The Market Gardener – Make Money Farming on Small Acreage
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The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming by Jean-Martin Fortier demonstrates that it is possible to earn a good living on a small piece of land, and provides the reader with the tools they need to do it.
With under 2 acres of cultivated land, Jean-Martin and his wife aren’t just small farmers, they’re micro-farmers. They have been supporting their family for the last ten years with just 1 1/2 cultivated acres , and achieving a profit margin of over 40%. I live in a state with large amounts of agriculture, and I know most farmers around here are struggling just to break even, let alone post that sort of profit.
How do they achieve these results? Through strategic planning.
Table of contents
The Market Gardener Success Strategy
- Garden Intensively – Maximize production by optimizing soil fertility, determining the best return per square foot of garden crop, reducing non-productive space and gathering multiple crops per season from the same soil
- Minimize Start Up Cost – Micro-scale production eliminates the need for large, expensive machinery, which is a huge expense for many produce growers. Additional tools/materials can be added over time and sometimes purchased used. Appropriate sizing and uniform sizing between beds allows production enhancers such as tarps, row covers and hoops to be moved within the garden with minimum effort, and allows a single item to be used in multiple locations over the course of the season.
- Minimize Production Cost – by operating on a micro-scale and planning for efficiency of labor, Jean-Martin and his wife minimize the need for outside labor, which typically accounts for 50% of costs of market growers.
- Sell Direct and Add Value – By cutting out the middle man, direct to consumer sales generate maximum return for the market gardener. Focusing on details that add value to the consumer, such as early season vegetables and unique vegetable cultivars, means that their produce can garner a premium price.
What’s In The Market Gardener
The book opens with a general overview, and then takes the reader step by step through the process of creating a successful market garden, including:
- Finding the Right Site
- Designing the Market Garden
- Minimum Tillage and Appropriate Machinery
- Fertilizing Organically
- Starting Seeds Indoors
- Direct Seeding
- Weed Management
- Insect Pests and Disease
- Season Extension
- Harvest and Storage
- Crop Planning
Planned Vacation!
One particular aspect of their cropping strategy that I found personally appealing was that they do not try to harvest a crop year round. This provides them with a couple of months in deep winter to relax and recharge – even take a vacation – before heading back to work with fresh enthusiasm. It allows reduces the need for supplemental light and heating. (They are located in Canada, so some supplemental heating for early season seed starting is a must.)
There are also detailed crop growing notes, sources for tools and supplies, planting schedules and crop rotation charts. Simple line drawings help to illustrate key points throughout the text.
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You can hear from the author himself talk about his inspiration for writing “The Market Gardener”:
Conclusion
If you’re ready to “grow better instead of growing bigger”, this may be the right book for you. It’s possible to make a living off the land without a large amount of land. Jean-Martin Fortier and his wife have proved it.
Buy The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming now.
I received a copy of the book for review. As always, my opinions are my own.
If you have a favorite book for profitable small farming, please share your suggestion in the comments.
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Originally published in 2014, updated May 2016. Giveaway was held back in 2014 and is now closed.
I think my husband and I could learn a lot from this book.
Hi! I’m commenting because I’d really like to read this book! Thanks 🙂
Looks like a Book worth reading!!! Would appreciate winning a copy.
How can I plant different varieties of tomatoes, corns, melons, squash, pumpkins, ect. and make sure that they will not cross-pollinate? I would appreciate maintaining and producing seed true to each variety. I don’t have much land available but enjoy gardening. I live in a area with a zone 13 designation, without any limitation due to frost. Is there any guild to what can and cannot be grown in land in this zone? We have recieved seed and transplants catalogs, but they usually doesn’t mention our zoning, just up to zone 9. Although I’m aware that some of the plants included strives were I live, I would like to venture with some of the other plants offered in these catalogs, but would like to be sure they will be productive in our zoning.
My best advice is to talk to neighbors who have gardened successfully in your area. Some things just are not likely to grow well, others will likely thrive.
