Growing For Market Podcast

Over 25 years of running Buglady Consulting, entomologist Suzanne Wainwright-Evans has helped a lot of farmers with biological controls. This conversation is both a wealth of information and a hoot, as Suzanne tells us why beneficial insects are like sushi (you don’t want them old) while discussing how to source beneficial insects. We also talk about other biological controls, like soil drenches a...

Whether on the roots or aboveground, a lot of the pathogens we need to protect our plants from are fungi or water molds. In this interview with Penn State Extension Commercial Horticulture Educator Jennie Mazzone, we talk about how to diagnose infections caused by fungal pathogens and how to treat them. We also discuss the differences between fungi and water molds, why it matters and how these pat...

One of the most important things about business planning is how to plan for quality of life- and longtime GFM contributors Julia Shanks and Dan Brisebois have teamed up on a new book, The Profitable Farmer, that will help you plan for profit and quality of life. We talk about why it’s important to make a plan even if it may change, and what to do when it is time to go back to the drawing board. Da...

Pests and beneficials can sometimes act differently in greenhouses versus the field. So, this week we’re talking with Professor Laura Ingwell from Purdue University and Professor Samantha Willden from Cornell University about IPM for common greenhouse pests, including where and when they are likely to arrive. They tell us about a study they did on 36 farms over 2 years, and how conditions on those...

Radicchio has long been a favorite with market farmers for its ability to provide something colorful and delicious in the fall and winter. But with its adaptation to very specific regions of Italy, figuring out how to grow the vegetable in North America has been a bit of a puzzle. Luckily, Lane Selman puts that puzzle together for us with her new book Radicchio: A Celebration of the Beloved Italia...

When Corinne Hansch moved her farm from California to New York State, she thought they’d only grow microgreens for a while to get cashflow going in the new location. Now over a decade later she’s still growing microgreens, and she just wrote a book about how they do it! Listen to this interview to learn why they never stopped, and how easily microgreens can add a steady cashflow to most farms with...

Many market farms already have the facilities needed to grow culinary and medicinal mushrooms. Kyle Beaver of Ten Mile Mushrooms tells us how farmers can make use of existing infrastructure to add mushroom production for a year-round income stream that can help set your farm apart in the market. We talk about how to get started with mushrooms, and the temperature, humidity, light and airflow requi...

Back when I first heard about climate change, I thought the weather patterns would stay the same, and it would just be a couple degrees hotter. However, as we’re finding out, our changing climate is resulting in more extreme weather as well. This week we talk with Keith Carson, meteorologist and Director of Environmental and Science Communications at Maine Conservation Voters to try and understand...

We’ve been getting a lot of greenhouse tomato questions lately, so we invited Martijn van Stee back to the podcast to find out how they breed varieties to deal with the biggest challenges in greenhouse production. Martijn is the Global Manager for tomato breeding at Enza Zaden (means Enza Seeds), one of the top greenhouse vegetable breeders in the world. We had Martijn on the podcast a couple year...

Martín Lemos tells us how his background in farming helps him evaluate the impact of projects Dirt Capital Partners is considering funding from the farming side of things. It is their goal to invest in regenerative agriculture projects, for example helping a farmer expand with a bigger farm. He tells us how they do investment for and with farmers, with making farmer ownership the goal. We discuss...

August’s Harvest was Canada’s first meristem clean seed garlic program providing virus and pathogen clean planting stock to North America. This week, we talk with Warren Ham and Roshan Ghimire of August’s Harvest in Ontario about how they started with the meristem clean seed program after it became clear there was a lot of pest and disease in commercially available seed garlic in North America aft...

There’s a type of heater setup that delivers heat right where you need it and can offer some important advantages over forced air heat, but we don’t see many of them in the field. We think lack of knowledge about the technogy is the limiting factor, and it turns out there is also some customization involved, so we got ahold of John Wells at Rimol Greenhouse Systems to break it down for us. The tec...

