>>>>>specialty herbs for specialty restaurants on 1/4 acre and clear $300,000 to $500,000 per yearI want to raise specialty herbs!!! THAT's the kind of money I want to make. Please teach me how! 1. Start with market planning. Find your market. Specialty restaurants hire chefs who have specialty training. Those chefs will have their favorite specialty herbs they want. Find out what those are. Write down every chef and every herb on a list. After you have the list, you might visit with all the chefs again to see if they forgot anything. Go through your new list with them to see if they want anything that anyone else wanted. If you don't have any specialty restaurants with 'fancy' chefs within commuting distance, then you can move to that market or forget about this idea. 2. Revisit your market. Get an idea of how much they want, when they want it, and how often. Do they want it certified organic or simply pesticide free? How fresh is fresh? See if they have any special requests for packaging or delivery. See if you can find out how much he's paying now. If he cannot get it, see how much would be a ridiculous price and write that down. 3. Production feasibility. Don't start this until you have the full list of herbs. Using your list, determine what can be grown in your area. If you live in the northern hemisphere and the chef wants fresh cilantro in June, you probably cannot help him. Similarly growing vanilla bean orchids is probably out of the question. Eliminate the plants that will not grow in your area. Forcing plants to grow out of their adapted range is an exercise in futility. 4. Production costs. Estimate how much it will cost to produce the plants that will grow in your area. Compare that to what the chef is willing to pay. Prioritize the plants according to profitability. Remember that if you want to become THE provider of these specialty items, you will have to provide enough, all the time. Producers who cannot meet the demand may be dropped. When you are prioritizing, keep the production volume in mind. Also you might have to rotate your crops to maintain production. Some plants become susceptible to disease if grown in the same soil too many seasons in a row. 5. Before you put the first seeds in the ground, double check with the potential customers and let them know what you are planning to provide. Make sure they have the authority to buy, or approve buying, from you and that they intend to buy from you. 6. Then all you have to do is grow plants, harvest, process, package, and deliver. What problems could possibly come up with that?

CCKW - What you talk about is a major part of the problem. The thing is, they are people mind set and world view. Its how they are taught is ok, or what is normal. We want the change now, but we have to teach the younger generations how to change, rather then passing on our bad habits and continuing the cycle. RE: those apples I am wondering if there would be a colour change due to growing conditions, specifically if organically grown fruit has had the level of difference as I showed in the pic above. Bamboo Rabbit - Its up in the air it seems. There are too many variables to think of to get proper controlled experiments. I dont think its safe to say it is or isnt more nutritious yet. I personally assume organic should be more, if a little, but thats my thoughts, not something that i read in a paper :P Drew - I think many advocates of organic dont understand that there are differences between some agro chemicals. There is a difference between the sulfer we use to acidify the soil and petroleum based fertilizers and sprays. The differences (As far as I know, and please correct me if im wrong) between the sulfer and the petroleum products are the source. I believe the sulfer we use is naturally occuring, where as the nitrogen fertilizer we use is usually based on oil byproducts. The oil industry has its own stigmas, problems and bias which translates to the agro chemicals made from them. I definitely prefer soluble fertilizer for all of my indoor potted plants. The soil leeches nutrients too fast, and if you dont supplement with something then you have to repot or top dress the plant quite often. I use seaweed fert mixed to 1 tsp per gallon, and add 1/4 dose 20-20-20.

I wouldn't read too much into some of the arguments advanced in that book. They give one view but not one I agree with and I don't think some of the arguments given are convincing. Yes - to some extent invasive plant problems are connected with bad land management and we are to blame for them. But to use this as a reason not to manage invasive plants - I don't agree. If you want to fix problems caused by forest fragmentation in lowland NZ rainforest - well you can't really unfragment a lot of it because we have put cities and farms in the way. In such cases, you need to think about managing the consequences and this includes invasive plants. That is, if you want to take responsibility keep some parts of native forest remaining (I realise some people don't really care about that, but it matters a lot to me that we preserve some parts of our world for the environments and species that were there before us). Blaming plants has nothing to do with it. Also - in NZ it is pretty obvious in terms of plants what was here before humans arrived and what wasn't (how we usually define native). Over millions of years NZ ended up with somewhere around 2500 vascular plants via natural dispersal and speciation (there would be only a handful where we arent sure whether they are native or not). Maori arrived and brought about 10 plant species. The Europeans arrived (250 years ago) and have since introduced more than 25000. It's not the process of new species arriving that is the main issue. It's the RATE that is far exceeding pre-human times and that is the problem. With a longer human history North America is more complex but the issue is the same - it's the rate that is the problem. The arguments around "invasion is a natural process" and "everything was new once and will find their balance in time" seem to miss the point to me. Rats, stoats and cats will find their "natural balance" with flightless birds that evolved in the absence of mammalian predators. But that "natural balance" would see the extinction of many of New Zealand's endemic species (it already has in fact). There is a similar picture with invasive plants although it is much slower. Personally, I'm not prepared to accept that.

For those of you using detterents which advertise "natural oil's" in them such as eucalypt, pine and ti tree please be aware that constant use of these products cause the soil to 'repel' water. I.e. water running off and not being absorbed. I love cats, I love dogs. I have neither, I get miffed when my neighbors dog digs up my seedlings, marks my roses and leaves squishy messages behind. If I catch the dog it will be delivered to that neighbor (along with it's brown messages) with a stern warning and an invoice for the damaged plants and time taken to clean up after the dog. I don't expect it to be paid, but it does make it seem 'official' like you have been very patient and thourough with your investigations. I've found that some animals dislike certain herbs and some prefer certain herbs. Certainly try and plant your own garden with Catnip and Catmint to try and deter your cat from wandering into other peoples gardens. With dogs, I've found that a few soft drink bottles filled with holographic pieces of paper and water in their favourite spots stop them from digging. Along with a thick layer of tan bark. My lawn is a different story. Perhaps I won't buy 'people, cat and dog friendly' snail pellets any more? However I doubt it. I couldn't kill any animal, nuisance or not.