It sounds like a good idea, but if no one does it, there must be a reason....

Any thoughts?

Sue

It's like everything else -- it's all in the marketing and the buzz which you build up around the concept.

So, are you considering doing this, or are you looking for someone to do it for you?

Some possible reasons why professional landscapers don't do it: 1) vegetable gardens tend to get unruly and ugly fast, as things ripen off for the season, etc, and landscapers abhor such a thing. 2) Cost of labor is prohibitive, and most people wouldn't be willing to spend the kind of $ it would cost to do this. 3) Lack of knowledge about the subject. There is a lot of specific knowledge about each crop required. It's a lot more complex than throwing some hostas, daylilies, and impatients into a bed. 4) People who are into growing veggie gardens on any significant scale are the more self-reliant types to begin with.

Hey, who knows, I'm sure it could be done if marketed right. Perhaps even a specialty thing, such as installing and maintaining gardens for top-end restaurants, where the chefs want their own organic produce, but don't have the time to do it, or maybe for assisted living homes or retirement communities, where the members would enjoy the nostalgia of it, but it is beyond the capacity of the residents to do it.

1. Design
a.people who would want this service would not be willing to except cookie cutter designs
b. If was easy there be no need for the service.
2. plants varieties and seed starting costs.
a. you need very comprehensive seed library do to fact since people would not tolerate every day varieties.
b seed start would require info from clients at least 3 months in advance aka end January to early February at latest.
3. bed setup, labor,water system and maintenance.
a. bed setup 2-3 months in advance
b planting plants
watering system hoses, ooze hoses, water timers, manifolds
c planting plants
d weeding,pruning and tying up plants when needed

the final price for reasonable designed 30 ft 30 ft garden from scratch done right. with good production,and designed efficiently. soups to nuts including weekly check up, weeding for 7 month season with free choice of plants.

Total Cost $1000 min.

I did full scale test on local community garden plot.

If you want I could itemize it for you including all costs and activities.

This was kind of a random idea that popped into my head a week ago, as I was doing dishes and staring out the window at the frost. (You guys know the feeling!)

One common feeling I garnered from this info is that the sole point of having a vegetable garden is to do it cheaper than Safeway. Is that all everyone thinks these days?

I was thinking more about improving the mineral content of the soil (we are low in calcium and magnesium, esp, here), improving the soil itself, and creating a nutrition-dense garden. But, thinking about how dumbed-down and quick-fix Americans are, I guess few people would care. And it would cost too much to educate them in order to get their business (which wouldn't necessarily follow).

Sue

And what do you mean by nutrient-dense? You can get the same nutrition by buying the vegetables. You could talk about how garden vegetables are more nutritious and blah blah blah but sorry they're really relatively minor differences in nutrients.

And I really don't see/get your point about improving the soil. Improving the soil isn't something most people value in and of itself - it's what gardeners do for better gardening.

There is the advantage of organic gardening, but there are only so many Americans who eat organic, or who can even afford to. Sorry, but I just don't buy it - wow 2 parts per MILLION of a pesticide is in my food, I'm scared. There just aren't many things that can affect you at such tiny concentrations, and the things that can are completely natural, not manmade (we humans WISH we were that good at chemistry). And in general I just refuse to pay the exorbitant prices I see on organic produce. To put it another way, MAYBE tiny amounts of pesticides over time might have a negative affect, but I KNOW that organic produce costs an arm and a leg.

The good news is, regardless of what everyone is saying and "calculating", you CAN do it cheaper than the market. A LOT cheaper. Produce is expensive. And DRIVING to buy produce is expensive and time consuming. If you're just willing to save seed you can save seed you can save a lot of money. Heck even people who buy seed do more than break even.

Not to mention that you can grow exactly the varieties you want, and other stuff you can't find in the stores. These things do have a value.

In the end the biggest reason why more Americans don't garden themselves is that nobody has any real land. Half the land in populated areas is off-limits due to land restrictions of some kind or another, and the land people do own, they're not allowed to do anything with. A lot of places don't allow you to cut down any trees even on your own land. In the end land is scarce and expensive, and none of it is FULL SUN. Remember, water and LIGHT are the most important plant nutrients, especially for gardens/garden plants.

What I wonder more than anything is why nobody is considering this idea as a free thing? Am I the ONLY one out there who would do it for free and share the produce with the landowner?

Also, nobody's including fruit-growing. Fruit is especially exspensive and especially MUCH better home-grown. Home-grown fruit can definitely be much tastier, not to mention that fruit trees/bushes are in the long run less laborsome/time-consuming to take care of.

I farm an acre of raised permanent beds in vegetables and small fruit and two acres of mixed temperate and subtropical fruit trees. We sell produce and organic eggs retail ordered off an ever-changing weekly list distributed to families, caterers and restaurants. I have run this operation with limited help since 1991, peaking with three acres of beds in 1999.

