The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower's Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming

by Jean-Martin Fortier, Severine Von Tscharner Fleming (Foreword), Marie Bilodeau (Illustrator)

Les Jardins de la Grelinette is a micro-farm located in eastern Quebec, just north of the American border. Growing on just 1.5 acres, owners Jean-Martin and Maude-Helène feed more than two hundred families through their thriving CSA and seasonal market stands and supply their signature mesclun salad mix to dozens of local establishments. The secret of their success is the low-tech, high-yield production methods they’ve developed by focusing on growing better rather than growing bigger, making their operation more lucrative and viable in the process.

The Market Gardener is a compendium of la Grelinette’s proven horticultural techniques and innovative growing methods. This complete guide is packed with practical information on:


Setting-up a micro-farm by designing biologically intensive cropping systems, all with negligible capital outlay Farming without a tractor and minimizing fossil fuel inputs through the use of the best hand tools, appropriate machinery, and minimum tillage practices Growing mixed vegetables systematically with attention to weed and pest management, crop yields, harvest periods, and pricing approaches
Inspired by the French intensive tradition of maraichage and by iconic American vegetable grower Eliot Coleman, author and farmer Jean-Martin shows by example how to start a market garden and make it both very productive and profitable. Making a living wage farming without big capital outlay or acreages may be closer than you think.

Jean-Martin Fortier is a passionate advocate of strong local food systems and founder of Les Jardins de la Grelinette, an internationally recognized model for successful biointensive micro-farming.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Agriculture, Food, Business, Nature, Horticulture

424 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 17, 2014

Reviews

[Tuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

considered a classic of how to organic small Farm since it published in 2014? goes through planning, tools, soil, crops, harvesting and lots of techniques. though very site specific, still has lots of good advice and how-to. line drawing pictures, good short bibliography, informative appendices.

[January · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the biggest impact this book had on my gardening was that, reading it in January (thankfully), I immediately drew up my year’s production goals, though not monetary like Fortier’s. I then created a bed plan based on these goals, which was an enlightening task. I drastically reduced some crops and significantly increased others. In the past, my goal was always to just grow something, anything. I’ve never had specific crop goals per se and have been more lackadaisical about how much of this or that I’ve planted. As a result I’ve been disappointed or overwhelmed by the volume I’ve gotten from a particular crop. (Yes, talking to you, mutant zucchinis.)

The second most important thing I’ve gotten is a reframing of how I manage my beds. I initially got into gardening using the Square Foot Gardening method but as my garden has grown to almost 1000 sqft, this system has become a bit hard to scale up. I was actually losing crops (Where did I put that eggplant?) and the SFG direct sowing method just did not work in non-virgin soil. My beds are 36”x14’ and 24”x12’ so Fortier’s 30” wide raised row system can easily apply to my beds with a little fiddling. This year I’ll be focusing on planting plots (beds) not squares.

Thirdly, I’ll be investing in a number of new tools this year. Namely tarps, insect netting (for my broccoli particularly), a 30” bed rake with marking tines (genius!), and some long-handled stirrup hoes.

The crop appendix here is invaluable and I’ll be trying some new crop specific techniques this year.

Cucumbers: I loved the “umbrella” system he describes for cucumbers, a two leader system, with the second younger leader taking over as sole leader once the first has reached the top of the trellis and flopped over. Also having issues with cucumber beetles, his advice to plan a second planting to replace the first, inevitably diseased plants is so simple that it’s genius.

Tomatoes: I’m intrigued by the V-trellis system he describes but I feel like my current system is more productive. He advocates 24” beds with tomatoes in the center every 9” with two leaders, each coming towards the walkway, which is 36”. Including the walkway though I am able to squeeze almost double the plants in half the space with plants trellised to a single stem. Maybe a test row is in order, with total yield being the deciding factor. It might be that less densely spacing my tomatoes but allowing them two stems will increase overall yield per square foot.

I got this book from the library but I referred back to it so often to create my crop plan, I plan on purchasing a copy.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I put off picking up this book because I have no inclination to sell any of my food, even though I devote quite a lot of time to producing all the vegetables my husband and I eat in a year. I shouldn't have delayed. Because Fortier's beautifully illustrated and easy to read book fills in gaps in my production campaign, giving me ideas for streamlining production so my crops will be more bountiful with less work. His focus on hand tools and on high-density production makes this a book that will suit backyard gardeners just as much as, or maybe even more than, market gardeners. No matter your goal, if you like to grow things and want to do so in a sustainable fashion, The Market Gardener is a good book to have under your belt and I can't recommend it highly enough.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite gardening books, due to Fortier's excellent writing and practical knowledge running a small organic farm. It goes to show that you can be a very profitable farm on small acreage without the pesticides, without the chemical fertilizers and without the giant tractor/combine systems (not to mention the accompanying financing and debt) used by standard commercial farms. As my garden has grown from backyard plot to mini-farm size, I've increasingly incorporated the techniques described in this book. Whether it has inspired my ambition, or contributed to my mania, I can't say.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 5 out of 5]

