Gardening Reports

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Market Gardening On A Budget

November 4, 2023

Market gardening is a great job. Bringing fresh healthy food to appreciative customers can be enjoyable and profitable. But if you are on a budget, how can you start market gardening without breaking the bank? Here’s some suggestions to get started growing for market on a budget.

Step 1: Finding land to start market gardening. Here’s the good news: you don’t have to own a farm to be a farmer! In most rural areas, there is good land that is underused. Put the word out to your neighbours that you are looking for a small plot for a market garden. You can also find land by driving around and looking for fields that appear un-worked, without animals grazing. Ask local farmers if they might be interested in renting you a small plot; they may even take a share of the vegetables you grow in exchange. A plot as small as 5000 square feet can produce an amazing amount of food for sale.

Step 2: Covering your start-up costs. Here’s a way to raise the start-up capital you will need for seeds and equipment. Approach your friends, family, co-workers, boy scout troop, hockey buddies, in short everybody, and tell them you will be raising delicious, fresh, naturally-grown vegetables, and if they hurry they can get on the list to get some. You can ask them for a deposit to secure their share of the bounty from your garden, or even get them to pay you in advance for veggies they will receive throughout the season. This model of market gardening is known as Community Supported Agriculture, and is a popular and successful model to start gardening for money.

Step 3: Getting your equipment. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on market gardening equipment to get started. You can hire a local farmer to plow and disc your garden space for you. A simple light stand for starting seeds indoors can be built with florescent shop lights and 2 by 2 lumber. Shop light usually come with chains that will let you adjust their height as your plants grow. A market garden of up to an acre can be managed with mostly hand tools, often available cheap at farm auctions. If necessary, you can buy a used rear-tine roto-tiller, or rent one as required. Other recommended supplies include drip or soaker hose for irrigation, and a roll of floating row cover to protect your plants from weather and insect damage.

Step 4: Ordering seed. This is one place where you don’t want to skimp too much. Check the seed catalogs from different suppliers, and find the best prices and sizes of seed packets that suit your growing needs. It’s better to order too much rather than too little seed; if you run out in the middle of the season, more seed may be hard to find. And most seeds will keep for several years, so anything you don’t plant can be used next season.

Step 5: Putting it all together. You now have your land, some customers, start-up capital, and market gardening equipment. Now you actually have to grow the delicious vegetables your customers are expecting. To start with, you need a production plan for your garden. You need to figure out how much of each crop you need to grow, when to start growing them, and when they need to be replanted to ensure a continuous harvest. Your planning will be based on such factors as the length of your growing season, your date for last frost in the spring and first frost in the fall, the number of customers you have, and the equipment you have available. For example, if you have ten customers that each want one head of cabbage from you each week, you will obviously need at least that many cabbages available for harvest on a weekly basis. And since not every seed germinates, and there will be some losses due to weather or insects or disease, you should allow for a ‘safety factor’ when determining how many plants to start. To be sure you will have 10 cabbages ready for harvest, you might start 15 seeds to allow for losses. Follow this kind of analysis for each crop you plan to grow.

Step 6: Maintaining your market garden. Market gardening is real work, requiring regular daily attention to be successful. You will spend time each day in watering, weeding and feeding; the gardener’s WWF. One key to this is, don’t start too big a garden the first year. Perhaps just grow vegetables for a few friends, then as your experience grows you can increase the size of your garden.

Gardening

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Greying Tigers

October 24, 2023

Greying tigers, the generation of over 65s who are becoming a more powerful generation in the market place. This is the generation that has seen all the changes take place and are reminiscent of the good old days.

They remember when the wallflowers were sold wrapped in newspaper and they remember the price. This is a generation looking for nostalgia and is very price aware.

This is still a generation that are loyal to many garden centres and dare one say it, but because of their loyalty they may be putting young people off visiting the same establishments.

This is a generation that we cannot ignore, but have to fit them into a marketing scenario that meets all generation needs.

Many garden centers have realized there is an opportunity, especially where they can get involved in celebrating the Red Hat Society as an event in the garden center. If you are not aware of this society, I recommend you check them out on the web. This is a growing group and a great way of introducing fun into our garden center with this generation.

Greying Tigers are the most adventurous retired generation that has ever been and as a result will experiment in there gardens. They are the nostalgia market and this is a huge opportunity for any garden centre who wishes to develop nostalgic promotional opportunities. Why not have a corner in the garden center for nostalgic products and plants.

Garden centers who are looking to attract this market need to be less abled friendly and have plenty of seating located around the center. The coffee shop needs to be price aware; many price decisions are made by judging the price of a cup of tea.

Many centers are allocating special days for this generation; I have one client who has built their traffic on a quiet day by promoting to this group. My local shopping center actually takes a mini bus around the local retirement homes on a Thursday. They invite people to the shopping center, provide them with a complimentary cup of tea and let them shop. This has proved to be very successful, not only to the target market, but has also grown community support for the center. The same concept could be applied to a garden center.

They may be lower spenders, but on quieter days that can make a difference. The Greying Tigers are also often collectors and this is also an opportunity to provide them with collection pieces, the gift market especially has developed this market, but the same could be applied to cacti and other plant products.

