Growing For Market Podcast

During their first full season, Rick and Rose Bengtson of Ice Moon Farms suffered catastrophic damage from wind and flooding. As devastating as that was, they bounced back and we can learn from the way they rebuilt and the strategies they used to prolong cashflow later into the fall to make up for some of the income they missed in the summer.  One of those strategies was holiday wreaths and amaryl...

Heirloom chrysanthemums fill an important role for local growers- as very late bloomers they can be one of the last flowers in the fall to keep cash flow going after others have succumbed to the cold. Our guest this week, Kate Dagnal of Goose Creek Gardens, grows thousands of bouquets every year for grocery stores, and heirloom chrysanthemums are the anchor flower she uses to finish out the season...

This week Michalina Hunter tells us how she got so interested in perennial vegetables that she started a seed company specializing in them, Cicada Seeds! In this interview with host April Parms Jones, we hear about the advantages of vegetables that you can plant once and harvest many times, including crops like skirret, spinach vine, perennial kale, perpetual leeks, perennial celery, sweet lettuce...

This week Andrew Still tells us how Adaptive Seeds started in 2009 as an outgrowth of the Seed Ambassadors Project to steward and keep rare and heritage vegetable and flower varieties alive. In the intervening 15+ years they have furthered their mission of preserving open pollinated varieties and breeding new ones that are adapted to the Pacific Northwest. Interviewer Andrew Mefferd had the pleasu...

Farmers are used to the idea of fertilizing with manure, however one species’ output is usually not used: our own. This is despite the fact that effluent from water treatment is a large contributor to excess nitrogen in our waterways and the nutrient pollution that’s responsible for the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. If we could recapture those nutrients, not only could it give farmers a cheap...

There are very few one-size-fits-all solutions in agriculture- most things depend on the weather, soil, pests, diseases and a host of other conditions for a particular farm. One of the most exciting trends in agriculture right now is the development of varieties that are suited to specific regional conditions. Common Wealth Seed Growers breeds open-pollinated vegetable varieties that are adapted t...

Jen Aron is an agroecologist and owner of Blue Raven Farm in Corbett, Oregon. She also worked as a farm educator for seven years with Oregon State University Extension. About five years ago, Jen wrote four articles for Growing for Market Magazine talking about how she built her farm on raw land east of Portland, Oregon, focusing on creating a healthy soil ecosystem and dealing with a whole slew of...

When Elizabeth Lutz Kelly’s flower growing hobby turned into a business, it outgrew the space she had available in her yard in Akron, Ohio. Even though there wasn’t a lot of open space, she asked around her neighborhood and found places that could be growing crops that weren’t. Thus she was able to expand her business with one of the most viable strategies for growing a farm without having to buy...

This week we welcome Emily Grassie, the Director of Food Access Programs at the Maine Federation of Farmers Markets (MFFM) to talk about Harvest Bucks, an innovative program that helps SNAP recipients double their dollars when spent at farmers markets. MFFM works to fund and administer the program so when SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) shoppers use their benefits at participating farmers mar...

Flower pricing can be tricky with so many factors affecting value, between different crops, different markets and varying types of arrangements. You want to make sure you’re putting the price of your flowers high enough so you’re making a profit, but not so high that you price yourself out of the market. Listen to this week’s podcast with Lennie Larkin for pricing strategies to make sure you can k...

As the Vegetable and Berry Specialist at the University of Vermont for 35 years, Vern has a lot of experience with helping growers improve their high tunnel tomato production. One of the best ways to find out what is working on actual farms is with a survey- in 2024 Vern and his team did a survey of 48 tunnel tomato growers (heated and unheated) that included growing practices and yields, in order...

We get together with Nella Mae Parks and Maud Powell this week to discuss the challenges of farming in arid environments, and a new network they are forming for growers in those climates! Nella Mae and Maud are from dry parts of Oregon, and they are starting the Western Arid Growers Network (WAGN) to facilitate farmer-to-farmer learning for arid growers. A lot of people think “rainy” when they hea...

Sarah Gretsinger worked for other farms for over a decade before starting her urban farm, The Kale Next Door, on the land around her house in Akron, Ohio. Hear how she scaled down techniques she had practiced on larger farms in order to grow intensively on a small land base. Host April Parms Jones, one of Sarah’s CSA customers, gets all the details of how Sarah gets the most out of not a lot of sp...