My barn has a split personality. On one side, you may not be surprised to learn, dusty in the gloom, carefully organized and stacked, are defensive implements of war, slumbering until the day of judgment. On the other side are implements of agriculture, for I also aspire, in the now, to be a peaceful gentleman farmer. That is, not a profit-making farmer, or even a farmer who sells anything, but someone who enjoys being outdoors and learning how to grow plants and husband animals (and bees). As I expand from simple garden plots to acre-plus growing,, I turned to this book to expand my knowledge. I got what I was looking for, and I also was inspired to think about two closely-related topics: modern farming practices and fat people.

Of course, in agriculture even more than in most areas of applied arts, book learning is no substitute for experience. Not only are the variables nearly infinite, so that no book can hope to cover all situations, but any book with specifics is going to focus on one geographic area—in this case, southern Quebec, whose conditions are considerably different from my own Midwestern climate. Nonetheless, a well-written book such as this frames thought processes and offers data that makes the gentleman farmer’s task easier. Or the market gardener’s task, at whom this book is actually directed—someone who aims to make a living from selling quality produce to those who will pay a premium for it.

The core concept of market gardening is that some consumers will pay extra, and give up the convenience of buying any item at any time, in exchange for receiving the freshest, best produce (or other products, such as meat, though the author, Jean-Martin Fortier, produces only vegetables), often from a farm with which they are personally familiar and to which they have long-term ties. Fortier, a leading exponent of market gardening, sells his farm’s produce at local markets, and also sells “shares” to locals as part of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, in which consumers at the start of each season purchase a share of the crop, and receive regular weekly bundles of produce throughout the growing season. This is a subscription box model, really, though one developed long before the internet made the model ubiquitous.

Fortier explicitly aims to encourage young people to consider market gardening as a permanent, full-time occupation. That’s what he and his wife chose to do, in their twenties (he is now 43), and by his account it has worked out well for them. What does “well” mean? He gives figures for revenue and expenses, and it appears that his family clears around $70,000 (Canadian) each year, or did in 2013, when this book was published. But he also gets three months off in the winter, he’s his own boss, and he gets to listen to the birds when he works. Certainly, this is a far more healthy lifestyle, physically and spiritually, than the vast majority of jobs young people take now.

Market gardening isn’t a spiritual quest, however. It’s entrepreneurship, and should be viewed as such. In today’s culture, entrepreneurship is thought of mostly as a way to get rich, and that’s certainly how I thought of it when I was running a business. I’ve offered detailed thoughts on entrepreneurship before, through my own lens, but we should remember that it’s perfectly reasonable to bear the costs and risks of being an entrepreneur not because you want to get rich, but because you want to do something you enjoy and which helps accomplish other ends important to you. Certainly, that’s why Fortier went into this line of work. But never forget, there are plenty of costs. The work can be quite hard, and entrepreneurship, of any kind, most definitely isn’t for everyone. It’s a good idea for far fewer people than the number who think it’s a good idea, most of whom see splashy profiles of successful entrepreneurs and fail to count the costs, including that most entrepreneurs fail. The same is no doubt true of farming as a business.

How practical is being a market gardener for a young person in America? We’ll talk later about how broad a consumer reach market gardening has, but sadly, being an entrepreneur, especially as a young person in America, is not easy, and harder than it used to be. For one, let’s be honest, the Canadians do a better job in letting young people start their working lives without debilitating financial liabilities. To take the two major areas, college costs are far lower (Fortier went to McGill); you can’t start a business when you must start paying back massive loans. And in America, you have to get health insurance, especially if you have a family, and individual policies are crushingly expensive. But agriculture has many other disincentives to American entrepreneurs, even aside from that most people think “entrepreneur” means “tech entrepreneur,” so there is little cultural support for getting one’s hands dirty for a living. Prime among these is regulation, eagerly desired by large concerns in order to create barriers to entry. Stories are legion of “health” regulators shutting down small farm operations for ticky-tack violations (that may be a problem in Canada, too, but Fortier doesn’t mention it). Worse, though, for an agricultural entrepreneur, is that by driving down labor costs through importing illegal and legal immigrants, as well as “legitimate” methods such as economies of scale, big agriculture sets an expectation of low prices among consumers. Thus, I’m far less optimistic than Fortier about the practicality of market gardening as a career path for young entrepreneurs, even though I’m in total agreement with him about the upsides of it.