Dos

Ensure your garden center is less abled friendly. Have parking for the less abled in a prime location in your car park

Have a wheel chair available, but more important encourage your team to get in it and go around the garden center, this will give them an opportunity to experience it and make appropriate changes to the customer flow

Have plenty of seating located at locations around the garden centre

Promote nostalgia plants at key locations around the garden center and use words like remember and Nostalgia on the signage

Make sure signs are bold and simple; eyes fail as we get older

Ensure your cash point team are greying tiger friendly and are prepared to help .have a help service to the car for the less abled

Donts

Place delicate products in locations where frail hands may drop them

Talk down, this generation has a lot of background knowledge, especially on gardening self and will not consider the container as such an important element as, for example generation X

Put all your container plants in expensive containers, this generation will purchase plants for the plants it

Gardening

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Ebb and flow VS Drip system

October 2, 2023

Do you really need to read an entire article to determine which of two very similar hydroponics systems are best for you? I think so, because each of them have some small particularities that can make a world of difference for you in the long run. Find out which one is better suited for you in this versus article between a hydroponics drip system and an ebb and flow.

Building and Installation Difficulty

Both types of systems work on pretty much the same principles and are quite easy to set up if you’re buying a ready-made kit that you just need to install. Although both systems are slightly harder to build from scratch in comparison to water culture, the ebb and flow has a slight edge, due to the fact that the drip component in the system bearing its name is harder to get working. So ebb and flow hydroponics systems win a point at this category.

Reliability

When I say reliability, I’m thinking of how often a particular system breaks down and how much risks does it take. Another aspect of reliability I will take into account is the damage these systems produce if they do indeed break downbecause it’s not the same thing if your hydroponic system breaks and floods your entire greenhouse, or if it breaks and spills a few drips on the floor. And I guess you already noticed where I’m going with this, namely that an ebb and flow system does a lot more damage if something breaks, thus it is less reliable than a hydroponics drip system.

However, there are certain ebb and flow products out there that come with an automatic water pump controller that spots when something goes wrong and cuts off the water pump so it doesn’t make mess. And honestly, if you’re serious about gardening, you shouldn’t be caught without such a protection system. Still, for making us take this extra measure, the ebb and flow system loses one point to the continuous drip.

Efficiency

Efficiency refers to how well and how fast plants will grow in a specific system as well as how much of the supplies you will use will go to waste. From the perspective of growing efficiency, both systems do fairly well, so none gets the extra edge (after all, they work on almost the same principles, so there shouldn’t be large variations in performance either). But when it comes to supplies efficiencythe ebb and flow hydroponics system will prove to be quite the waster. Because it constantly floods the plant tray then pulls back the excess water/nutrients in the nutrient container, the pH levels in here will be on a constant fluctuation. This will force you to change the solution more often, since an unstable pH can have some nasty effects on your plants. On the other hand, although a hydroponics drip system will still have this problem; it will have it at a much lower rate, which gives it the edge in efficiency over the ebb and flow. 2-1 for drip!

Power Consumption

The fact that the drip system uses a special pump header to control the flow of water doesn’t affect power consumption at all. So the power these two systems eat up should be similar. But obviously, the main power hungry component is the lighting system, so whatever lighting system your hydroponics kit comes with will determine its power consumption ratio. Since the systems themselves are on equal terms in this category, neither one gets any points, leaving the final score 2-1 for the hydroponics drip system!

Gardening

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Ways To Be Truly Artistic

September 10, 2023

Many people I know believe that in order to be truly artistic a person has to be an artist. They must paint, draw or take brilliant photographs to have artistic talent. While These traits may make someone an artist, I believe that it takes something entirely different to be artistic. It is possible for literally anyone to live in ways that are artistic.

One of the most important aspects of being an artistic person is to be confident in yourself. Lack of self-confidence does not get anyone very far in living creatively. Look for positive qualities about yourself and dwell on those. If you think you are good at a particular activity you should practice it to become even better.

Think about the things you love to do most. I suggest that you can be artistic doing just about anything. Whether you love to sew, cook, or play soccer, you can do things in a way that is artistic and intriguing.

One of my favorite things to do is garden. I used to not think much about the way that I arranged or tended my garden. However, recently I have begun to see gardening in a whole new way. I have realized that I can arrange my flowers and plants in creative ways. I can care for them with tenderness and help them to grow to their highest potential. I have learned that being artistic is more about perspective than it is about what is actually being done.

Being artistic is all about seeing the world creatively and allowing yourself to do the things you enjoy and enjoy the things you do. Consider how you can do your favorite things in new ways. Think about how preparing a meal can become more than just cooking food. Look for ways to incorporate beauty and fine detail into your food and into your presentation. Being artistic is about going a step further than what is typical. If you love to play a sport, look for ways to play that sport with energy and grace. Almost anyone can hit a volleyball over a net, but few people can do it in a way that looks unique and graceful.

You will never be artistic in anything unless you are enjoying yourself. Don’t take life too seriously, but instead, look for ways to have fun and relax no matter what the circumstance.

Gardening