1Small Garden Money Map

How To MakeAn Extra $1,947 Per YearFrom Your Small Garden

2CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 3

CHAPTER 1 ADAPTING YOUR GARDEN PLAN 6

CHAPTER 2 ASSESSING YOUR LOCAL MARKET 12

CHAPTER 3 CREATE YOUR NICHE 17

3INTRODUCTION

Now that you have the basic ideas about how to grow vertically using the 4 square foot

gardening program, I thought it would be a good idea to also issue you a supplemental report

on how to turn some of your bounty into profits or other products that you may not have the

space to produce at your home. In this report you will learn about what I consider to be the

best process of turning a profit on your vertical garden, as well as how to turn some of your

produce into attractive and more valuable products that are highly in demand in your area.

When you start to sell produce locally, you learn one thing very quickly, demand is almost

always larger than supply. You have a huge advantage because you are now a part of the

local food movement and people will proudly pay you a premium for your produce compared

to food costs in grocery stores.

The first step you should take, if you have the

time to do so, is to go to farmers markets

toward the end of the day and take note of

which items are sold out. These are the items

that you are going to want to focus on if you

are selling at farmers markets. Personally, I

always make sure to have salad greens of

one type or another on my farmers market

table every week from May to September. I

decided to do this because when I went to

the farmers market as a customer, I noticed that farmers never had greens at the end of the

market, and if they did, it was only early in the season or late in the season. The other decision

that I made was to make sure that I always had a large variety of culinary and medicinal herbs

for sale each week. These two simple steps account for about 20% of my annual sales at

farmers markets, and I made those decisions based on what I was seeing, or not seeing, at

my local market. I will talk more about the possibilities of selling at farmers markets later in

Chapter 2.

The next step you should take toward marketing your produce is to reach out to locally owned

restaurants in your area that buy local produce. Unfortunately, this isnt as easy as going to

a farmers market and inquiring about a booth, but, once you find a few restaurants that like

you and your produce, you will have a very easy to maintain relationship that doesnt cost you

a dime. And, you will also notice that local chefs are very excited about buying from a local

producer, particularly if you are a smaller grower. You will learn that your personal story will

become almost as valuable as the quality of your produce. With that said, keep in mind that

these people are small business owners, and there might be some strings to selling to them

on a regular basis. I will get more in depth with these details later.

Another option for you to sell your items is to sell to a middleman. A middleman can be a

larger farmer that has existing market stands and isnt growing what you have to offer. The

farmer also might have a service through his/her farm called a CSA (Community Supported

Agriculture) that is a program which people buy weekly bags of produce from a local farm.

These farmers often run into problems during the year and need some variety in their weekly

baskets. A lot of them will also be happy to help out a new farmer that is just getting started.

Unlike the other two options, do not expect to make as much money selling to a farmer.

Their profit margins are often very small and yours will be too if you sell through them. Still

another option is to sell to a local grocer that specializes in local produce (they also might run

a weekly delivery service and may or may not have a brick and mortar store). The prices a

local grocer will pay will likely be pretty low, but in my experience they are a good alternative if

you do not want to put in the legwork of setting up with multiple local vendors. You can also

contact them in advance and schedule out when you expect to have your produce ready for

sale to them.

One thing to remember is not to get lost in all of the possibilities

of how you can make money. The most rewarding thing about

growing food is the money that I SAVE by not buying my food

from someone else and not the money that I MAKE by selling

food. Dont get me wrong, it is great to have a pocket full of

money that came from a successful day at the market, but I

5find far more reward in eating my own produce. That is why I want to give you two pieces of

advice; feed yourself first.

You may really like growing and eating something, but there may not be much demand for

it, or the return simply isnt sufficient to justify the additional work of selling it. You will have

to decide for yourself how much of what you grow you want to put toward turning into a

profit and how much you will just eat. The second piece of advice I want to pass on to you

regarding produce sales is that you should focus on quality and keeping your word. This is

simple and might seem like common sense, but all too many times I have seen people at

farmers markets peddling poor quality produce because they are focused on making a quick

buck.

