Urban Growth Farms | a small market garden in the city of cleveland

First Market of the Season

By Virginia | Published: May 18, 2010

We had a great first market on Saturday. It was a beautiful day and just the right temperature which made for a perfect season opener. As we drove down to Peninsula we had arugula, spinach, salad mix, scallions, radishes and green garlic packed in the back of the truck, within two hours we had sold everything and had the pleasure of driving back to Cleveland without any produce.

We tried a couple of new things that seem to work well so far:

1. We have a new banner printed on biodegradable vinyl that we hung in the back of our tent. Not only does the it give us a bit more professional cred, but it seems to make us more visible. Although our original homemade sign holds a special place in my heart.

2. We changed our pricing system. Instead of having a 2 for $5 deal we sold everything for $3 each. This seemed to work really well and we didn’t have to repeat our semi-cheap line about how “everything is $3 dollars each OR you can mix and match any 2 items for $5.”

3. Peter made laminated “crop cards” which give a short description of each product with a few recipe ideas. We put one in front of each basket. The green garlic crop card was a lifesaver. Everyone seemed to need a bit of guidance about what to do with green garlic.

4. Due to some mature plants we were challenged by our spinach harvest so we decided to try and sell bunched spinach with roots. We made bunches similar to those found in the grocery. No one seemed to mind.

It felt great to be back out there with everyone and to have one year under our belts. We are looking forward to returning this week and promise to take some more photos. Big thanks to Alex who helped us harvest and prep this week.

Posted in Spring | 2 Comments

First Harvest

By Peter | Published: April 15, 2010

It’s never in good taste to talk up your own products too much, but this is the best spinach I’ve ever had. It’s just unbelievable. Sown in September (or was is October?) of last year and covered with low tunnels over the cold Cleveland winter, it’s everything a wintered-over crop should be: sweet, succulent and surrounded by giant weeds!

We’ve now harvested both beds, and since our market doesn’t open for another month the first went to Fat Cats and the second to the Flying Fig. The new screen table made it’s debut and performed like a champ.

In addition to the spinach our garlic, shallots and scallions made it through the cold without a hitch and are thriving. And boy is the compost cookin!

Posted in Spring | Tagged compost, garlic, spinach | 1 Comment

Late Winter Lull

By Peter | Published: February 28, 2010

Whoa it’s been a while.

But after all this is a farm blog and our farm in February isn’t much to write about, at least not yet. Granted we could be posting pictures of snow-covered garlic and spreadsheet screen shots but to be honest we’re enjoying our winter recess.

So here we are in Cleveland in February: seeds ordered and stored in a cold closet, planting schedules calculated and re-calculated, a foot of snow still on the ground.

And I’m beginning to get a little stir-crazy.

So to break the spell we’ve made a couple of acquisitions and started a few projects that we hope will make this year’s efforts to scale up a little easier.

First we finally found a truck cap that fits our trusty ‘96 Nissan pickup. No longer will we suffer the embarrassment of being the only farmers market vendor to roll in on a rainy day without one. But more important than weather protection, we’ll now be able to stack our bins two-high, effectively doubling the amount of produce we can bring to market. Cha-ching!

Second, we bought another reach-in cooler off of craigslist – this one from a pizza shop fire sale. Ideally we would be building a CoolBot walk-in in our basement or garage, but alas we rent both our house and our post-harvest garage so used reach-ins are an inexpensive – yet less efficient – way to go. Doubling our cooling capacity means that we can stretch out our harvest work across the week and keep everything cool for our Saturday market.

Third, we built a simple screen table for washing and drying the harvest. For only $40 in materials and about an hour of labor it’s a good investment that will give us more space to spray-wash root vegetables, drip-dry greens, etc.

Pics:

Posted in Winter | Tagged cooler, screen table | 3 Comments

More Quick Hoops!

By Peter | Published: November 12, 2009

Today we finished covering the rest of our vegetable beds with low tunnels. Some of the beds were seeded a few weeks ago and already have a good start while others we seeded today. Next year I think we’ll leave a little more room between the tunnels so that walking between them isn’t so treacherous (especially when wet).

All in all everything that isn’t planted in garlic is under plastic, a pretty agressive strategy that we hope will pay of with late season greens and an early start to next year.

Posted in Fall | Leave a comment

Quick Hoops!

By Peter | Published: October 25, 2009

Some time ago I came across this link about Eliot Coleman’s latest and greatest invention for doing what he does best – extending the growing season. Using relatively cheap materials (electrical conduit, sand bags, row cover and plastic) and a really simple design (you can put one up in about 20 minutes), he has come up with a design for low tunnels that replicates most of the function of a hoop house at a fraction of the costs. So when the “Quick Hoops Bender” showed up on the Johnny’s website we quickly got to work trying out his new model.

We decided to test the quick hoops on the new plot we prepared last weekend, which we prepped and planted with cold hardy crops that will either mature for a mid-winter harvest (spinach, chard, etc.) or over-winter for a harvest early next spring (carrots, onions, etc.)

After bending the half-inch electrical conduit we sunk each end into the ground every five feet down the length of our beds (25 feet). With a little muscle we were able to fit three 2 foot wide beds between the ends of each hoop. Then we rolled out our row cover fabric (Agribon AG-19 in our case), fit it snugly over the top of the hoops and secured it in place by resting sand bags along side of each hoop. It worked great!

In about a month we’ll supplement the row cover fabric with 4-mil greenhouse plastic which will take us into the really cold months. We’ll see how well the conduit – and the crops – stand up the cold and snow. Check back later this winter and hopefully we’ll have some pictures of a bountiful winter harvest!

UPDATE: While the Quick Hoops Bender is available through the Johnny’s website it was actually developed by Lost Creek Greenhouse Systems. Thanks to Loy from Lost Creek for filling us in (see comments below).