The Draft Animal Power Field Days are coming right up from October 2-4, and horse farmers Becky Frye and Donn Hewes tell us how they farm cooperatively thanks to a connection made through the Draft Animal Power Network (DAPNet). In addition to telling us about the ways to learn about horse farming at the Field Days, Becky and Donn tell us what it’s like to farm with horses. They both farm at North...

There are two sources of inspiration for this week’s interview: one was Rebecca Kutzer-Rice’s article “ Why and how we automated our flower greenhouses ,” which you can read here. And the other is the 40hr Farmer live greenhouse coaching and video course, brought to you by Growing for Market and Orisha greenhouse automation (it’s also free for all GFM subscribers by the way- get the code to regist...

When we asked what insect pests were bugging you, we got so many questions it turned into two podcast episodes! So, this week we sit back down with Dr. Anna Wallingford of New Hampshire Community Supported Research to answer the second half of the bug questions submitted by the audience. The first half of this podcast ran the week of 7/7/26 so you can still listen to that one if you haven’t yet. T...

This week we have the pleasure of learning from Clarenda “Farmer Cee” Stanley, author of the new book, The Black Girl’s Guide to Building a Boutique Farm: Practical Advice to Keep Your Business Cute, Profitable, and Sustainable. In the book and interview, Cee tells us how she built her own Green Heffa Farms in North Carolina. She uses her background as a marketing and fundraising expert to provide...

It’s that time of year when the pests and the questions about how to keep them in check are building up. So, in keeping with the mission of Dr. Anna Wallingford’s New Hampshire Community Supported Research to respond to what growers are wondering about, we surveyed our audience and asked her how to deal with the insect pests that are bugging you this time of year. In fact, we got so many bug quest...

When he was running Ardelia Farm in Vermont, Bailey Hale found that many trending flower varieties were not available in quantities market farmers could use, or available at all, which led him to start brokering orders with other growers. In this interview, we hear about how that business grew until Farmer Bailey plant brokerage became the full-time business and moved to Portugal. Bailey tells us...

Soil is finally getting the attention it deserves, and though many of the best practices in the field hold true in the greenhouse, there are some important differences and that’s what we talk about this week with Judson Reid. We talk about why you can’t apply all the fertility a long-season crop like tomatoes need at the beginning of the season, and how to handle supplemental fertility needs. Juds...

When Kate-Lynn Clark got the opportunity to take over a peony farm, it didn’t include the land. So she dug up and moved over 250 varieties of peonies to her family’s farm in Brownsburg-Chatham, Quebec. There she runs En Fleurs, shipping peony roots to Canada and the USA, so we figured she could tell us everything about planting and maintaining peonies! We cover the difference between tree peonies...

In 2023, Maggie Taylor wrote an article for Growing for Market Magazine about several projects she had started as part of a grant program incorporating agroforestry into Delight Flower Farm in Illinois. Since many of the projects were on a three-year timeline, we thought this would be a great time to check in and see how they turned out! The projects included alley cropping, windbreak renovation,...

Chip and Susan Planck ran Wheatland Farms growing vegetables in Virginia for 37 years, and in this interview, we talk with them about what worked, what didn’t and what changed in market farming over almost four decades. We talk about founding farmers markets, and then how they pulled off 10-15 farmers markets every week during the season. That involved employing hundreds of people over the years,...

“Hyloom” tomato varieties have become popular with growers for the combination of heirloom flavor and looks, and grower-friendly traits like improved vigor and disease resistance. In this interview we talk with Greg Vogel, Assistant Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell University, who is working on breeding hyloom tomato varieties. If you’re a tomato nerd you’re in luck because we g...

On this week’s podcast we talk with Drew Cramer of Ghost House Farm in Michigan about how he more than doubled his greenhouse tomato yields through good management and automation. Automation makes the difference between just controlling the temperature in a greenhouse and controlling the climate. And controlling the climate is what creates a growth-promoting, disease-discouraging greenhouse enviro...

Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium get a lot of attention, but there are other nutrients that are just as important for soil and plant health. In this week’s interview, we talk with Gregg Forster of Wisconsin Mineral Solutions about some of those other nutrients, including the role of calcium as the “truck” that helps move other nutrients in the plant, the role of boron as the “wheels” on the truc...