I also really like the idea of removing money from the equation by trading/bartering with other

people for eggs, honey and (sometimes) meat. I will get into this more in-depth as well later,

but I think that bartering is a great option. It is my favorite thing about selling at a market,

because at the end of the market, everyone with perishable goods is looking to get rid of it

and will be happy to trade with you.

The final thing I want you to keep in mind going into this guide is that

when it comes to selling your produce, I think you should start small

your first season and scale up from there. I have listened to many farmers

and gardeners say that their first year they sold a tiny amount and built

up from there. I will get more into this later as well, but I want you to take

some basic steps to determine what there is a market for in your area

and focus on one product the first season.

6CHAPTER 1ADAPTING YOUR GARDEN PLAN

In the original guide I advised you to sit down and plan out your vertical garden both in space

and time. If you want to focus part of your garden on making a profit, you will need to alter your

garden plan. Think of it like this, in the original report I advised you how to grow a variety of

food that was nutritious and flavorful and would thrive in the vertical landscapes you created.

The goal here was to maximize the amount of food available to you that you could enjoy and

gain nourishment from. Essentially, this was a survival garden on a very small scale. Now,

if you want to maximize profit instead, you will be growing a market garden on a very small

scale.

In a lot of ways, growing a market garden in your vertical landscapes will be a lot less work

than growing a variety of crops. You will still have to water daily and fertilize on a regular basis,

but since you will be growing a lot of one thing (or even all one thing), harvesting will be easier

and you will be able to spend less time daily working on the garden.

The first thing that I want you to do is adjust your yield estimates that you made based off

of the initial report. Instead of growing all kinds of different things in a survival garden, I want

you to focus all of your growing space on 2 crops that I think will grow well vertically, and will

also be easy for you to market locally. The two crops that I recommend you grow specifically

are Genovese (green, large leaf) Basil and Flat Leaf Parsley. I have been involved in market

gardening in 3 different geographical locations within the U.S. and I am suggesting these two

herbs because they have a long harvest season, they are culinary herbs used on a regular

basis in both homes and restaurants, they are in high demand on local markets and they

fetch a premium over more common garden staples.

With basil, there is the added bonus of the opportunity to harvest seeds from the basil plants

later in the season as well. Though there will likely not be enough seed to sell and make more

than a few dollars from, there will be plenty to supply you with seed for the next season so

that you dont have to buy basil seed again. The reason that basil seed will be available but

parsley seeds wont is because basil is an annual and parsley is a biennial. Annual plants

7express their full life cycle in one season while biennials need two separate growing seasons

to complete their full life cycle. In other words, if you wanted to harvest parsley seed, you

would have to allow the plant to go dormant during the winter then flower the following spring.

It is also not recommended to harvest parsley from plants that you will be saving seed from

the next year. The result will be a normal harvest of parsley the first season then a small,

spindly seed stalk the following spring that may put off immature sized seeds. The money you

spend to get parsley seed every year is money well spent in my opinion.

Based on the space available in the garden towers, I estimate you will be able to grow 40

basil plants and 40 parsley plants per tower, which means you will have a total of 160 of each

plant if you grow 4 garden towers like recommended in the initial report. From each plant, I

estimate you will be able to harvest 3 bunches of basil and 2 bunches of parsley during the

season. That means your estimated yield of your cash crops will be 480 bunches of Basil and

320 bunches of parsley. That is a total of 800 bunches of herbs from 4 square feet of space!

As a market gardener, those numbers get my attention.

You are probably wondering what I consider a

bunch to be, exactly. Well, there is no exact

science to it, but when i make my bunches of

herbs, I try to make each bunch at least 2

fingers in diameter. So, what I do when I pick

herbs is I cut stalks with scissors for basil and

I just snap the stalks free from the parsley

plants with my fingers. I bunch the harvested

stalks together in my other hand until they are

about 1 in diameter at the bottom of the bunch, then I put rubber bands on them to hold the

bunch together and they are ready for sale! Depending on what you are trying to sell the

bunches for, you can make them smaller or larger. Different customers also may prefer to

purchase by weight, but I would discourage this, or simply weigh out 1 pound worth of

bunches and set your price per pound based on how many bunches were in 1 pound. For

herbs, the price per pound will be quite high, and that sticker shock may turn off buyers, so

stick to bunches if at all possible.