I wish it were practical. A substantial amount, probably the substantial majority, of jobs in America today have no value whatsoever; it is simply legions of “email workers,” in the words of Gord Magill, who churn paper while looking down their noses at those who work with their hands. Of course, people take those jobs because they allow the lifestyles desired today—Fortier says manual labor is pleasant, and I agree with him, but most people don’t, sadly. Far better to earn $150K as someone working half days on Zoom at something completely ephemeral; that’s what the people want, or think they want. But if the alternatives were less risky, maybe they’d get more traction.

Anyway, the book itself consists of Fortier going through all aspects of his operation, from site selection and preparation through winter storage after harvest. The Market Gardener is, as I say, for those who want to make a living, a profit, from market gardening; Fortier focuses on crops that can be sold for high profit margins, which means primarily good-looking vegetables that can be identified by the consumer as fresh. That excludes quite a few crops someone with an extensive home garden might want to plant, such as potatoes. His highest revenue (and profit) crop is greenhouse-grown tomatoes, but he grows a wide range of other vegetables, from turnips to radicchio. Each of these is covered in some detail.

Almost all of his farm is set up in raised beds of standardized length (a hundred feet). This is only one example of how his operation is designed for efficiency, something any entrepreneur needs to be aware of, but one sometimes ignored, especially because an operation (in any industry) takes on a life of its own, having to be immediately responsive to the many unexpected demands placed on a business. It’s easy to get lost in the weeds and end up with a Frankenstein’s monster of a business, and as the proverb goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so planning ahead is key.

His farm is an acre and a half of intensively cultivated land. This includes a heated greenhouse and two unheated hoophouses. Fortier uses no tractor or other large-scale mechanized implements; rather, he uses a walk-behind tractor that, with different attachments, cultivates thirty-inch raised beds, and a variety of hand tools for weeding, along with insect netting and similar aids made possible by modern technology. This is physically demanding, and in many ways complicated, involving complex schedules for planting and harvesting, as well as crop rotation, and for cultivation, cover crop planting, and similar necessary activities.

Although, as the subtitle notes, this is a book about organic farming, Fortier is not a purist. He doesn’t use artificial pesticides, to be sure, but he uses petroleum, both in his small-scale machinery and in products such as insect netting. He uses manure from factory-farmed chickens. He rejects no-till (leaving plant debris on the surface rather than turning it under, and planting through it), and he gently sneers at those who claim that “proper balance” will eliminate weeds and insects.

So this is a great book if you want to learn; Fortier writes well, the graphics and illustrations are excellent, and the book is even an uplifting pleasure to read. I highly recommend it even if you’re not considering any type of farming; it’s interesting in its own right. But let’s turn to what this book can tell us about America’s approach to food.

First, is market gardening a concept that has broad appeal to consumers, as Fortier thinks? I am skeptical. We associate CSA and farm-to-table with Brooklyn hipsters because that type of person is the primary market; as with so many things, from buying made-in-the-USA products to exercising, the average person pays lip service to the concept, but won’t inconvenience himself to do something that requires the least cost, in cash but even more in effort. (When our Peloton was delivered, before the Wuhan Plague, the setup man said that the vast majority of bikes are never used.) Fortier notes that “enthusiastic consumers ready to pay a premium for fresh, organic produce are usually found in large urban areas,” which I’m sure is true, but even in urban areas such people are a small minority. Smaller towns also have some such consumers, but fewer, and Fortier admits that in rural areas, people tend to grow their own, and thus the market is extremely limited—not to mention that the distances in rural areas make selling harder.

This is just a subset of the broader modern fundamental food problem: that most people claim that they want fresh, healthy food, good wages for producers, and “food security,” yet they won’t pay anything for those things. The market gardener must locate that small set of people who will. This challenge is similar to that faced by airlines. Now, I have no love for airlines, and less love for the farce that is “service” on airlines, but it is true that most airline passengers won’t pay anything for service, even as they wail about it, instead gravitating to the very cheapest fares. However, with the magic of big data, airlines have successfully algorithmically sorted and separated those who are willing to pay, who self-sort out of a vast pool of consumers. That’s not possible, at least to the same degree, for the market gardener, necessarily limited in his geographic area. As a result, I suspect market gardening is not a viable career path in most areas—and in edge cases, there’s little way to find out except by trying, which can easily lead to entrepreneurial failure. I can’t think of a good solution for this, given the current culture.

