Question for Experienced Market Growers

[LDx4]

Hi Everyone,

This is our first year selling at a farmers market. We just sold for the very first time last Saturday and had a great time. All the customers on Sat were very nice and many people complimented us on how great our produce looked (we were selling tomatoes, squash, cukes and peppers). Even another vendor told me that our cherry toms looked better than his! So it was a very good first experience (I'm sure not all will be this nice!).

Here is my question: I picked every tomato that was ripe or close to ripe late Friday. There were some that were blushing, but not close to being ripe that I left on the plants. Today, those tomatoes are ripe and we're not going back to market until this coming Saturday -- those tomatoes will be overripe by the time I'm ready to pick on Friday again. Is there anything I can do to preserve these ripe tomatoes until then? We have a very small operation here - just 250 plants right now, and every tomato counts (and the ones that are ripe are big, beautiful beefsteaks: Ananas Noire, Carbon, Russian Rose).

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Lyn

[FILMNET]

Pick them asap put the with tops on bottom is a cold room asap. this will let them stop for some day.

[joseph]

I agree with Filment. Get them out of the garden as soon as possible, otherwise the bugs, molds, weather etc will take a toll on them. They store better in the garage than in the garden. They will continue to ripen, and by next market they will be that glorious red color that customers love. At my market, the more over-ripe a tomato is the better it sells. I don't like them because they are so fragile to get to market, but they are the first to sell. I always remove stems in the garden so that they don't gouge the other tomatoes, and so that it isn't obvious that they were picked a few days ago.

[Keger]

As soon as they blush we pick and put on a table indoors. Soon you will see how long it takes for them to be market ready. But I think they need to be picked when they blush.

[LDx4]

Thanks everyone!

Unfortunately, we don't really have a cool room right now to put them in and our garage is the hottest part of the house in the afternoons. I'm going to try putting these ripe ones in a box down by the floor, where it's the coolest and see what happens. And if any start to blush in the next day or two, I'll pick them right away.

Selling produce -we still have a lot to learn!

Lyn

[LDx4]

Joseph -

Thanks for the tip about the stems - I wouldn't have thought to do that.

Lyn

[bejustice]

This was an issue for us. A coolbot in a well insulated room is working well for us now. We learned about them growing for market from a flower grower. We built a storage facility with a coolbot on one side and keep it at 58. The other side is the same size but has an unmodified AC unit we keep at 70. This combination gives you a lot of versatility growing for market.

[Deborah]

Good luck Saturday, Lyn !

[LDx4]

Thanks Deborah! This Saturday will be our third week and so far, we've had a good time each week. We applied to join a market that was kind of small for our first year. We know we won't sell as much, but we want to get the experience before we apply for one of the bigger, more popular markets. We've already had some repeat customers that came back for more tomatoes the second week
Lyn

[LDx4]

Originally Posted by bejustice

This was an issue for us. A coolbot in a well insulated room is working well for us now. We learned about them growing for market from a flower grower. We built a storage facility with a coolbot on one side and keep it at 58. The other side is the same size but has an unmodified AC unit we keep at 70. This combination gives you a lot of versatility growing for market.

Thanks for this information bejustice. We're still too small for a dedicated storage room, but someday maybe we can do this. I can hope!

Lyn

[jennifer28]

I might put this info in a different post. But I'll put it here too. My friend Maria who owns a farm and runs a CSA has a small room she calls a walk in cooler. This room has inexpensive wire racks in it where she puts the produce for the CSA pickup. It is insulated with a thick insulation almost like solid foam panels that she picked up at a sale at Home Depot. There is an air conditioner in the wall and she sets it to around 57 I believe. This makes a nice above ground walk in cooler.

In my home I have a very large basement. It just so happens the previous owner was nearly self sufficient off the land here. He built wood racks with spare wood to store produce in the basement and he also made a root cellar.

If you have a basement maybe you can find a cooler place there to store produce?

[LDx4]

Originally Posted by jennifer28

I might put this info in a different post. But I'll put it here too. My friend Maria who owns a farm and runs a CSA has a small room she calls a walk in cooler. This room has inexpensive wire racks in it where she puts the produce for the CSA pickup. It is insulated with a thick insulation almost like solid foam panels that she picked up at a sale at Home Depot. There is an air conditioner in the wall and she sets it to around 57 I believe. This makes a nice above ground walk in cooler.

In my home I have a very large basement. It just so happens the previous owner was nearly self sufficient off the land here. He built wood racks with spare wood to store produce in the basement and he also made a root cellar.

If you have a basement maybe you can find a cooler place there to store produce?

Jennifer - I WISH we had a basement! In California, most homes don't have basements, and I don't know why. Growing up in northern CA, I had never seen a basement until I went back east as an adult. It would be so much more useful to have all that storage space under the house.

But the info about your friend has given me some ideas. I might turn the extra bedroom that I use in the spring as my seed germination room into a cooling room for the summer by adding a room air conditioner. Thanks for the idea!

Lyn

[Heritage]

Lyn,

I'm not an experienced market grower but I'm going to give you my great ideas anyway

1. Have your husband quit work so that you two can schedule a different farmer's market every other day. As you know, there is a market running somewhere in SD County every day of the week. Also, your husband should be selling some garden-related woodwork at your booth. (Maybe custom built greenhouses, owl houses, etc)

2. Dry the tomatoes that are not going to last all week and sell them at the market in those plastic-packages-that-have-all-the-air-sucked-out thingies. Dry tomatoes would bring a good price but I'm not sure about the additional paperwork for selling a processed vegetable at the local farmer's markets. You probably already know.

Post photos of your beautiful setup when you get a chance. And let me know when you are selling at a North County market so I can stop by.

Steve

[Rockporter]

Basements are for the most part a safe place to go for bad weather, the same kind of weather is not seen in California.

Sounds like you are doing well being able to get to market.

[LDx4]

Steve,

You have some great ideas -- my answers are in red below

Originally Posted by Heritage

Lyn,

I'm not an experienced market grower but I'm going to give you my great ideas anyway

1. Have your husband quit work so that you two can schedule a different farmer's market every other day. As you know, there is a market running somewhere in SD County every day of the week. Also, your husband should be selling some garden-related woodwork at your booth. (Maybe custom built greenhouses, owl houses, etc)

I wish he could quit work and help me all the time -- but we've still got to pay the mortgage! The woodwork idea is a good one, in fact one person has asked my husband to come over and give a quote on building a greenhouse, and owl boxes are getting popular around here. So the garden woodwork is something he is definitely going to pursue.


2. Dry the tomatoes that are not going to last all week and sell them at the market in those plastic-packages-that-have-all-the-air-sucked-out thingies. Dry tomatoes would bring a good price but I'm not sure about the additional paperwork for selling a processed vegetable at the local farmer's markets. You probably already know.

Yep, that would be selling processed food and it would require a food handlers license which is separate from the certified producers license we currently have. SD farmers markets are picky about the regulations and we can't just show up and sell something that's not on our certs. But the farmer in the stall next to us is selling onions, squash, garlic and cucumbers in half his stall and jars of pickles and relish that he's canned in the other half. He does a good business with the canned goods too. So maybe next year I'll apply for the food handlers license too.

Post photos of your beautiful setup when you get a chance. And let me know when you are selling at a North County market so I can stop by.

I'll post some pictures of our setup soon . And -- I did get the county to approve me for seedlings sales, so I'm going to get a nursery license for next spring (not very expensive since we have virtually no land) and apply to some north county markets for that.

Steve

So thanks for the ideas -- I'm open to any and all suggestions!

Lyn