8Diagram 1 - a rolled out garden tower

In the initial garden tower spreadsheet, I showed all 4 garden towers in 2 dimensions which

in hindsight may not have been as good of an explanation as I had hoped. The following

diagram is the result of rolling out a 12 diameter garden tower so that you can see how the

spacing will actually occur as you move around the garden tower. As you can see, this layout

does a better job of representing the actual planting spaces available. In the fencing that I

used for the accompanying videos, the garden towers are 14 spaces high and 20 spaces in

diameter (the spaces representing the holes in the fencing).

basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley basil

parsley basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley

basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley

basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley basil

parsley basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley

basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley

basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley basil

parsley basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley

basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley

basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley basil

parsley basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley

basil parsley basil parsley basil parsley

tomato pepper tomato pepper

I staggered the plants like this because I wanted to leave as much space between two

identical plants as possible. When you are planting, if at all possible it is good to interplant or

companion plant multiple varieties of plants for a number of reasons but most of all because

9a variety of plants growing in one place is far less likely to become diseased than one type of

plants growing in one place. The different types of plants also take up water and nutrients at

different rates, so the companion planting will hopefully limit any possible stress that may be

caused by roots taking up nutrients from the soil mix.

Now that you have a little bit better of an

idea about how I am suggesting that you

lay out the plants, I wanted to talk a little bit

about how to price your herb bunches. A

little bit of your own market research should

be included in this, and if you are selling in

bulk to one vendor, some negotiation

should be acceptable, but I suggest asking

$1.50/bunch. I play with my prices a lot at

farmers markets because I want them to

be as close to the other vendors prices as

possible. At the markets I go to, there is an

unspoken rule that you dont want to set

your prices way below the other vendors

for the same item. I realize this runs contrary

to the way a lot of people think, but I dont look at other farmers as competition, a lot of them

are my friends, and I know that a lot of them need to price their produce at what I think is a

high price in order to make a profit. That is one of the reasons that I bring so many different

things to the market, so that I can discount certain items and not feel like I am undercutting

other vendors.

At one market I went to, I was the only one selling herbs and I just priced them at $1/bunch

because I knew the clientele coming to that market were not affluent. However, I also sell to

an upscale restaurant for $1.50/bunch and they have never batted an eye. There are more

affluent markets where people sell herbs for $2 or $3 per bunch and consumers dont mind.

That is what I mean when I said earlier that you are at an advantage because you are selling

local produce at a time when people are buying almost as a stylish thing to do. It might

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not always be like that, but I see no problem with taking advantage of such prices while

consumers are willing to pay them.

So, with the target price of $1.50/bunch of herbs you are looking at gross income from selling

these two items to be $1200 in one growing season (spring to fall)! That is very impressive

for something growing on four square feet of space in your yard. And you must keep in mind

that there is the possibility to make more than that per bunch, which will increase your profits

dramatically. Now, dont be discouraged if you dont meet this goal. Especially if this is your

first year growing, you are likely going to make some mistakes and you wont have an optimal

yield. Disease isnt as likely since you are not growing in the ground, but it is still possible that

you could end up with a problem of some kind that is beyond your control too. This is less of

a concern with these two plants though, because I have not had any disease problems with

either one since I started growing. But just imagine even if you make half of that, $600 is a

nice chunk of extra change to have for what will likely amount to a few minutes of work every

day and a couple of days a year to harvest.

