Ooops! That should be opinions! :)

the prices in book are bit out of date

Sounds interesting, I hadn't heard on that book before.

I wonder if getting on board with someone like SPUD would be easier, let them handle the distribution.

If you want a postal code to get some example prices, use V3H3S4. Remember that's in Canadian dollars, which is worth about $0.94 US.

Another suggestion is to look at what they sell at Path To Freedom.

Thanks for the great links! Amazing! 3 tons of produce from 1/10 of an acre.

There's a thread in the market garden forum with a link to a produce pricing web site. It's broken out by major metro areas so you can get an idea of what prices are going in your area. If you're near one of the cities that is. You select the fruit or veggie from the drop box and it'll bring up a price grid. I've attached the link. (BTW, organic prices are for certified organic.)

Cheers,
Whynot

Here is a link that might be useful: market prices by region

You got me thinking about this. 10,000 sq ft in SFG style would be a lot of work!

10,000 / 16 = 625 boxes.
625 / 7 = 89.3 boxes per day
89.3 / 8 = 11 boxes per hour (working 8 hours a day):

to plant, mulch, water, harvest.

My back aches just thinking about it. :)

Yes indeed it would be alot of work....That would be the maximum I would have available. I currently have two beds 4'x32' and two 2.5' x 30 ft. Reading the book just made me curious if anyone actually is doing it and what kind of success they have had.

Lets see 11 boxes per hour, 16 sq.ft. per box = 176 sq.ft. per hour / 60 = 2.93 Sq. Ft. per minute. Yep, that's zipping right along! :)

Goodness, and I thought my 116 SF of space I built recently was ambitious. Good luck! I know mine will feed my family of 4 and likely my extended family if they want.

I'm even planning on auctioning off veggie shares for the annual charity aution.

I don't have any experience with this, but it seems that with all the buzz this year about seasonal, local produce, food miles, and heirloom veggies the timing would be great for something like this. More and more, you're seeing the variety of a vegetable on food menus (Brandywine tomatoes, baby pattypan squash, honeycrisp apples, etc.).

Your best bets: Selling rare, organic, beautiful vegetables to small gourmet restaurants. Think Alice Waters. Chains probably aren't the way to go because they have less control over who they buy from and their menus.

Maybe you could talk to a few restaurants now, before you do anything, and see what varieties they are interested in featuring on their menus that they can't get elsewhere. You could also invite some chefs and restaurant owners to a "tasting" of your veggies so they can consider the possibilities.

I think the sq foot method would be better for this kind of thing because you could plant a larger variety of things, and plan them in succession so that you have just enough for each week's demand. It's more work, but you don't have as much waste.

stagger the boxes so you could harvest over a longer period of time instead of harvesting all at once..in that case you might plant 625 boxes over two to four weeks which would require less hours per day AND might you hire a couple of kids to help you plant (my son loves planting and harvesting). You should be able to maintain yourself especially if you use soaker hoses.....definately report back...I love the idea:) We go to a local restaurant that buys all their food from local farmers and plan their menu around what they get.

Well, just in case anybody cares I went ahead and decided to answer the questions myself. :)

Over the winter I cleared 35 trees, ground all the stumps, and built and filled the beds. I did enough that I have 4200 square feet in total growing space.

In my original post I wondered if it would be possible to have an income of $5.75 per square foot. After most of the first year is past we have an income of a little over a dollar per sq. ft. Till the season is complete I expect around $1.25 per Sq. Ft. I consider this good considering all the mistakes I made this first year, and looking ahead I believe $5.75 per Sq. Ft. is a realistic number.

.......
Is it an easy or a tough sell?
.......

Well...I found it depends on when in the season it is. I visited a few Chefs (seed catalogs in hand) in Feb. and explained what I was doing and tried to get them interested as well as get a little guidance as to what they would buy. That did not work out so good, the typical response was "When it's ready bring it in a we will buy it" So I took a stab at it and ordered seeds and started plants. Turns out I was wrong on some a right on others. Walking into a restaurant with fresh produce in hand is an easy sell IF you have the right restaurant, they either are excited and want to buy or are not interested, does not seem to be much in between.