Second, does market gardening provide broader social value? Fortier strongly believes it does, mentioning especially food security—that market gardens are not subject to the same supply chain failures that can affect industrial agriculture. I don’t dispute that such failures are possible, perhaps even likely. But I doubt if market gardening is the answer. Fortier’s products are extras—the amount of calories from his farm would only feed a handful of people, given that he produces no calorie-dense products. Food security only comes from growing grains, and it’s extremely hard to feed a modern town, much less a city, with small-scale agriculture of grains. And I’m all in favor of localism; among other benefits, as Fortier notes, it adds “resiliency” to a community, and I would add that it increases social trust, something in short supply nowadays. But again, it strikes me as quite clear that most Americans won’t actually take any actions that cost them anything to advance these social benefits.

This is especially true with respect to food because the unfortunate reality is that most people today are gluttons. They want to stuff their faces, six days a week and twice on Sunday, which is why most Americans are fat. Most people, instead of fresh tomatoes, want a BK Double Stacker King with a giant fries, and for no more than two dollars. This is terrible, and one of the strongest indicators of the spiritual decay of America. I’m not as hung up on the physical debilities produced by food as those on the Right like Bronze Age Pervert, but a diet of high fructose corn syrup, vegetable oils, and processed foods is certain to be damaging, doubly so when consumed in quantities grossly in excess of the body’s needs, triply so when coupled with no exercise. It’s therefore no surprise that eighty percent of those hospitalized during the Wuhan Plague were obese or overweight, probably a large part of why the Plague has been less damaging in Africa, where few people have the luxury of being fat.

Americans simply won’t exercise basic discipline, even when the benefits are in no dispute. Much of the reason is that the social disapproval that used to apply to the obese has disappeared in most of America (less so among the rich, but even there it is mostly eroded), along with all the other beneficial social stigmas that used to exist. I, certainly, assume that any truly fat person I meet has a problem with discipline more broadly. Although there are certainly exceptions to this, several of whom are friends of mine, lack of discipline in one area of life correlates strongly with lack of discipline in other areas of life. We should bring all the social stigmas back, including those tied to obesity, and that’d help market gardening too!

And while the masses lack virtue in this respect, let’s not forget . . . [Review completes as first comment.]

[cellomerl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow I managed to grow a few veggies last year by doing everything wrong. Imagine if I were to follow the instructions in this book…I could sell enough veggies to retire! Yippee, I’ll get started tomorrow.
Seriously, if you did even 10% of what’s in this book properly, you could probably stay alive on what you grow. It seems a terrible lot of work to make a living at this, and the author must be astoundingly well organized and have some kind of magic touch to be able to get the hands-on help required to do it. But oh the freedom.
Even someone gardening for himself with no intention of selling even a single bean could benefit from the various tips and detailed explanations in this book, especially in a northern climate with a short growing season. And the illustrations are charming too. It’s worth reading just for the lovely reward of Appendices 1 and 2.

[Nico · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aspiring market gardeners, take note: This book is much-loved by people who wish to have a farm someday, and despised by actual diversified veg farmers. Read it with an enormous grain of salt, because J-M's success has not yet been replicated by others and the entire premise of this book is that it can be. Business plans that look beautiful on paper, especially when it comes to agriculture in the age of industrial capital and climate change, can change and fail spectacularly.

As with anything, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

This is not a full review, but if you haven't started farming, it's just what you need to hear. Much respect to J-M Fortier, but listen to your elders and talk one-on-one with small farmers before accepting J-M's word as gospel.