If you do decide to save your basil seed, make sure that you are starting with open pollinated

seeds. There are two types of seeds on the market today, open pollinated - also called

heirloom - and hybrid seed. The seed package should either say open pollinated or hybrid

on the label somewhere. Most seed catalogs will note hybrid seeds as F1 which means

that it is the first generation of a filial cross of two distinct plant varieties. You can save the

seed from an F1 plant and they will grow the following year, which is considered F2 or 2nd

filial generation. The F2 produce might be nearly identical in every way to the F1 that you

purchased in yield, taste, date of maturity, etc. However, the F2 produce might be something

completely different. It might have an odd shape, bland taste or low yield at a higher date of

maturity. Open pollinated varieties, however, can be grown and the seeds can be saved with

very little variance from year to year. Notice that I say very little variance, because you will likely

notice that if you save the seed of a plant that cross-pollinates, you will likely pick up some

new characteristics over a number of years.

So, just make sure that your basil package doesnt say F1 or Hybrid anywhere on the package

and you should be fine. I also want to take a minute to say something else about hybrid

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seed because I think it deserves a moment of additional explanation. People are increasingly

concerned about GMO or genetically modified organisms. At any normal seed vendor, you

will not find any GM crops. The reason for this is the high cost that big corporations put into

the development of their GM crops. They want to keep a tight control over who is purchasing

their GM crop so that they can recoup their investment and guarantee their seed isnt saved.

Just rest assured that other than corn or squash, there are no GM vegetable seeds on the

market, and NO GMO seeds are for sale to home gardeners. If you want to keep track of the

risk of consuming GM food, you can check http://www.nongmoproject.org/ from time to time

to make sure you are in the clear.

One great way to guarantee you are getting organic, heirloom and non-GMO seeds is to join

our Monthly Seed Club.

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CHAPTER 2ASSESSING YOUR LOCAL MARKET

Before you read any further, I want you to

find out when your next local farmers market

takes place. Put it on your calendar, and go

to it. Wait until the last hour or so, and really

spend some time browsing each stand. Ask

the vendors what has been selling well that

day. Ask the vendors if they sell at another

market. Ask the vendors if they run a CSA as

well. Ask the vendors if they sell fresh herbs.

Make it a conversation. Dont make it seem

like you are just interviewing them because

you are growing and want to sell in the same

area as they do. Take all of the information from

all of the vendors and use this information to

determine if there is an opportunity for you

at that market. Realistically, you will probably

not go to a market every week with just the

produce from your 4 square feet garden.

But, maybe one of the vendors you spoke

to would be willing to buy something from

you every week and sell it. Or, more likely,

try to sell it for you and split the income with

you. You dont have to make any decisions

or commitments that day, you can just briefly

talk to them and see if they are interested or

not.

If you decide you want to start selling at

a farmers market, ask a vendor who the

organizer of the market is or do a search

online to find out if they have a web presence.

The earlier you can get the details hammered

out, the better, since the best markets are

usually filled before the season starts. Also,

expect to pay between $75 and $300 per

year as well as a weekly charge in some

cases for your weekly booth. Like I said,

this sort of overhead wont be worth it until

you have more produce on a weekly basis. I

wouldnt go to a market with less than $200

in produce a week in the hopes of selling at

least half of that.

Now, the next thing I want you to do is make a list of restaurants in your area that are locally

owned and have an upscale menu. If you dont know exactly what I am talking about, what

you are looking for is a restaurant that is locally owned and offers entrees that are $20 or

above. The reason I am steering you toward the more upscale restaurants is because they

are more likely to pay the premium you will be asking for your produce. Ask your friends if they

13

know of any places and make a list of as many possible restaurants as you can. Here is the

header from my spreadsheet:

RestaurantChef/Kitchen

Man.Contact Number

Email Delivery Day Repeat?Payment Method

Basil Parsley

Jax Jim Smith502 555

5555jim@jax.com Tuesday Yes, weekly

Net 30/Credit Card

8 bunches 15 bunches

Contact each restaurant and get the following information. Here is a loose script you can work

off of:

Hello, My name is _____, can I speak to your kitchen manager or head chef?