As to the type of restaurant, we sell to 5 (3 on a weekly basis) and all but one the owner is also the chef or somehow involved in the kitchen. I have found that the ones to deal with are smaller and upscale, although don't eliminate the possibly of a smaller owner/operator family restaurant. We sell lots of lettuce mix to one of these.

Well anyway it has been a great, fun and learning year! Not everything is grown exactly "by the book", however I did use it for the basis of most of my methods. Thank you Mel!

And here are some pics:

The garden!

A "Row" of beds.

A nice bed of lettuce

Heirloom Tomatoes!

And some of what they produce!

A "Strawberry Tower" I am in the process of building. Got the idea from the all season fruit company...excited to see how it works out.

Hey Daryl - thanks for posting those pics! I think it's cool what you are doing. Do you have a blog that I can keep track of? I love keeping up with other people's gardens.

EG

Here is a link that might be useful: My Garden Blog

Sorry no blog

Thanks for the link, looked at it briefly, want to spend a little more time browsing when I have time.

I'm interested in that strawberry tower! EG, isn't that what we just put under our beds for drainage? I'd rather have it full of berries, and I have a perfect spot for it in my garden!

Granny

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

Interesting info.

The stawberry tower is similar to a flower tower that I tried for a couple of years. The biggest problem was getting it evenly watered. I had put in a 1 inch pipe with holes drilled in it down the center and this did not do a good job of evenly distributing the water through out.

I have been thinking about this and wondering if puting in 3 1/2 inch pipes that stop at different levels would do a better job or even better yet putting a soaker hose through the middle would do a better job.

Mike, here is a pretty good video of a commercial tube. I'm thinking drip tubing and emitters down the middle, and a cap to keep the top from drying out. You can get a cap for the PVC and just drill a large enough hole for the tubing.

I've also seen rain gutter attached to a chain link fence, then planted with strawberries. That doesn't seem like enough soil, but maybe....you could attach several sections at different heights.

Granny

Here is a link that might be useful: Vertical Grow Tube

Wow! First let me say that I am completely impressed with what you have done. As someone who has studied the same book but have yet to pull the trigger, I am in total awe of your efforts.

What does concern me is the return you are experiencing.
Seeing that the book was published 23 years ago, shouldn't the average price of produce per square foot be much higher than the $5.40 (or even $5.75) that Mel calculates on page 81 of Ca$h From Square Foot Gardening?

Assuming you are selling organic produce wholesale in a market like Austin, TX, I would calculate the estimated profit per square foot at closer to $25 by plugging current wholesale prices into Mel's Typical Yield chart (also on page 81).

Is there a reason why you haven't updated your expected return to match modern organic prices? Can you tell me a little more about where you are located and what the local market is like?

Best regards,

-pulpo

.....
What does concern me is the return you are experiencing.
.....

The primary reason we did not recognize a higher return was because of mistakes. As I said in my earlier post I spoke with some chefs early in the year hoping to get ideas of what to grow and how much. They where not very helpful in that regard so I took a stab at it. A good example of one of our mistakes was lettuce mix. We get $4.00 a bag at the restaurants (about a pound in a bag), however we way over planted and ended up taking extra to local produce auctions, one day we took about 40 lbs and ended up with $.25 (yeah thats 25 cents) for the bunch. Needless to say after that I feed the excess to my compost pile. So, because we had way to much in the spring I backed off on the amount I planted, only to discover that in the heat of summer you simply don't get as much per cutting or as many cuttings till the stuff bolts. As a result we did not have enough to keep all the restaurants supplied and of course we wasted valuable growing space on the excesses in the spring.

.......
Seeing that the book was published 23 years ago, shouldn't the average price of produce per square foot be much higher than the $5.40 (or even $5.75) that Mel calculates on page 81 of Ca$h From Square Foot Gardening?
.......
Is there a reason why you haven't updated your expected return to match modern organic prices? Can you tell me a little more about where you are located and what the local market is like?
.......

