods currently being used in the majority of the Midwest.

Organic Is More Profitable

The basic conclusion of the four year study done by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) was that a 130 acre farm could increase it's profitability by switching to organic growing methods. This study is particularly credible given that they factored in transitional risks such as a learning curve and increased amounts of weeds during the learning period. This is great stuff and I encourage you to read the full article by clicking the link in the opening paragraph. I think that's hilarious.

PS This is entirely off the topic, but I read about a company that offers an inflatable male passenger for women who feel insecure about driving alone at night. They are using this as a gimmick for their main business of giving out a auto insurance quote and then trying to sign you up.

Internet Revenue for Farmers

Over the last few months I have researched extensively on the web presence of farmers and growers. Looking at these sites I have seen a lot of good things and a lot of areas for improvement. Basically, the three main sources of internet revenue for farmers and growers will come from direct internet sales, affiliate marketing, and advertising.

Direct Sales

The natural/organic movement is extremely well suited for direct internet sales because of the focus on local production and freshness. Web site domain names sell for as low as $2.95. Hosting services such as BlueHost provide a year's web hosting for around $84 a year. Don't have the web savvy to build your own site? Simple web design can be contracted for on sites like eLance for around $500. Still need a secure way to take credit card orders? Paypal provides an easy way to just add a button to your website that sends all of your transactions through Paypal with a $0.30 transaction fee and around 3% commission. So, to make your first sale online, you only need to spend around $600. Therefore, just ask yourself how many sales you'll need to pay off your internet investment.

Affiliate Marketing

Once you already have an internet presence established and regular traffic to your site, you have the additional opportunities to use affiliate marketing programs and advertising. Affiliate marketing programs allow you to choose which companies you want to advertise on your site. Through services like Commission Junction you can search through a database of companies to find the one you like. You cut and paste a piece of HTML code into your website and you're ready to go.

Advertising

This basically translates into using Google Adsense on your site. If you don't know what Google ads look like you only need to look above the title of this article and you'll see two text ads provided by Google. Adsense has become the service of choice because Google searches over the text of your site and puts ads up that are related to the content of your site. Take a moment to notice what the ads are at the top of this page for an example. Google gets paid every time a visitor to your site clicks on the ads and you get a percentage of that fee. It adds up slowly, but if you generate a lot of traffic and a lot of clicks you can make some extra revenue from your internet site.

In conclusion, just remember that internet revenue is not a magic bullet that will instantly make you thousands of dollars and replace your physical sales avenues. Internet revenue is a supplement to your existing business that will increase your visibility and profitability.

Heirloom Tomatoes

Saturday was an exciting day for me at the Southeast Idaho Farmers' Market because for the first time this year I had an appreciable amount of all-natural, vine-ripened tomatoes to offer for sale. Of all the produce we grow, those juicy, red tomatoes are by far the most popular and most welcome after an entire winter of flavorless grocery store tomatoes. Of course there were a few questions about the variety, because everyone marvels at how early they are, and inevitably a few customers wonder if they are heirloom tomatoes. Given the recent spike in interest in heirloom varieties, I would like to chime in with my two cents on the heirloom tomato phenomenon.

What is an Heirloom Tomato?

The definition that I feel most accurately captures the essence of heirloom tomatoes is that they are the varieties that your parents and grandparents used to grow. I know that this isn't very specific, but I think the connotation of the term heirloom tomato suggests that it is old and has some sentimental value. Most talk about heirloom tomatoes also mentions the distinct flavor available from heirloom varieties. Also of note is the fact that heirloom tomato varieties are pure-bred, that means not hybridized, so that you could take a seed from the tomato, plant it, and get a plant that produced the same kind of fruit.

So if you are looking for heirloom tomato varieties and can't find them, what are all of those varieties in your local greenhouse or nursery? Hybrids most likely. And why are there so many varieties of hybrids? I'll try to give a short answer. First, a hybrid is two varieties being cross-pollinated to produce a third distinct variety with different, hopefully better, characteristics than the parent plants. This process has been undertaken for three purposes:

• Earlier and larger yields
• Disease resistance
• Patent protection

Early Girl is a famous hybrid variety. The hybridization is what led to the earliness of the fruiting. Also, hybrids have been bred for resistance to disease. That is what all the letters behind the variety name mean, like Early Girl VF. Patent protection refers to the fact that once a new variety is created, the seed company can patent it and be the exclusive seller of the variety. The patent is further protected by the fact that seeds from hybrid plants do not produce the same type of plant as the parent because of genetics that I won't discuss here. This translates into more money for companies that own popular varieties, like Burpee's famous Big Boy variety.

Why Heirloom Tomatoes?

I personally don't advocate either heirloom tomato varieties or hybrid tomato varieties. However, I believe heirloom tomatoes are an excellent choice for growers who are emphasizing an all-natural approach. Heirloom varieties have been around a long time. You can save seeds from year to year to reduce costs. Most of all, heirloom tomatoes are gaining popularity at nearly the same pace as organic produce. So in conclusion, I believe that heirloom tomatoes are here to stay and I'm interested in hearing your comments on successes/failures with heirloom tomato varieties vs. hybrid tomato varieties.