[Pam Dawling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Review, The Market Gardener, Jean-Martin Fortier
Jean-Martin Fortier’s The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming, has recently been published in English by New Society Publishers. It has been available in French since 2012, and has sold over 15,000 copies. Jean-Martin and his wife Maude-Hélène Desroches run an impressively productive, tiny bio-intensive vegetable farm in Southern Quebec, Canada. They use low-tech and manual farming methods (no tractors), and have found some unusual and successful high-yielding techniques.
They grow on just 1.5 acres, arranged as 10 plots each of 16 raised beds 30” x 100’ long. The paths are 18” wide. The garden plots surround the building, which was a rabbit barn before the farmers converted half of it into their house and half into a packing and storage shed. Their planning is a wonder of considered efficiency and function. I hear it’s also beautiful.
This book will be an inspiration to all those hoping to start in small-scale vegetable farming but lacking land and money. If you can gather the money to buy a small amount of land (or find some to rent), this book will provide you some of the expertise to make your very small vegetable farm successful, without tractors or employees. Neither Jean-Martin nor I would claim it will be easy, but this book shows that it is possible, given hard work and smart work. So don’t believe those who say it can’t be done. The tips from this book will ease your way, once you have served an apprenticeship on another farm.
Their small farm is called Les Jardins de la Grelinette, which translates as Broadfork Gardens, giving you a clue to one of the tools they value. In many ways, Jean-Martin is in the school of Eliot Coleman, producing top-notch vegetables and books from a small piece of land with only a small workforce. Even the drawings remind me of those in Eliot’s books. Biologically intensive production can feed the world, as well as provide a decent living for farmers. Attention to detail is required, as there is little slack for things to go very wrong.
They run a 120 share CSA for a 21 week season and sell at two farmers’ markets for 20 weeks. They grow a ponderous quantity of mesclun (salad mix)! They even sell it wholesale. Jean-Martin and Maude-Hélène studied the value of all the crops they grew, comparing sales with labor and other costs, including the amount of land used and the length of time that crop occupied the space. They provide a table of their results, assigning profitability as high, medium or low. A quick glance shows you why 35 beds of their 160 bed total grow mesclun – number 2 in sales rank, despite being only number 19 in revenue/bed. This is because salad mix only takes 45 days in the bed, and then another crop is grown. This book deftly illustrates the importance of farming to meet your goals and to fit your resources. My climate is very different from Quebec. I’m providing 100 people for a 52 week season. We don’t want 300 pounds of salad mix each week! We do want white potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and winter squash to feed us all winter.
And yet I find more similarities than differences. We both want high-yielding, efficient farms that take care of the planet, the soil and the workers as well as the diners. We value quality, freshness and flavor. We do season-extension to get early crops in spring. When novelty is important, we grow several varieties of a crop.
The start-up costs at La Grelinette ($39,000) include a 25’ x 100’ greenhouse, two 15’ x 100’ hoophouses, a walk-behind rototiller and several big accessories, a cold room, irrigation system, furnace (remember they are in Quebec!), a flame weeder, various carts, barrows and hand tools, electric fencing, row cover, insect netting and tarps. Jean-Martin sets out all the costs, all the revenue from each crop – valuable solid information for newbies or improvers alike.
I came away from this book with several ideas to consider further. Jean-Martin recommends a rotary harrow rather than a rototiller. It has vertical axes and horizontally spinning tines, and stirs the top layers of soil without inversion, being kinder to the soil structure. It comes with a following steel mesh roller, which helps create a good seed-bed. Earth Tools BCS in Kentucky sell Rinaldi power harrows that fit the bigger BCS walk-behind tractors. The Berta plow is another BCS accessory that Jean-Martin favors, in his case for moving soil from the paths up onto the raised beds. I think we could really use one of those too.
Broadforks and wheel-hoes are already in our tool collection, but the use of opaque impermeable tarps to cover garden beds short-term between one vegetable crop and the next is really new to me. These tarps are sold as silage/bunker/pit covers, and are 6mm black, UV-inhibited polyethylene. Weeds germinate under the plastic, where it is warm and moist, and then they die for lack of light. Earthworms are happy. The tarps can be cut to the width of one bed, and rolled after their 2-4 weeks of use. This could be a useful alternative when there is not enough time to grow a round of buckwheat cover crop (or it is too cold for buckwheat, or your tiller is in the shop). Weed pressure on following crops is also reduced. Tarps can be used to incorporate a flail-mowed cover crop as an alternative to using a tiller.
At Twin Oaks, our gardens are in many ways like a CSA with one big box for the whole community, but in other ways we are more like a self-sufficient homestead – we try to keep our bought-in inputs to a minimum, so producing our own compost and growing cover crops for increasing soil nutrients are valuable to us. They do not fit so well for a micro-farm in the cash economy. For La Grelinette, it is better to buy in compost and poultry manure and keep using all the land to grow more vegetables.
The book includes tables of which crops go where, when to plant in the greenhouse and outdoors, pest control options, and lists of what to grow. The appendices include brief bios of 25 crops, and a short list of the crops they don’t grow and why (potatoes, sweet corn, winter squash, celery and asparagus).
Jean-Martin is obviously very particular about running their farm as efficiently as possible, but don’t make the mistake of thinking he must be a grim workaholic! He is very funny with his iconoclastic sidebars. “Crop rotation is an excellent practice . . . to ignore.” (He is addressing new farmers who will likely find plans need to change to improve productivity. He doesn’t want slavish dedication to a crop rotation to prevent someone seizing on a better idea.) His paragraph on the hazards of inexperienced workers with insufficient training and oversight was so good I read it out to my crew. We have never had leeks sliced off at the surface or pea plants pulled up as harvest methods, but we have had carrot seedlings pruned to a uniform height of an inch, rather than thinned to a one inch spacing! If you get a chance to hear Jean-Martin speak, don’t pass it up. He is fully fluent in English as well as French, and does a hilarious skit of French people living in Quebec who found it hard to buy good leeks (until they discovered La Grelinette). His spoof of French-accented English has to be heard!