As far as updating the prices and getting more per square foot depends on alot of factors. I am located in southeast PA, just outside of Lancaster County the produce capital of the northeast I believe. We have a large produce wholesaler (Four Seasons Produce) that buys from local farmers in season and resells to stores and restaurants as well as three produce auctions within about a 20 minute drive so it is a competitive market and alot of the produce available from the restaurant suppliers is local when in season. This fact forced me to keep my prices to the lower side of the normal range in order to help open the doors. Now that we have relationships established and happy chefs I believe I will be able to raise my prices somewhat and still have the business. As to the $25.00 per square foot, maybe in TX with the longer growing season, but I doubt that would be possible in PA especially in my area.

Some examples of prices I charged and the going range in my area

Romaine lettuce $.75.....Price range $.75 - $1.25
Lettuce Mix $4.00 LB....Price range $3.00 - $4.00 LB
Tomatoes $2.00 - $4.00 LB....Price range $.25 - $4.00
Bell Peppers $.25 ea or $8.00 1/2 bu....Price range $.25 - $.50 ea or $8.00 - $16.00 full bushell
Scallions $1.00 bunch...Price range $.75 - $1.25 bunch

Thank you for being so kind as to give me all of that very useful information. It has done a lot to educate me on the price differences per region and to further understand your particular situation.

Would you say that aside from any pricing differences, that the yield Mel outlined on page 81 of the Ca$h book is accurate?

0-0 Wow!! Out here, I just saw green peppers on sale for $.50 and that's pretty standard. I wish you lived near me, lol. I might give up growing peppers and buy em from you, lol.

Green peppers here are $2.50 to 3.50 a lb and most of vegetable are a grade B vs the Grade A you can get on the mainland.

Hmm, starting that business in an area inundated with producers is a challenge. I think you'll have to do what the PTF folks did. They differentiate themselves from the countless farmers and distributors out there by going high end and organic.

Good luck expanding the network of restaurants that you sell direct to!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden adventure!

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They differentiate themselves from the countless farmers and distributors out there by going high end and organic.
......

I think the PTF folks stole my plan! LOL.

That is indeed the route we are trying to take, we also focus on mostly heirloom varieties and some exotic stuff. "Mexican Sour Gherkin" cucumbers, "Taiwan Black" beans (a three foot long green bean), and "Chinese Red Noodle" beans are just some of the "strange" things we grew. Restaurants love serving those long beans on a coil on their plates!
And one per plate is a full serving.

Hello,

I just found this site and it is awesome. My name is Ava and I just started SFG a few months ago and I love it. I just purchased Mel's Cash for gardening book last week and am almost done reading it.

I like the ideas of cash fro gardening and I am looking forward to trying it out. But I just have to ask darylw about his tomatoes garden. Can you please tell me how you made your garden? Is that a plastic cover on the bottom of the bed or what. You have some awesome pictures.

Thank for sharing.

Ava

I'm not so concerned about SF gardening as gardening. Not necessarily dirt or in the yard even. How much can I get if I donate 100 SF. of room to growing something. From my initial experiments, the most productive method is hydroponics. Even with indeterminate toms, one can grow 100 of them in 100 sf. (50x2). A decent plant should produce at least 25 pounds of tomatoes per year, providing 2500 pounds of maters. Even at 50¢ per pound, that's $12.50 per sf. If one wanted to construct a hoophouse around the area, it would be easy, even in Zone 5, to get ripe toms in June and continue to get them through mid-October with very little in heating costs. That could boost production by 10 pounds per plant but more importantly, locally grown, vine-ripe tomatoes will easily sell for $1.50 per pound when out of season, 3500 pounds of tomatoes times 75¢ per pound equals more than $26 per sf.

FWIW, I do hydro, container and dirt, both yard and raised bed, though this is my first year with a raised garden. If I can keep people from harvesting produce without reporting it, I will have very good records of what about 31 different veggies produce.

I also have a small backyard garden (~900 sf) that I will try to keep track of my harvest.

Mike

Ava,
No plastic under the beds, however I did use a plastic weed barrier between the beds and covered it with stones...keeps most things from growing in the walkways.

For the tomato trellising I used 3/4" EMT Electrical Conduit and Trellis Netting from Johnny's Selected Seeds.

Darylw,

Wow~ What is the update to your SFG this year? This is my first year and I'm growing just for my family of 5. I can't even imagine what you've done, but totally admire it! Let us know how it;s going for! Thanks!
Kendra