In my high tunnels, I still have tomatoes, cherry tomatoes peppers, lettuce, spinach, radishes and a few turnips. I don't have tons, but enough to have some selection. I planted my broccoli and cauliflower too late, or it has been too cool and cloudy all fall. I forget when I planted it, but I think I will move it up to the middle of July. So we will be freezing lots of cauliflower and broccoli.

I don't think I am going to make myself go out and pick my produce and wash greens when it is 34-40 degrees outside with a strong north wind. Then on market morning it is going to be 35 degrees. It has been colder, but the customers just aren't coming out anymore. In addition, I am not selling alot of what I have. It makes me sad to see the season come to an early end, but I will find something to do I am sure! It has been a fun 26 weeks. I will continue to pick produce to feed our friends and family until they freeze in the hoop buildings.

Yes, our customers don't come in early, but as soon as it states to warm up they show up.

Can you pick the greens and clean them inside?

We have had several low 30 degree at starting time of market.

Will we continue til the end? That's a good question, I was going to quit and son talked me out of it. Now, IF it will be COLD and RAINY, we may stay home but probably not. Canopies are wonderful, plus we have electric available and bring in an electric heater to warm hands/feet.

I plant with the idea of market ending Oct 31 and usually don't have anything left in the garden. Just winter squash already picked just waiting to be sold.

Maybe I will make it, maybe I won't. If it is raining, no way. Canopies are great.

I can wash stuff inside, I just don't want to waste all my time tonight doing it. I wish there was an easy answer. I guess I will go, this week, and not next week.

I will make my decision at 4:00.

Jay

If you don't do this already, give it a try. It might make it a bit easier, we all need to work smarter not always harder.

It works for me. I am only picking about 5 pounds. Much more and your method sounds great! I have not sold out of it in 4 weeks. I guess the cold fall isn't time for salad. We love the stuff and everyone who buys it loves it, just not enough people love it!

Time to work on that tractor jay. ;)

Jay, I was picking about 10-15 lbs of green and red salad bowl, each, along with 5-10 lbs of oakleaf. Those varieties work well for my market. I also cut grass clippers to cut the lettuces, the spinach got hand-picked each leaf.

We have a lot of stored things like garlic, winter squash, onions and are still digging potatoes, parsnips, carrots. Still harvesting kale, spring mix, arugula, chard, broccoli and cabbage which is either in hoop houses or under row cover.

We have had 2 freezes in the past 10 days

We wash greens until it gets into the 30's than they go to market bagged dirty. I used a big tub for water and dry with an industrial sized salad spinner (holds 1/2 bushel). I used to do the swing the bag to dry the greens but hurt my rotator cuffs on both shoulders doing that (both had injuries already) so bought the salad spinner and find it takes about 1/4 the time of spinning bags and the greens get drier and are in better shape. The spinner costs under $200, takes up far less space than a washing machine (and can be moved around if need be) and takes no electric. I love my salad spinner. It's a Dynamic and Johnny's selected seeds carries them but you can them far more cheaply from a restaurant supply place. There are many on line

Joe Il: I did work on the my tractor today. It was my grandfathers. He died several years ago, it is sad that I don't remember the year. I got it to turn over today. It didn't start, but I consider it a first day success. Next time I work on it, I am pulling the fuel tank, and clean out the fuel lines and work on the carb. It is a Massey Fergeson 35 Deluxe with a front end loader. There is a disk, plow and mower also. The disk and plow are in the trees but in good condition. The mower has been used several times on another tractor. I am very excited that I will get it going soon. When I do, I will post pics.

I have a question about greens. I really want to grow more, but they just don't sell. I don't get it. I don't know what I am doing wrong. Am I too high with my price? Is there not enough in a bag? Does selling greens just take time to build a market? Even in the spring, I had a hard time selling them. I always had to "Do a lot of talking" to get them sold.

I usually put about 5 ounces (1/3 a pound) in a gallon size clear bag. I am asking $2.50 for Spinach and $2.00 for lettuce. I lowered my price to $2.00 and $1.50 and I still was bringing too much of it home every week. I am only taking 4-5 pounds total. I had a very small offering in the spring. At the end of August and September I had Summer Crisp lettuce. It was very good. I had Magenta, Concept, Cherokee, Anuenue, Jericho, and Loma all together in a mix. It was very pretty and tasted wonderful. I grow this using "Organic" methods. There are no holes, not bitter, picked young and tender and still hard sells. In the town I sell in on Wednesday, a friend sells there on Saturday and he sells out every week of all of his mixes. I just don't understand.

