The Imported Cabbageworm is produced by a small white butterfly while a similar looking pest, the cabbage looper, is produced by a grayish colored moth. The larva of both will be green but the cabbage looper will crawl by bunching its body, like the inch worm. If there are few hand squishing works quite well and yellow sticky traps are reported to aid in trapping the adults which can reduce the number of eggs laid. If large numbers are present spraying with Bacillus thuringiensis - Kurstaki can help or if absolutely necessary a pyrethrin dust could be used, carefully.

Hi Anthony, Like Mark, my prices are based on retail, not wholesale. You are essentially a contract grower of specialty produce. If chefs want specific varieties, they must pay a premium, and truly high-end restaurants (that's my market, as well) will just pass on the cost to the guests - don't short yourself. I have worked in high-end restaurants for over 25 years, and been a supplier to them for as long. If your quality is good, don't be afraid to charge what it's worth - it is a lot of labor and a lot doesn't get sold to the best restaurants, because they only want the best, and that is expensive to create. Chefs want clean, unblemished, uniformly sized produce, because it is cheaper for them to process into an elegant presentation. Generally they prefer smaller rather than larger sizes - haricot verts instead of large green beans, slender short carrots instead of large ones - because it means less prep time in the kitchen so less labor cost. They prefer, and know how to recognize, freshness, so harvest your most perishable crops early on the morning of delivery day, and field chill if necessary. If you bring them bug-eaten leaves, crooked carrots, or 10 pounds of potatoes that weigh 1/2 oz and 2 lbs in the same bag, or anything that needs to be washed, they aren't happy. Do your first sorting right in the field into 3 categories - best quality, very good, and the rest. As an example, my purple carrots are grown in beds that are 30" wide and 20' long (50 sq. ft) where the soil is sifted 18" deep, so they all grow straight and fast. I wash them by hand, sort them by size, cut the greens at 1 1/2 inches from the top of the carrot (I sell the tops separately) and sell them 12/$5. They are ready to cut and cook when they arrive. I have a replacement guarantee for any produce that gets returned because of quality issues, or I credit the next order if they don't want a replacement. I deliver on Thursdays and Mondays only, because they are too busy on weekends and Monday they have time to spend talking about the week ahead. I expect payment within ten days, or impose a service charge. Most pay on delivery. For your first year, one restaurant may be all you should commit to, and market the surplus to the others as you have it. Tell the other restaurants that this is your first year doing this type of marketing, and you don't want to sacrifice quality, but you will keep them apprised of any surplus specialty items and they will have first pick. Chefs are very pressed for time and don't like any BS, so be upfront and direct - they'll appreciate it. It is more important to meet the expectations of volume and quality in the beginning, and create a reputation that will allow you to maintain a premium price for your produce. If it's really good, the chefs will be calling you. The only discount should be for produce that doesn't meet your highest standards, and if you can find a non-restaurant market for that, such as caterers or gourmet grocers, it will serve your reputation... chefs talk to each other all the time. I grow in Maine, and most of my markets are local, but I have sold my produce in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, D.C., and Palm Beach, and they pay air-freight shipping rates. Ask the chef you are working with how many people he serves per week (in the trade we call them "covers", i.e.; "we did 158 covers last night," which means they served 158 entrees, not people. Remember that, in most fine dining, dinner is a salad or appetizer, the main meal, dessert, and beverages. You should try to have something from your farm on every plate, even if it is garnishing material like Blue Basil flowers. Even in urban markets, restaurants are seasonal - there are way more rich people in New York in the winter than in the summer (a lot come to Maine), and your area will have seasonal variation too. The chef should be able to guide you towards when demand will slow. Remember too that you have a good market around the winter holidays, so it pays to have something to offer between Thanksgiving and New Years, and Valentines Day can be a nice winter income pop if you plan right. These days, "high-end" in the restaurant industry assumes that each guest will pay $80 or more for dinner, and often way more... some of my clients charge over $200, not including drinks, per person. The very highest-end restaurants routinely get $400 per person, and I have served tables that spent over $10,000 per person - it is a very different world for the 1% crowd. High-end restaurants have a lot of overhead, but they aren't hurting like the mid-range restaurants are. This is the market you want to shoot for, because they have a stable clientele who don't worry so much about economic fluctuations, they just want the best, and will pay for it. There were only 20 restaurants in America last year that received 5-star ratings from Mobil, considered the most stringent reviewer. There are hundreds of 3-star. You want to be selling to 4- and 5-star restaurants, because that will get you adequately funded for retirement.Your preference should always be to service the most expensive restaurants. They are buying from farms like ours. Try to get your farms' name printed on the menu in any restaurant you sell to, this will serve both you and them in that it promotes the perception that they are concerned about local organic food - a very strong selling point these days. Put their names on your own marketing, and at your stand, if the chefs agree to it. Use press releases for marketing as well - if there is a culinary benefit, or the chef is doing a special event, donate something and get it publicized. Sid Wainer is one of the largest purveyors of specialty produce in New England, his website will give you some insight on pricing of some specialty items. Professional cooking magazines will also have good references to follow up on for pricing - much of my garden planning revolves around culinary resources rather than seed catalogs. Publications aimed at the retail consumer market will be of less usefulness - Saveur being a notable exception. I use Fedco for the bulk of my seed order, they are a Maine company that has principles I respect, and carry a lot of good seeds at fair prices, with substantial volume discounts. I also use Baker Creek, Johnnys', Ornamental Edibles, Kitazawa, Seeds of Italy, and Graines-Baumaux in France, and many others. I do not sell large potatoes, "utility" onions and carrots, standard green broccoli or cabbage - the return isn't worth it, and chefs can get it cheaper elsewhere. Once you calculate your plant needs for one restaurant, at least double the number of plants. Stagger planting dates, and take advantage of micro-climates to stagger the harvest further. Explore using different growing techniques as well as unusual varieties, and invest in season-extension and crop protection technology - hoop houses, row covers, IRT mulches, drip irrigation and the like will make your life easier and your product more reliable. Buy varieties based on flavor, color, and heirloom qualities for the most part, but buy common cultivars for experimenting with growing techniques. Look for things like white celery, cornichons, treviso radicchio, sea kale, Egyptian onions, and any unusual colors - carrots are the big thing right now, but black and watermelon radishes, blue peas, orange or Romanesco caulflower, or white strawberries will appeal to chefs with "foodie" clientele. I have ways of growing radishes, carrots, and garlic that are unusual and offer a product unique to my farm, I also market a lot of unusual greens and edible flowers and micro-greens - anything that makes you stand out in the mind of the chef when he wants something unique will bring in $ and more clients. Eventually, you should be intensively working about 5 acres for specialty produce, making a good living, and not need the farm stand at all. Plan to have some of your farm dedicated to ornamental products as well - cut flowers in summer, unusual pumpkins and gourds in fall, and greens in winter can all add to the bottom line. The dining room manager or GM will give you guidance on what they might buy from you instead of a florist. Here is a link that might be useful: Manzano seed

