The Gardening Everyday

Several years ago I had the crazy idea to try to make some money from my garden.  I knew from my employment background at the time as a research assistant at the Noble Foundation that many small farmers were making good money selling vegetables.  In particular, tomatoes were known to be a great crop.  So I set out to turn my one acre into a gold mine (or so I thought).

I started ninety tomato plants in my home that spring.  I prepared the ground, which wasn’t the whole acre, and began my quest for red riches.  However, I ran into a few snags that I hope to share with you here.  Hopefully, if making money from your vegetable garden is your goal, you will be able to learn from my mistakes.  I’ll cover some of the steps involved and give you examples from my experiences that season for you to follow or avoid.  Let’s get started.

Probably the greatest perk to growing vegetables for money is that you do not need a large chunk of land as with traditional farm crops like wheat or hay.  I had an acre to utilize but I only used 0.05 acres total or about 2200 square feet.  In addition to tomatoes I also had several varieties of peppers, radishes, and eggplant.  The area I used for tomato production was about 1500 square feet for the 90 plants.

It’s important to note, as with any product, that you must first find your market before going into production.  A great resource that I have used is the book by Eric Gibson entitled Sell What You Sow: The Grower’s Guide to Successful Produce Marketing.  You can also find a link to the book at the bottom of this post.  It makes no difference whether you can produce 200 pounds or 2000 pounds from your garden if you have no place to sell them.

I suggest starting with your local farmer’s market.  Check around and find out what the requirements are for your farmer’s market for things such as selling dates and season, booth costs, and any other registration or commission fees.  These are all operating criteria that you’ll need to be aware of before planting your first seed.  Most farmer’s markets are open on Saturday mornings so you should consider whether you really want to spend half of every Saturday during the summer peddling your produce.  Also, you might want to speak with other vendors about sales volumes and pricing.  Be aware, as I found out, that many other growers will obviously see you as competition and may not want to share some information.

Once you’ve determined the specifics of your market, it’s time to start planning your vegetable garden.  As I stated before, tomatoes are a great value crop for small gardeners trying to make a few dollars.  I’ve often stated on this blog that you can produce 15 to 25 pounds of tomatoes from each plant.  In fact, I’ve written a special report at Grow-More-Tomatoes.com that can help you achieve this goal.  For simplicity, let’s assume that you can produce 10 pounds per plant.  Planting 90 plants, as I did, would result in 900 pounds of tomatoes.  At an average price of $1.00 per pound that works out to $900.  Not bad for a garden of a smaller size than most homes!  However, not all of that is pure profit as you’ll see below.

There are a couple of ways to establish your planting for a market garden.  One is to start your own seeds like I did.  This method will allow you greater control over variety selection but may cost more than the second method which is purchasing plants from a garden center.  By purchasing plants that are ready to go into the ground you can cut out 6 weeks of time that it takes to go from seed to transplant in your home.

Other inputs that cut into profit are irrigation, fertilizer, and plant training such as tomato cages.  All of these are costs that should be considered.

At The Market

Every Friday while I had ripe tomatoes, I would spend the evening harvesting and culling tomatoes and peppers.  I took great pride in offering only the best of my produce.  Any tomato that had severe cracks or blemishes would be placed in different buckets for sale at a reduced price or simply placed into the compost pile.

People are funny.  My wife and I usually had some, if not the best, looking produce at our small market.  However, we often lost sales to an older couple that were well established at our market.  Our prices were the same, but we simply did not win over some of the customers.

One of the worst things that happened at our market was the sale of wholesale vegetables.  A couple of the vendors, including the older couple mentioned above, would go to Dallas on Fridays and purchase tomatoes and other crops from a wholesale market just as brokers do for grocery stores.  They would bring these items (with the same stickers on them that you find in the produce section of a grocer) and sell them to their customers.  They would even pass them off as locally grown.  I could hardly believe that people would rather buy from a “middle man” than from an obviously local grower.  It really made no sense!

On several occasions we went home with half of the tomatoes we brought to market.  We ended up giving many vegetables away to anyone near our home that could use them.  Most markets these days have strict rules on the source of produce to protect you as a local grower.  Our experience is likely an isolated event.  But, it is good to check your potential market’s regulations.  If you are considering a large farmer’s market, you’ll likely have no problem with wholesale vendors.

That summer I made about $300 in profit.  However, with the many hours I spent on the project, I really didn’t have a great experience.  I did learn a great deal about people and ethics.  I suspect if you take the plunge into market gardening you will too.

If you liked this article please consider subscribing to this blog to receive all of my future updates.

Also, if you have tried making money from your vegetable garden, I’d love to hear about your experience.  Leave a comment below to share what you have learned.  There are many other gardeners that would benefit from your information.

 

Happy Gardening!

Related posts:

1. How To Start A Vegetable Garden From Bare (or not so bare!) Ground – Garden size considerations
2. Fall Vegetable Garden Maintenance
3. How To Plant Tomato Transplants

Tags: farmer's market, making money garden, sell tomatoes, vegetable garden