View previous posts What is Companion Planting? Biointensive farming expert, John Jeavons, defines companion planting as “the placing together of plants having complementary physical demands.” He broadens the definition even further, saying it is “the growing together of all those elements and beings that encourage life and growth: the creation of a microcosm that includes vegetables, fruits...
View previous posts “If you get the soil biology right, there’s absolutely no reason to rotate to a different crop. Our understanding of agriculture is flawed. As human beings, when we start paying attention to how nature manages things, we start changing our agriculture to work the way nature works. Nature has been managing to do this process for the last three and a half to four billion years...
Listen to more episodes of Carrot Cashflow Episode Summary Many people start market gardening in the hopes of becoming an established farm that consistently provides fresh, local food to their community. But what if that niche is already filled and there are already a lot of other people doing what you want to do? You can certainly try keeping at it. Or you can pivot and lean on your other skills...
Listen to more episodes of Carrot Cashflow Episode Summary Many farms have different programs to draw people to their location—from tours to workshops to parties. If you’re someone who’s managing your farm’s CSA program while running an on-farm farm stand, what can you do to draw people in and keep them coming back? In this episode of Carrot Cashflow, we’re talking to Will Conway of Stone Acres...
View previous posts Crop rotation is the practice of changing the crop each year on the same piece of ground, in an effort to confuse pests, reduce weed pressure, and ensure the soil does not get depleted of certain nutrients. Eliot Coleman, considered to be one of the godfathers of market gardening, says that crop rotation “is the single most important process in a multi-cropping program” (The...
Listen to more episodes of Carrot Cashflow Episode Summary One goal that many market gardeners have is to become financially independent. And for that to happen, sometimes there needs to be some sort of supplemental income coming from outside the farm. Managing both can be tricky but doable. If you add on homeschooling your children on top of managing the business and an off-farm job, what can...
Succession planting refers to strategically planning out a sequence (or succession) of crops that will be planted one after another in a designated area throughout your growing season. On a small-scale bio-intensive market farm, the goal is to maximize the yield of a limited growing space. This makes strategic succession planting of utmost performance. The more rotations of high-value crops you...
Listen to more episodes of Carrot Cashflow Episode Summary In a world where more and more businesses are offering convenient delivery of organic produce, how can a traditional farmer’s market compete, especially in post-Covid times? The Vancouver, Washington Farmer’s Market has an answer: offer an online option. In this episode of Carrot Cashflow, Stephanie Haynes of the Vancouver, Washington...
Having a large enough space to keep your veggies adequately cool until delivery is incredibly important. With all of the painstaking labor that has gone into planting, protecting, harvesting, washing, and packing your beautiful produce, the last thing you want is for it to spoil due to an insufficient cooling space! Different Cooling OptionsStandard RefrigeratorCommercial Refrigerator (“Two-Door...
Listen to more episodes of Carrot Cashflow Episode Summary When people look to start a market farm, either one of two things happen: they either become good at managing both the growing side and the business side and their farm operation becomes a viable business, or they struggle with either the growing or the business side—or sometimes both—and the whole operation struggles. How can we prevent...
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