As for avoiding cross pollination, it comes down to isolation. Corn will cross pollinate over miles, tomatoes tend to be self fertile. Growing a single variety of each is the best way to ensure staying true to type, but to make sure you have a strong gene pool, it’s advised in most cases to have at least 30 plants of a particular variety. This can be tough in a home garden. My favorite book to date on seed saving is “Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners“.
I would love to win a copy! This looks like a great resource to have on a permanent bookshelf!
The book looks informative and beautiful, too!
What is the best material for raised beds?
Stone or concrete blocks are the most durable and least likely to leech. In the book, they simply use a specific type of tiller to mound the soil without any structure to hold it. Cedar is good and rot resistant, but pricey.
This book looks wonderful and I would love to win a copy! Do you have any suggestions for getting rid of wire worms in the soil without using chemicals? I try to do everything organically and I love potatoes but can not grow them here because of these awful worms. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Are chickens an option? If you could put some in the space temporarily, they would love to eat and dig out anything that moves and some things that don’t.
Really looking forward to reading this book. Would also like to know more about growing herbs all year long in our home
I’d like tips on growing bell peppers to a larger size – mine are always so small!
Lovely giveaway. Looks like a great read. I’ve gardened most of my life. The past couple years I’ve had little to no luck trying to garden in our yard. I think between the dogs and the soil not being good its a struggle. I wish I knew what to do (besides fencing off a section of the already fenced in backyard) to keep the dogs out of my garden. Any ideas? They dig too. So I suspect they would just dig under the fence if they really wanted to get to my garden. 🙂
The points listed under “The Market Gardener Success Strategy” tell me that these folks know what they’re doing. There are too many books out there written by folks who are good at writing, but don’t know the subject matter from personal experience. I can take each of those points and show where they also apply to the software business that I started 19 years ago. That business has allowed me to live and work from my own little homestead on a dirt road. I can work in the garden and work with the chickens and ducks and geese while many of my customers probably think I’m in an office in a large city.
Farming is a business, whether it’s a two acre organic market garden or a two thousand acre agribusiness. It sounds like the authors of this book understand that and have found that sweet spot where you are doing what you enjoy and making a decent living from it. I’m looking forward to reading this one.
Stephen Clay McGehee
The Southern Agrarian
Looks like a great book! Just added it to my amazon cart, but would really love to win a copy!!
I would find this book very interesting. My husband and I keep talking about market gardening, so this would be very informative.
Looking forward to gardening this year. Thanks
can I put too much organic matter in my garden? My son said that it may burn my plants.
Hot compost or manure that has not broken down can burn plants.
I have been gardening ever since I was a very small girl, grew up with most all the family being farmers of some type..dairy/produce. I still have lots of questions even after all these years!! We are fairly new to chicken keeping also. I have questions about the use of their waste for compost… The ‘hows’ & ‘whens’. I think this book is a great asset to anyone new or old to the gardening scene. We are not using our garden to “profit” from outside consumers, but we are growing for TO-profit from having our own organic fresh vegetables and fruits. We start seeds indoors, and use the “hot box” methods to start outdoors earlier. We also can/freeze our harvest to extend the ‘life’ of our labors. I am also learning more in the storage area of produce, (root cellars), this I think is a huge key to having fresh, whole vegetables in the ‘off’ seasons. I would love to acquire this book, whether or not I am lucky enough to win it!! Thank you for the opportunity!-Danielle
Love this idea! Will be reading this book!
Oh, I’d love to have a copy!
I’ve been working to improve my heavy Ontario clay soil for 10 years but it’s still not great. I compost and add manures, and this past year I’ve spread heavy mulch everywhere. Any extra tips on what I can do to improve tilth?
Sounds like you are on the right track. Make sure to encourage soil life, and add some bulky organic matter that will take longer to break down than finished compost. Our last place had heavy clay soil, and by the end of nine years (when we moved), we were just starting to see significant improvement.
I would love this book , sounds like where we are trying to head!
I would love to know how to make compost.