I admit upfront that I can't make a living alone from this part-time operation. I could if I focused on a few high-valued and well-marketed crops, but I have designed the farm as also a demonstration "urban farm" or market garden and host tours and volunteers from the community.

Other posters have complained about how hard the work for vegetable farming is. That is true. You do have to bend and twist and push and pull and sometimes work in bad weather and even in the dark. But, with the right choice of tools and proper timing, the amount and severity of labor can be minimized.

More difficult is the learning curve of what to plant and how to culture a crop. There are lots of sources of information and some may actually be true for your garden at the time you are growing your crop. Of greater value is your own growing experiences. We all make mistakes and miss windows of scheduled work. The key to success is good record keeping of what you have done in detail, including maps of planted bed to help with later succession planting.

If you wish to market products to a sustaining client base, you have to plan so as to grow what will sell and have the crops come in when customers expect deliveries. If you really know your business, you will have already sold what you plan to grow.

When you put in a vegetable garden or orchard for someone else, be sure to follow the planning model outlined above by bakersfield but with this proviso:

Start simple and start small with favorite edibles identified by the customer. You can more easily expand to more beds rather than have the customer complain about all that food going to waste because they or their friends don't eat that sort of stuff. So don't do exotics unless you are specifically asked to include them in your seed or plant list.

Make pretty. Add color and accents to the edible garden beds. As the crops are removed or decline, the visual impact will be lessened.

In the end, eating unprocessed food such as grown in these market gardens represents a declining investment in our diets. Less than 5% of America's diet is comprised of fresh, unprocessed foods. I am happy to see interest in growing your own or helping others grow their own fresh food.
Guess that's enough for now. Monday am pre-dawn wakeup is in store for this old farmer.

Your store produce must be MUCH better than mine! Our stuff isn't even close to desirable. The carrots and lettuce tend to be bitter, the fruit far from ripe.

Homegrown carrots are FAR superior to store carrots. If you can lay hands on a juicer, juice some organically-grown carrots and then juice some store carrots. Even a smoker can tell the difference: much sweeter, far less bitter.

"You can get the same nutrients by buying the vegetables."

NO, you can't. Fruits and vegetables have the ABILITY to contain a wide range of vitamins and minerals, but if the soil is lacking in calcium, magnesium, selenium (etc) or any of the trace minerals, the food that grows there will be lacking it also. Produce can't pull minerals out of the air, and they can't absorb what isn't there. THAT'S the reason for improving the soil with minerals. It isn't just a matter of NPK, like the chemical companies want people to believe.

"There just aren't many things that can affect you at such tiny concentrations, and the things that can are completely natural, not manmade."

Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?

"Organic produce costs and arm and a leg."

My vet says good nutrition is essential to a healthy body. He says "You can pay now or you can pay later, but you're going to pay".

"What I wonder more than anything is why nobody is considering this idea as a free thing? Am I the ONLY one out there who would do it for free and share the produce with the landowner?"

You're independently wealthy? You have a high-paying job with minimal hours? You have a hardworking spouse who supports you? Lucky!

Sue

Without doubt. IME, the more one eats produce from mineralized soils the more sensitive one's taste becomes. Also, the less synthesized fats and sugars one eats the better one can taste the nutrients in whole foods.

Curt

Scientific analysis of produce shows no - or occasionally subtle - differences between 'organic' and standard grown. If you think you can taste a difference, good for you.

Now most of us do not go into a vegetable business, but I planted and caged 2 Sun Gold [cherry] and 1 Juliet [red grape] tomatoes at the assisted living place where my step mother is. They loved them.

Curt

This assumes letting the fruit actually ripen on the plant, btw...as we can all tell a vine ripened "Better Boy" (for example) tomato is a hell of a lot better than a picked-green then ethylene ripened tomato.

A big reason our home-grown veggies taste a lot better than grocery store veggies is that we aren't selecting seed types that produce quality shipping veggies (aka, usually harder or thicker/non-bruising skins).

There are some veggies who's flavors are believed to be influenced by more available nutrients. Sulfur in brassicas and bulbs (onions/garlic) are not only necessary, but it believed by some to enhance/change flavor...in some soils where S is more available it can make onions/garlic hotter in flavor. That said, it's effect via enhanced application is debated, plus S is practically an essential element comparable with N/P/K.

All plants have macro/micronutrient considerations that will give you the healthiest plants according to their needs, including healthy fruit/veg production and ripening.

Also...there's a lot of bunk (aka total b/s) stuff being sold out there as micronutrient supplements that do nothing more than extract money from you wallet while promising wild as hell benefits. Plants may benefit from these nutrients...but only if your soil is deficient to begin with...and usually there's far cheaper ways to meet these requirements.