If no, can I have that persons name and a good time to contact them?

If yes, once they pick up, Hello, My name is ______ and I am a local gardener. I was calling

to find out if you buy local produce.

If no, just thank them for their time and hang up.

If yes, Great, I am looking to partner with a local restaurant to supply fresh, local, organic basil

and parsley. Would you be interested in trying some of my herbs?

If no, just thank them for their time and hang up.

If yes, Great, when is a good day and time for me to bring some by to you, and how many

bunches do you want of each?

If yes, set up a time and quantity they want.

When you arrive at the location for the first time, ask if there is a back entrance to accept

deliveries. Go around to the back if necessary and meet with the kitchen manager. Present

them with the produce they requested and ask how they would like to pay. I prefer cash,

of course, but I also take credit card payments using my smartphone and an app called

Square. They take 1 to 3% of the transaction to process the charge, so you may or may not

want to ask for an additional amount as a convenience fee. Personally, I think this is tacky and

just take the loss. If and when you develop a regular relationship with a particular restaurant,

they may want to pay you by check or credit card on a delay either Net 15, 30 or 45. This is

normal in the business world and what it means is they will pay your for the delivery 15, 30

or 45 days after the delivery. Whatever way they want to pay, create a receipt for them. I use

the square app on my phone and send an email or text copy of the receipt to them. You can

also just use a piece of paper if you want. I like using the square app because I can access

14

it later on my phone or computer. I only have had one restaurant that wanted to do a net 30

payments, but I just want to make you aware it is out there. Most likely, they will just pay you

in cash or with their credit card.

If restaurants dont pan out for you, you also may want to make a list of contacts that are

middlemen or grocers in your area. You can use the same contact template I used for

restaurants above, just change kitchen manager to procurement manager. For as small of

an operation as you will have, these options might not work out for you, but it might not be a

bad idea to contact them anyway. Dealing with a 3rd party like this will mean that there will

definitely be a delay between when you deliver and when you get paid. I have never been

paid on delivery from a grocery store or middle man. So, again, be prepared to wait 15 or

more likely 30 days for payment. If you are not sure how to find a middle man, a good place

to start will be farmers in your area that have CSA programs.

Remember, I mentioned them earlier and they are farms that offer weekly subscriptions to

consumers. They might buy from you either because they want to help a new grower or

because they dont have what you are offering or they had crop failures and need to augment

their weekly baskets. You can also check online at http://www.localharvest.org for possible

leads as well. A lot of times the middlemen delivery services will do a lot of advertising, so

you might hear about them that way. They also may be listed on local harvest, and you can

also do a search online for vegetable delivery your city to see if anything comes up. If there

is a Whole Foods in your area, they might buy from you, but they have very strict demands

and penalties for not meeting your contractual obligation, so I would not go with them until

you are well established.

Your final alternative, and as I mentioned, it is one of my favorites, is to barter with other local

producers for stuff that you cant produce yourself. I have had mixed results with bartering

fresh produce for eggs, honey and value added goods. I have not yet been able to procure

a source of meat willing to barter with me, but you may have better luck in your area. Before

I go into my specific experiences, let me talk a little about value added goods.Any effort you

make to a piece of produce to preserve it or to combine it with other ingredients is creating

15

a value added good. The idea here is that there

is only so much value in certain items during their

peak seasons, and many people only buy items

fresh to preserve them. So, if you do all of the

work for them and present them with the finished

product that they desire, you can ask for a

premium on that product.

Examples of value added products are pickled

cucumbers, beets, carrots and onions. Salsa,

spaghetti sauce, jams, jellies and preserves are

also common value added products. You can

also make quick breads, muffins and cookies

with some of your garden produce on the

ingredient list like zucchini bread, carrot muffins

and blueberry muffins. You can also can

applesauce, pears or peaches for later use and

charge a premium for them. Still another

alternative, and one that I have not seen at any

markets, would be fruit and vegetable drying or making fruit leather. I would imagine you

could make a nice profit from both items.