I've been full-time for four years, right from the start, this is my fifth coming up! It's great. Luckily, I am able to do some freelance computer work (web site stuff) right off the farm, so I've been able to supplement my income a reasonable bit (and that has been necessary!), but without really affecting my day hours and full-time focus. It's not for everyone, especially if you're starting from scratch as I did. Money is a big pressure, and there is just so much to learn, so many bases to cover. I had "consulting" help, a lifelong farmer to ask and help with some things like equipment repair. You have to be flexible and very focussed to organize and follow-through, but once customer feedback kicks in, that provides an amazing amount of real in-field energy to keep going (your veggies have to be good, but they tend to work out if you give 'em the basics). In my very humble opinion so far, the most important thing is that you have to unlearn a bunch of insidious little habits from "consumer society", like hopping in a vehicle to drive 20 miles to a hardware store because you need a couple of bolts. Things like that. If you can get into the flow of market garden work (which fully includes marketing your stuff) to the exclusion of pretty much all else, it's unbelievably excellent: sanity-inducing and maintaining and plain...fun!

Ilene, TOMATOES: If I lived in your part of the state, I believe I would spray the plants with Daconil. I like to do things the organic way, but there is no good organic solution to EB. Sometimes you have to choose to use a chemical or there is little to no harvest at all. Heck, some years I wish I had started Daconil at transplant time. By the time you see EB, by the way, it is too late to start Daconil and expect good results. Daconil is most effective at keeping EB away, but once EB arrives, Daconil does not "kill" it although it might slow its spread. My choice not to use Daconil explains why I replant for fall tomatoes--because the EB damages the spring-planted ones so severely in late June through late July that it is easier to start over with fresh plants for a fall harvest. Usually, but not always, my cherry tomato plants and a few others outgrow the EB, but a lot of the others do not. CABBAGE: Well, my personal solution would be that you convince your spouse you need a tornado shelter. (Then (hee hee) you could use it as a root cellar. However, if that is not practical, here's a few other suggestions. 1. For best keeping, plant a cabbage that is a long keeper. Harvest while slightly undersized (slightly larger than a softball). For spring-planted cabbage, cut off the head off the stump of the plant with a sharp knife and leave the roots/stump in the ground. You ought to get a new, small head on the stump, or with some cabbages, you get multiple sprouts that look like brussels sprouts. You can harvest and eat them like brussels sprouts. 2. For fall-planted cabbage, you can leave it in the garden bed all fall and most of winter if you heavily mulch it....and if mice, voles, rats and squirrels don't find it and eat it. You can build an above ground "storage pit" using 6 or 8 bales of hay placed around a row of several cabbages, and the put a piece of plywood over the tops of the bales and then lay a couple of bags of leaves on top of the plywood as insulation. You also can store cabbage heads for 3-6 months in a fridge. Sometimes you can store cabbage in an unheated garage or shed or an unheated screened-in porch or breezeway. The results are variable, though, and this works best if you have pretty good humidity and a stable, cold winter.....not one like this year with multiple days where the temps have gone pretty high. Sometimes you can store cabbage in an unheated attic or crawl space under a house. This works best if you can hang the cabbage (maybe using cheesecloth or something similar) so it has air all around it. Success will vary, and mice or other rodents might get to it. In the absence of a cellar, basement, root cellar or tornado shelter, you can store in a pit. See the linked publication for a good description of how to build one. You can even store in a trench dug in your garden. I think that is described in the linked publication too. You can make sauerkraut. You can slice it, blanch it, and freeze it. Of course, after that, it is only good for cooking. You can preserve cabbage by canning it in chow chow relish, traditional corn relish, Dixie relish, Piccallili relish, Red Root Relish (if it is red cabbage),Sweet and Sour Pepper Relish or Spiced Red Cabbage. I am sure there are many other ways to can it as well. Finally, if you have a dehydrator you can dry it and use it in cooking. To dry it, split the cabbage and cut out the bitter core. Slice up the rest and spread it on drying trays. Dry it at a fairly low temperature--about 120 or so--because higher temps will burn it up. Dry it until the pieces feel brittle. Then, store it in dried shreds or grind it up into a powder and add it to soups, stews or salads. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Long-Term Home Garden Vegetable Storage