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading another "market gardener" book at the same time, but found Fortier's book to be far easier to read, and the language far more accessible (perhaps due to the original being written that way, or the translator). Even if you have no intention of selling anything you produce, this book provides great information on crop rotation, organic methods of fertilization, and successive planting - basically everything needed to keep your garden organic as well as maintaining the highest production as possible. He gardens on one and a half acres, which is a very reasonable amount of land that many folks on acreages have access to. The limitations of it are that Fortier does not explore options that he has had no experience and/or success with, so, for example, if you do not want to raise your tomatoes and peppers in a hoop house, he has no guidance for you. But overall, a great book, and as Fortier gardens in Quebec, information that is more helpful for Canadians.

[Annie Bruza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, but not immediately helpful. Our garden this year is the largest we've attempted yet, so I picked up this book looking for some ideas on how to potentially make it marketable. While I found certain parts of this book helpful (the chapter on weed management was very applicable to us since we've planted our garden in rows this year), this book would be best read by someone trying to make farming a self-supporting job. He approaches the garden as a business first, so there is a difference in priorities between us. We are trying to feed ourselves and take care of the land/soil first, rather than produce as large a crop as possible to sell. There are many things in this book that will be helpful to us in the future if we look to transition to more of a market garden, so it will have to remain in the back of my mind to revisit later.

[Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved how much emphasis was placed on how one's lifestyle can be intertwined with their passions, political outlook, value for sustainability and community, and desire for work-life balance. reading this as I worked my shifts at the student farm (1) made me so proud of the work that we do and how much our methodology connected with the author's, (2) made me truly believe that with sufficient experience I too can work outside, can be connected with local food systems, can live sustainably, and can be a pillar for my community through land and food sovereignty in a way that gives me financial success and inner fulfillement.

loved this book

[tricia larson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book . I particularly enjoyed the fact that it was written by growers in a similar climate as mine zone 5. Whether you plan to grow large or small scale this book is filled with invaluable knowledge

[Mikie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Säkert bra för sitt syfte, men för mig var den för mycket inriktad på produktion och försäljning, och för lite på permakultur vilket var vad jag var ute efter.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting, comprehensive read! would be helpful if I needed a guide for farming.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate Fortier authoring such a comprehensive handbook about his growing operations, and I certainly learned a lot, but I doubt I will use many of his methods in my future vegetable farm because I disagree with his basic principles about what small-scale organic farming should be. To Fortier, efficiency and high yields are the gods that determine his every decision. This is the wrong way to try to model some new, better version of society. Because it’s precisely these “easy way out” approaches of row covering, plastic mulching, mineral amendments, and spraying for pests and fungus (however “natural”) that led us from a sustainable farming system in the pre-fossil fuel days to this energy-intensive, net-loss, absolutely destructive system of agriculture that threatens life on this planet. His method that require legions of off-farm, factory-produced inputs (though they are legally “organic”); petroleum-based bins and ground covers; and absolute precision in production are no more sustainable than what the conventional farms are doing. Because to treat growing food as any more than an unpredictable, uncontrollable beast is to assume one can command Mother Nature. And each time we act as if Mother Nature can be controlled, we are reminded by terrifying natural disasters, famine, and plague (ahem, COVID) that Mother Nature commands the man, not the other way around. So preaching that aiming to control what happens in your fields through limitless inputs is to behave in the same way as the oil executives, cheap goods manufacturers, and development tycoons, who see moneybags instead of beauty in nature. Fortier did help me see beauty though. The beauty of the justice that the coming destruction of the planet will serve to humankind because we allowed men to take in their care the health of the planet and the direction of society.

[Andrew Welleford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is truly an exceptional book, one that I refer to regularly as a home gardener. It is full of concise, thoughtful, and practical information related to growing high-quality vegetables. The charts and illustrations are simple but clear and effective. Fortier is on the cutting edge of small-scale growing, and I look forward to learning more about his new research farm in his next book.

If I have one small quibble, it's that the actual shape of the book is slightly awkward: its wide pages flop over my hands while reading. Please don't let this stop you from purchasing this book, but if the publisher reads this please reconsider these book dimensions in the future!

[bibliotekker Holman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too many organic farmer memoirs are airy affairs about hugging trees and communing with nature, it is good to finally see something "nuts and bolts" that puts aside sentimentality. Fortier illustrates that a profitable small-scale operation is possible even in cold northern climates like Quebec. I may never get further than the garden that is about all I can handle, but Fortier shows that more is possible.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative

Good food, organically and locally grown is the trend of the future. The market garden satisfies our needs and benefits the environment as well. You won’t get rich, but you will have a fulfilling life. This book will definitely set you on the path with enough detailed information to make a viable business. I wish I’d read this many years ago. I highly recommend it to everyone who wants to make a positive impact on the world.