The other thing about value added items is that you dont necessarily have to grow the stuff

yourself. There are apple trees all over my neighborhood that people dont eat hardly any of

the apples from. You could simply stop at the house, introduce yourself and ask if you could

pick up the apples in their yard for free in return for letting you pick the ripe apples still on the

tree. Most people will be happy to accept that deal in my experience. They are usually just

happy to know that their yard is cleaner and the fruit is being put to good use. These apples

are generally older varieties and are known on the local market as cooking apples. Not worth

much by themselves, but cooked into applesauce or apple butter they are suddenly more

marketable.

16

The reason I bring up all of these value added items is because they may be more attractive to

people who have non-perishable goods such as frozen meats. Most often, I have experienced

that people selling meat either grow their own gardens or they cant afford to barter for

produce, no matter how much of a mark up you offer them. I offered $15/week of produce

for 1 lb a week of ground beef and was turned down. It happens. But that is the imperfect

system of bartering.

You really have to work to find a person that wants what you have for sale. I have successfully

bartered produce and flowers for honey on a regular basis (I eat a lot of honey but dont yet

have my own hives) and I have a standing deal with a lady down the street that gives me 2

dozen eggs in exchange for $15/week worth of produce from my garden. Notice that there is

a difference in value between the eggs, which are in relatively high demand and my choice

of produce each week, which is in considerably less demand. I dont expect to get dollar for

dollar value in barter of produce for more in-demand proteins. I have not yet tried to trade

away anything that I have canned, but I can see that there would be more value in them to

people selling meat. People sometimes look at fresh vegetables not as a food but as an

ingredient in food, so I think that is why there is less value for them in trade. Of course, your

experience may be different, and it has a lot to do with forging relationships with people.

17

CHAPTER 3CREATE YOUR NICHE

Up to this point in both the original report and in this report, I have encouraged you to follow

a particular plan. Now that you have this information along with my anecdotal experiences, I

really want to encourage you to diverge from what has been described to this point. Although

you can expect some variance from the plan that I laid out, with this information and your

own twists you can make this vertical garden a monetary success. I dont believe gardening

to be a turnkey business or a step-by-step guide to start at a seed and end with a bountiful

harvest. There is a lot of art and science mixed in along the way. If you have internet access,

just doing an internet search for whatever you are experiencing will result in you finding a lot

of good ideas. If you have not already, sign up for our newsletter so that you can continue

to get good information and ideas. You also might need to have someone else working with

you on this. I think that some sort of continuing communication is a big help in keeping you

motivated. Another person is also great to bounce new ideas off. Enough of the pep talk, I

realize this isnt a motivational book, but I really want to make sure you succeed in this project,

so a paragraph of cheerleading isnt such a bad thing every once in awhile.

This report has been focused on basil and

parsley because I think that those two plants

have the most universal appeal and the

highest likelihood of success in the vertical

garden, but that doesnt mean that is your

only option. You could substitute other

herbs, like cilantro, rosemary or sage. All

of them are in-demand culinary herbs, but

they are simply not as sought after. If you

can find a market for sage, then you should

grow and sell it, because it is perhaps the

hardiest of all of the common herbs. Since it

is a perennial, which means it comes back

from the same plant every year, it may not

do well in a container for more than a year

and you may need to pull it out in the fall

and then replant it in the spring. Rosemary

and lavender are similarly robust, but I do not

know of a strong demand for either in local

markets. Again, if you can find someone to

buy it though, it is a good direction to take.

You also dont have to limit yourself to herbs.

You could also try to focus on selling cut

flower bouquets. Zinnias, marigolds, salvia

and ferns would all grow well in the towers

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and could be cut multiple times for multiple

bouquets. Restaurants and farmers markets

are both good places to sell such bouquets.