Whether buying or making your own, how do you tell if compost is any good? We go deep on this question with Jason Gearheart of Integrated Elements Compost in Columbus, Indiana in this week’s podcast interview. Jason honed his compost-making skills as a student of Dr. Elaine Ingham’s Soil Food Web School, and now he makes a variety of products including vermicompost, biologically active compost, co...

As we approach the end of the year, we wanted to check in with farmer/CPA Sarah Scott to ask about tax and accounting best practices to make sure growers aren’t leaving money on the table and are ready to move into 2026 as strong as possible. Sarah and her family run Scott Farm & Flower and Allegiant Tax & Accounting Services, so she understands both the accounting world and how farm businesses op...

After retiring from more than 30 years of farming, much of it at Potomac Vegetable Farms in Virginia, Ellen Polishuk started Plant to Profit to keep teaching the next generation of growers. In this interview, we talk about the farm trends she is seeing with her clients, and how the farm business landscape has changed over the years. We discuss the perennial problem of farm labor, possible solution...

Learn about the origins of Turtle Tree Seeds, and why co-founder Beth Everett returned to her family’s fourth-generation farm in this week’s podcast with host April Parms Jones. Founded in 1994, Turtle Tree Seed grows and sells exclusively biodynamically certified seed. Beth has continued to grow and sell seed from her family’s farm in Nebraska, called Meadowlark Hearth.  Hear how they use a CoolB...

After starting the farm over 20 years ago, Chris Jagger and his family scaled Blue Fox Farm from very small up to about 45 acres, including a lot of wholesaling. When the wholesale market changed, they scaled back down. Learn why Chris says his current farm size puts him in a farm “economic dead zone,” so you can consider farming on either side of it. Chris farms in the Applegate Valley, a sparsel...

Wild East Farm was one of many in North Carolina that suffered from catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Helene in September 2024. Parts of the state received 15-30 inches of rain during the storm, resulting in flash flooding and extensive tree blowdown. Almost a year after the storm, we caught up with Noah Poulos to talk about the lead-up to the storm, how they tried to save their animals and c...

With over 20 years of farming experience, hear how Laura Llewellyn grew Chimalow Produce to maximize soil and veg quality, based on the idea that healthy soil will lead to better vegetables. Learn how Laura encourages biological life in the soil, how they balance minimizing soil disturbance with mechanical cultivation, address deficiencies and encourage mycorrhizal fungi. Drawing on her experience...

Scaling up means different things for different farms; hear from Grace Lam how Fivefork Farms has scaled up to the point where they are growing 60,000 dahlias both for flower and tuber sales and over 700 dahlia share members.  They don’t just grow dahlias though- there is a lot of practical info in this interview, including how to keep up with labor and water needs as the farm grows, when and how...

Discover how farmers and researchers are collaborating to develop seed varieties tailored to farmers' needs with Michael Lordon of the Organic Seed Alliance. Since vegetable and flower varieties are not one-size-fits-all farms, Michael tells us how the OSA is working to breed varieties that will thrive on farms without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Michael highlights ways farmers can parti...

“Get your fresh local insects, and frass too!” If Pat Crowley had his way, insects and their byproducts (most notably frass used as fertilizer) would take their place alongside vegetables and flowers as profitable enterprises for local farms. And the best part is, they are fed on a widely-available byproduct: some of the 100 million tons of food waste that is currently going into landfills in the...

Over more than 30 years, Featherstone Farm has grown their CSA and wholesaling to the point where they are now growing on 135 acres and have scaled up some of their major crops- for one example, they are storing 120 tons or more of carrots every year. These are distributed through their CSA and wholesaling. Though Featherstone has gotten a lot bigger over the years, they have remained committed to...

Anne Massie and Virginia Pleasant share how they’ve grown Region Roots Local Farm and Food Hub to increase opportunities for famers to feed their regional communities. “The Region” is how the area of Northwest Indiana where they are based is known locally. Both co-executive directors of the NWI (Northwest Indiana) Food Council, they tell us how they’ve rapidly grown their grassroots nonprofit orga...