About Market Gardening

If you're thinking about, or just getting started in direct marketing, welcome to the business! It's a great way to make a livelihood. Being a farmer means working out of doors, being your own boss, meeting challenges and surmounting them, caring for a piece of land, and, most of all, doing the important work of feeding people.

As you know, farming has been losing ground for decades and has hit particularly tough times in the past few years. Yet one segment of agriculture is booming -- direct-market farming. You see it in the proliferation of farmers' markets; in the financial success of roadside farm markets; in the phenomenal growth of Community Supported Agriculture.

All over the United States and Canada, families are making a decent income from direct marketing of food and flowers. Their businesses range from the 1-acre market garden that provides extra income for retirement or college, to the 100-acre vegetable farm that supports several generations. Market farmers come from all walks of life -- from conventional farms, of course, but also from urban occupations with no farming experience.

Market gardening is also unique in that it doesn't take a lot to get started -- a few acres, some basic equipment, a love of growing things, an intellectual curiosity, and a genuine enjoyment of hard work.

Growing for Market is the only national publication for market gardeners and farmers. Every issue is full of practical, how-to information about growing and marketing food and flowers. Every article is written by an experienced grower, market manager, or other expert. The advice and inspiration you will get from a Growing for Market subscription will be one of your most important tools as you build your business.

START SMART with a Full Access online membership, which gives you access to every article published since 2001, plus a full year's subscription. Or you can choose to get it all on paper with the Beginner's Special, which includes printed compilations and back issues from 2001 through 2008.

Subscribe today! Click here for a list of other subscription options.