[Amy Beasley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this text

When I retire, I am going to be a full time market gardener. Informative and inspiring, this book is a treasure.

[Lynn Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Canadian Elliot Coleman!

[Keen Chew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Market Gardener is a guide written by Jean-Martin Fortier, an organic farmer based in Quebec, on how to start and establish a successful market garden. A market garden is defined as a place where vegetables and fruits are grown for direct sale to the consumer. In The Market Gardener, Fortier shares valuable insights concerning major aspects of starting and maintaining a market garden, such as site management and selection, soil fertility, and his methods of growing healthy, delicious produce. He stresses the importance of soil quality, and touches on ideas such as cover crops, the benefits of compost, and weed management strategies. For aspiring farmers, Fortier’s advice on site selection is indispensable, and his insights into choosing the right piece of farmland helps combat potential problems. His farm, Les jardins de la grelinette, is only on a ten acre plot of land. Even so, Fortier is able to make a living as a farmer by implementing his intensive growing practices.
Although The Market Gardener is a comprehensive guide on how to start a market garden, only some of the considerations presented in the book are applicable to a home gardener. Some proposed ideas, such as building a hoop house, are not only too much of a time and space investment, but aren’t practical for the average gardener. However, many of the main ideas Fortier presents are.
Methods to increase soil fertility and biology are some of the most prominent ideas in his book, because better soil and conditions go hand in hand with better produce and healthier plants. Adding compost to beds is one way he does so. In The Market Gardener, he asserts that, “the organic amendment we use in the greatest quantity is compost, as we believe it is the best ingredient for building and maintaining a healthy soil” (Jean-Martin 61).
Fortier lessens his workload with targeted weed control methods, such as the “stale seedbed technique” (105), in which prepared beds are left fallow for ten to fifteen days so that dormant weed seeds germinate, then lightly worked under so as to leave them nearly weedless for a future crop. Another method he describes is covering the area with a black tarp. When weed seeds germinate from the heat created by the tarp, they eventually die from the lack of light. These practices are easy-to-do and low-tech, and using them, even novice gardeners can diminish weed pressure in their own gardens.
Caring for the soil’s integrity is yet another guideline Fortier follows when operating his market garden. Because the biology of the soil is so closely linked to soil health, destroying its structure can be detrimental to its quality. Light cultivation of the soil is sometimes recommended, but he warns that working the soil too heavily and too deeply can damage its biology and structure, negatively affecting plant health, thereby reducing potential yields.
In The Market Gardener, Fortier also covers the plants that are grown on the farm, and gives important details on how they grow them, such as the recommended distance between plants, harvest, and general guidelines. Many of these ideas, such as intensive spacing, where plants in cultivation are planted close to each other to maximize yield, are especially applicable to a home gardener, who might want to grow more with less space. The harvest and general information could help gardeners find and decide to grow new plants, or just improve and adapt their current, preferred growing methods.
The implementation of some of these ideas into a farm or home garden shows promise. After following these general guidelines for over ten years, Fortier asserts that, “A better understanding of what enhances soil fertility can translate into better growing practices. We see the proof of this when we harvest high yields of top-quality vegetables, at the same time as we see our gardens getting ever more productive, and with increasingly less effort” (54). Although a home gardener might not find all of the suggestions from The Market Gardener useful, many of the core ideas and principles will be of great use to any gardening audience. Furthermore, they are realistic to implement and the techniques mentioned are proven to work. If you want to garden successfully while caring for yourself and the earth, you’ll find that The Market Gardener is a must-read.

[Jacqueline M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book for those looking to monetize their mixed vegetable gardening activities. I will be purchasing a copy of this book for my own library and implementing some principles for weekend market growing. I do caution that the intended audience is for those who want to be true farmers and make market gardening their full-time job. The author also assumes you have 3+ acres plus room for a hoop house, though they do discuss intensive gardening principles which could be adapted to smaller spaces (FINALLY. Someone is going to actually explain HOW to intensive garden without some trademarked garbage) It is also important to note that these authors' garden is in Canada so the advice on growing seasons etc will need to be modified for most growers in the United States. This is the first small scale book I've seen that discusses the benefits of tiling and costs associated with that. I would consider this a book for intermediate to advanced gardeners with understanding of advanced agronomy. This is not for beginners, though it does include some basic "how-to" that will feel redundant for the target audience. (To be fair I would not advise true beginners to hope to replace their corporate salaries with market gardening with no actual experience.)

