Market gardening requires effort and attention. In the early days, everything was tended by hand all year round, so it was necessary to live and work on the site.
Market Gardener
by George Thabault
We've always had a garden, usually a small one, but this was our first large-scale attempt.
As a market gardener and entrepreneur, it's up to you to keep your finger on the pulse of the most in-demand varieties of the plants you are growing. This varies from region to region and among different groups of people.
Organic market gardener Molly Bartlett of Silver Creek Farm in Ohio transplants good-size rhubarb divisions in early spring. They produce large, tempting stalks in May, which she harvests lightly without damaging the plants.
Four Season Farm is an experimental market garden in Harborside, ME, owned and operated by writers Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman.
Though geared to market gardeners who are growing on a larger scale than most home gardeners, the information is fascinating and immensely useful.
Endive was largely ignored in the U.S. by market gardeners until after 1940s.
True endive should not be confused wtih French or Belgian endive, which is a variety of chicory. Endive and Escarole are closely related to chicory and radicchio.
As a child, I got a vicarious thrill seeing my grandmother raise her axe to cleave open a monstrous 'New England Blue Hubbard' squash, grown on her three-hectare market garden farm in Churchill, Ontario.
Grace Gershuny is internationally known in the organic agriculture movement, having worked for over 30 years as an organizer, educator, author, and consultant, as well as a market gardener.
This book was intended for the small-scale market gardener, but there is nothing in here that doesn't apply to us backyard gardeners. He's laid out a blueprint for getting the most from your garden while giving back to the soil.
Bimonthly magazine, published by KC Publishing, is targeted to mid-market gardeners and landscapers.
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Eliot Coleman, noted organic grower and author of The Four Season Harvest, uses this technique of "passive" protection in his Maine market garden. Instead of freezing in Zone 5, his winter veggies grow in a temperate Zone 7.
There is another point: the market gardener has to grow the things that give the biggest yield. He has to sacrifice quality to quantity. You do not. One cannot buy Golden Bantam corn, or Mignonette lettuce, or Gradus peas in most markets.
 See also: Plant, Gardening, Water, Vegetable, Growing
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