How do you do it, Myfamilysfarm, Boulderbelt, herbgardener? Do you sell mixes of lettuce? Or just one variety. I know that "Fancy" or "Unusual" greens won't work. Is there money in greens or do you sell them because they are hardy? Next spring I am building a new high tunnel to plant tomatoes in. The tunnel that I had tomatoes in this year, I am going to plant spinach, lettuce, broccoli, carrots, green onions, cauliflower, Chard, and beets. I am wanting to have these ready for the first markets at the start of May. Then in Mid June, I am going to plant a row or two of tomatoes for late in the season.

I just think I need to work harder on educating our customers about "local" food. I wish we had a "Winter" market. I am having a hard enough time selling stuff in October, I don't think November would be any easier.

Herbgardener, the fingerling potatoes sell well for other vendors. I just plant red potatoes and never plant enough. This year, I bought alot of potatoes in addition to the 50# of seed potatoes that we planted. I really need to count how many pounds we bought. We had maybe 50# not sell, they will be seed for next year. If I had to guess how many pounds we sold, I would guess close to 500#, if not more. the fingerling that sell well at market are the white ones.

We finally bought a tractor a few months ago, it came with a mower. Today we got a disc, YIPPEE. Now maybe we can work the ground better and easier.

Last year I sold out of potatoes in early September. I harvested 1200-1300 pounds of potatoes. This year, we started our market a month earlier. I started to dig them earlier. I sold out by late July. The reason is I started to dig them a month earlier and they were very small new potatoes. Dollar wise, we were about equal each year. I did find that the "New" potatoes were much easier to sell.

Last year I ran out of Yukon Gold early and had plenty of reds. This year I planted more Yukon Gold, and ran out of Reds early. So who knows what to plant. I am going to up my planting numbers to around 200 pounds.

No one has ever asked me about fingerling, so I am not going to plant any.

I believe that I bagged 6 ounces and sold it for I think $3.00. I mostly sold mixes, but would usually take some bags of just one variety, but they would not sell as well for me. Would usually end up bringing those back. I linked a page from my blog in which I explained the different mixes that we had available, if you would like to check it out. The lettuces and greens were smaller in the picture than when I took them to market. I believe I took the pictures a week or two before the first market. They were a nice size when I started to pick for market. They were still very good though, not bitter at all.

I think what really helped us sell our lettuces is that no one else at our market sells lettuce, so we do not have to compete with anyone else. It is something different that they could not normally get from our market.

Maybe for you it will just take time for customers to start buying your lettuces. I know I love selling lettuces and greens. It is a lot more work to harvest than other things, but for me is very much worth it.

We are actually done for the year (so sad). I can still hardly believe the summer is over, how quickly it goes by. We did not even go to the last market this Saturday. Just hardly seemed worth it. We do not have much of anything left and not many customers have been coming anyhow. It would have been different if we would have had more fall crops planted, but didn't. All I have to do now is get things ready for winter, build a hoop house, and plan for next year, oh and hope spring gets here quickly.

Spring mix (a mix of baby lettuces-11 to 20 different kinds, arugula, mizuna and other baby greens) I do 6 ounce bags. Arugula 4 ounce bags.

All bags have a nice label. I use 12" x 20" produce bags not zip locks because they are a lot cheaper and "greener" (far less plastic) The link is where I got these bags the cheapest. this site also has salad spinners, refrigeration and other useful items all at great prices

Before board of health clamped down on us, we also sold watermelon and cantalope chunks, cut at market and packaged in deli container. Now you can't sell cut melons, it took probably $40-$50 per day out of our sales.

Just got a thought, if we have the egg permits, could we sell individual boiled eggs for salad??? Any thoughts?

I would agree with the pumpkins too. That is why I don't grow them anymore. They take up alot of time and space. Also you lock yourself into a one crop rotation. In the area I would grow them I have had 3 crops and have sold them all before I would have sold any pumpkins. Potatoes, Green Beans, Fall Lettuce and Radishes were the three crops.

Still up in the air if I will go on Saturday or not.

Jay

I will be growing some pumpkins this next year, so that I can offer a u-pick pumpkin patch. I have the land, and the seeds are rather cheap. We also have alot of strawberries, so we may open the strawberry patch for u-pick. Tomatoes may be our crop in-between. There is a u-pick tomato patch about 1 hr away, they seem to doing ok.

I'm not sure what else we will plant, but our main crops will be strawberries, tomatoes and pumpkins/winter squash.

Tomorrow we be our last 'normal' day at the market. Our market is offering extra days on Nov 14, 21 and Dec 5 to finish off this year. They usually have 1 day in March for early sales. Most people don't have much produce, but the bakery and craft people do well.