[Zora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not a market gardener, though I may be a one-crop one in the future. Still, I find the entire back-to-local organic small-farm movement heartening and am very interested in it. The information here is clearly presented, and as I'm an intensive-planting, seed-starting home gardener, there was useful information for me in here as well. (I push spacing with square-foot gardening concepts, and it looks like I can push it even harder)

Fortier is smart, a good planner, and the smart and thoughtful planning he did in establishing his Quebec farm is echoed here in the organization of the book, the useful charts, and much else.

He does everything with hand tools, if you do not know of him and his work. He is a good business man, and he understand that if a oil furnace works better than solar or wind power, that's what he'll use. And he and his wife pay two FT employees and make a living, on a farm that's 2 acres (it includes a greenhouse for tomatoes). I applaud them and wish them continued success.

[Luke Merrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Market Gardener - A comprehensive guide to small-scale farming. Fortier, in learning from his own experience on his own farm in Quebec, lays out the methods and logistics of owning, planting and sustainably running a small yet profitable organic farm.

Before reading the Market Gardner, I envisioned farming to be a large-scale operation with multiple employees, endless irrigation and expensive tractors and equipment. That being said, I was wonderfully surprised to discover the possibility of a tractor-less small organic farm. My wife and I plan to start a farm similar to the one outlined in the book and will be using many of the concepts explained here for our own venture in New Zealand.

I believe that these kinds of farms are vitally important to the future of humanity, and that we ought to be making the future in our actions now.

A huge thanks to Jean-Martin Fortier for taking the time to record and write such a helpful guide to aspiring young farmers.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty comprehensive guide if you're starting a market garden. I really appreciated the templates and examples they included for crop planning and crop rotation in particular--even if you're using very different crops in a different climate, seeing those types of hands-on templates is really useful.

The most useful part for me was the crop rotation section. I'm nowhere near market gardening, just doing raised beds in my backyard, but the level of complexity that went into their crop rotation plan was fascinating, and gave me a lot more to think about than avoiding pests and thinking about nitrogen in the soil!

Recommend this book for people who are seriously thinking about scaling up their bed production, but there are also useful tips for dedicated gardeners as well.

[An Te · Rating 4 out of 5]

A splendid book full of notes on what it takes to grow your own organic gardening business. As my family has already gathered, the techniques are similar on the most part and the plants capable of being sowed and reaped very much depends on the climate of the area and the soil structure.

The book was very useful for ecological insights and organization of the business, to avoid excessive toil. This was extremely helpful. Furthermore, the breakdown of crops by profibtality, ease of growth, cold hardy etc. are all useful references for all those starting out and the experienced; a most helpful appendix.

Much recommended for any green-fingered person who is growing more than they can consume and relish the thought of selling some home-grown vegetables.

[Lgordo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a market gardener, I'm a backyard gardener in search of real information. Most of the stuff for hobbyists is thin and dictates rather than explains. There's also a ton of crap info out there.

This book was not crap info. True, his analysis of mechanical equipment and heated greenhouses was not relevant to me, but his discussion on soil amendments, crop rotation, and succession planting certainly was.

This is not a book by someone who has gulped down the organic kool-aid. Fortier does his best to be organic, but he's blunt about its shortcomings and myths.

On the whole, I found this a very good and enjoyable book.

[Carolyn Tragasz · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most practical, easy to read, and well though out "how to" manuals I have read, about any topic. The author was thorough and precise, making his points in a way that was not just informative but engaging. The pencil diagrams and illustrations enhanced the book tremendously, giving the feeling of reading a children's book at times. The author explained his processes on the farm simply, without being condescending or dogmatic. Rather, he encouraged curiosity and experimentation. The whole thing left me inspired- I got high utility from reading it. Even though my farming is just a dream at this point, this book showed a concrete path for making that dream an accessible reality.

[Ariel Rittenhouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I actually didn't finish this book). I am about halfway, and LOVE the information in this book. Straightforward, clear, informative, and interesting!! Wow. It reads more like a textbook or reference book. I simply could not finish it when not actually farming. I will certainly return to the market gardener because of the invaluable information. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone curious to understand agriculture in a very realistic perspective/wants to have their own market garden!

[Felicity Fields · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read several books on growing vegetables for sale, all of which referenced this book as the book to read about running a profitable market garden in limited space.

They were right - it's a great book. ;) Practical, informative without going too deep, and covers everything you need to know.

I especially liked when the author discussed why they choose not to do something on their farm (use a machine, grow a particular crop).

If you're looking for a book on how to profitably grow vegetables on 2.5 acres, this is your book.