I was selling 3 zinnias, 2 fern stems, and 5

salvia stalks for $8 per bouquet and would

sell out at each market I went to. I have also

seen people buy cheap old vases at thrift

stores and put the same amount of flowers

in them for double the price. Another thing

about flowers is you dont really have to grow

them all. Black eyed susans, queen annes

lace, ferns, coneflowers and wild daisies all

grow like weeds and make beautiful wildflower

bouquets. You cant always charge as much

for them, but you can literally pick them out

of the ditch for nothing, so it is tough to

complain about the lower price tag. Flowers

have a finite value though, and I wouldnt

focus all of my energy into them. But, they

are a beautiful alternative to herbs.

If you dont want to grow flowers or herbs,

and you are confident you can get good

production the next thing I would focus

on would be leafy greens. Spinach, kale,

collards, chard, beet greens, arugula and

mizuna could all grow fairly well and net you

a nice return. You can pick them all over long

seasons and you can sell them at markets

or to restaurants either separately or mixed

together as field greens. They are also very

nutritious. If you are an ambitious type, you

can partner with different fruit growers in your

area and market smoothie mixes including

your greens and their fruit.

I would not focus on selling any fruiting

vegetables or roots from your vertical garden.

Generally speaking, roots are not worth very

much money and require the most amount

of work for the money returned. Fruiting

vegetables, squash, tomatoes, peppers,

cucumbers, eggplants, okra, etc, do not

produce enough in such a small area that

selling them would be worth your while. The

other problem with them is that everybody

grows them, and unless you have them

earlier than everybody else, you cant get

much for them. If you can produce a lot of

veggies like this, I would think about doing

some sort of value added product. Another

idea would be to grow all unusual varieties of

hot peppers in the towers as they sometimes

draw more attention at markets.

The other option is fruit, and in this case

the main option would be to grow ever

bearing varieties of strawberries as they

are the only thing that would likely do well

in the containers. The problem with growing

strawberries is that they just dont produce

very much, so the best alternative here would

be to freeze them until you get enough to

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make preserves or jam. I personally think that

selling strawberries fresh is a waste of time.

It is incredibly time consuming and the ripe

fruit (if you can get it all ripe at the same time)

is so perishable that it is tough business. Not

to mention the amount of fruit you lose to

birds, who love them as much as we do.

With that said, I think that strawberry plants

have a place in every yard because they are

a delicious snack, I just dont want to get into

business with them.

The other component to creating your

niche is developing a good reputation in

your community. Last year there was a bad

drought in my area (when I lived in Texas,

there was a bad drought every year, but

thats another story). Due to the drought, I

really struggled in August to bring anything

to markets as I pumped my water source

dry and was forced to plant my fall garden

at a friends farm who had city water. I would

talk about what was going on with regular

customers, kind of apologizing for the lack

of variety on my market table. And because

I had forged these relationships with people

earlier in the season, they kept buying my

produce even though they could get cheaper

produce at the grocery store and better

looking produce from other vendors at the

market. They liked me because they knew I

grew organically and that I didnt even spray

organic approved pesticides on my plants.

They were willing to accept less than perfect

produce because they wanted to support

me.

My story isnt unique, there are plenty of folks

that I know of that have gotten by in hard

times on good long-term relationships with

customers. This is where your good name

becomes so important. As you expand your

market offerings, share your story and stand

by your produce. If someone comes back

next week and says your produce went bad a

day later, give them something for free. If you

cant bring great tasting fresh produce to the

market to fill your table, bring what you can

and explain what is going on. Also, if you are

marketing to businesses, either restaurants

or third parties, a quick text or email makes

a big difference to let them know you are

still planning on meeting their order. Regular

communication does wonders in keeping

those relationships intact.

Now that you are equipped with both, The 4 Foot Farm Blueprint and this guide, I believe you have an excellent knowledge base to not only save tons of money eating healthy produce, but turning a decent profit from your small farm. Make sure to check out the Seed Club to ensure that youre getting seeds fit for the season and geared toward growing in your small garden.

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Published by:

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_GoBackIntroductionChapter 1Adapting Your Garden Plan

Chapter 2Assessing Your Local Market

Chapter 3Create Your Niche