I have a few other questions:
1. What about a balanced harvest? Rather than all of one item becoming available at one time – consistently having a certain amount of vegetables etc. available will be important. How would one go about accomplishing this?
2. How many rows could be placed in a hectare?
3. What about growing Herbs like basil and cilantro etc?
4. Besides the Gardening materials are there any training courses I could take? (Chad Foulkes – Vietnam)
Chad & Group:
1. There are two ways to achieve a “balanced” harvest. One way is to grow single-crop varieties, such as cabbage, lettuce, etc., planting part of the garden every two weeks, so that you have crops maturing all the time.
The second way is to grow ever-bearing varieties, such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, beans, etc., that produce over many months. This way you only plant one time and can harvest throughout the growing season, once the first fruit matures.
2. Depending on the configuration of your ground you should be able to grow as many as 600-620 soil-beds that are .45 meter wide and 10 meters long (18″ X 30′).
If you build 1.2 meter-wide (4′) Grow-Boxes or containers and grow in sawdust (or rice hulls, coconut husks, baggas, pine needles, etc.) and sand you can increase the crops still more.
I recommend you DO NOT START with a hectare, but start SMALL and learn how to do it WELL. Also, you need to build up a base of clients, to whom you can sell your produce, and learn how to pack, preserve, and ship it to market.
3. You can certainly grow herbs in your market garden. Remember to harvest them often to avoid having them get old and tough, and going to seed.
4. In addition to the Mittleider gardening books, Dr. Mittleider created – and we have digitized – a 2-CD training course including 70 video lessons. These include thousands of hand-picked color pictures with scrolling words and audio instruction to teach the entire growing process.
The videos are used in a 3-month college-level intensive training course which prepares serious students to be serious commercial growers.
The last time I conducted the course – in Popayan, Colombia – several of my best student graduates were immediately hired to continue the program at the Agriculture College and in all of the local high schools.
The Training Videos (more like a PowerPoint Presentation with scrolling words and audio) are available directly from me for $97. Write to me at jim@growfood.com.
Jim Kennard
