has your market been busy? the market i go to has been kind of slow and i've been unable to sell as much lettuce as i would like to. when the market is busy with many customers it seems like i can sell out of just about anything. are there many other vendors at your market selling the same stuff as you?

Would it be the idea that several people are now growing some things for themselves? I can see that happening either now or in the future.

Our market has been slower than last year, but we have had several colder, drearier market days.

Can you offer some samples? I did that last week with strawberries and they sold well. I didn't get the lettuces/greens in fast enough to harvest yet.

Jay, Our market doesn't even start until June!! Is there a local restaurant who would buy the extra?? You might have to take wholesale prices, but that would beat composting it. You have some beautiful plants there. My spring crops are a total bust. Between drowning, rabbits, cold, weeds, and disease, they really had no chance. I think a hoop house is in order!!??

Brook

I find it takes time to build up a customer base and if there has been no one at your market(s) selling lettuce and other greens before you than you are dealing with customers that are buying elsewhere. You might want to start comping lettuce to your non lettuce buying customers to show them just how much better your lettuce is than store bought.

As for other greens I find my sales very hit and miss with things like kale and chard. Some weeks I will sell out and other weeks I sell one or two bags or none at all.

I have found my spinach sales are way off this year. I used to be able to sell out at $4 a 1/2 pound bag but this year people do not seem very interested in spinach, I sell maybe half of what i bring (I hope this changes as I have a lot to harvest in the next 7 days). Now arugula is very hot for me right now, I cannot seem to harvest enough for market.

last week I took in 157 bags of various greens and sold 113 of them. This week is an off week for us (annual event I have been going to for the past 31 years that I rarely miss)

If you can, donate them to a local food pantry-I know you want to make money but you can use such activity as very very positive marketing. And the food does not go to waste

I have also found if you are the only grower/seller of something it is much harder to sell it than when there are 1 or 2 other selling the same thing regularly (and it is even better when one of those people does not show up as the other 2 vendors almost always will sell out). For me this has happened with both lettuce and Garlic scapes. years ago we were the only people selling garlic scapes and they simply would not sell, even with recipes and a lot of talking. Than, one day, the main lettuce guy and the other farm that sells a lot of greens at our Saturday market started selling scapes and we started selling out. I believe this is because what was once strange to the customers became familiar and was thus a buyable item. Now I can't grow enough of them (well maybe this year as we expanded the garlic patch by 50%).

So give it time Jay, I assume you will be farming and selling long after 2010 is over.

I will sell a lot of beet greens and radishes. I don't bring lettuce or spinach cause the guy right next to me grows hydrophonic lettuce and it is beautiful, I can't compete. He is also growing and selling cucumbers and peppers. He brings in a lot of people to the market so I can't complain. I agree with another poster who suggested trying to sell to the restaurants.
All I brought to the first market was tomato, pepper and giant zinnia plants from the greenhouse. Sold well but didn't sell out.

Sorry to hear about your trouble. Your lettuces do look beautiful.

Last year our lettuce sold really well. We were also the only ones who sold lettuce at our market, in fact not many around our area sell lettuce at all. Our mixes sold best, the bags of just one type of lettuce never seemed to sell as well.

We did not seem to have any trouble getting people to buy our lettuce mixes, but mixed colored cherry tomatoes and kale and collard bunches were not as easy to sell at first. Both were things that no one else sells so people were hesitant at first. The collard and kale bunches finally started to sell around half way through the season. People then started to come back because they knew where to get them. It may just take awhile for people to try them.

I agree that samples may help. We started giving out samples of our cherry tomatoes, and right after that we started to have people coming back every week, specially for them. I think people were curious, but yet hesitant to try them, but once they did they discovered they loved them.

Our first market does not start for a couple of weeks, but we should have lots of lettuce and greens for the first market. I can not wait to see how our greens sell this year, last year they all ended up getting eaten by bugs. But this year we have a whole hoop house full of beautiful greens. 98% of them are completely bug free, the rest have some slight damage from slugs, hard to stop. I usually go out there when the sun just starts to go down and do away with the ones I see. Seems to be the best way to deal with them. They are often easy to spot.

I hope at some point your lettuce and green sales pick up. I love growing and selling lettuces and greens, guess I am lucky we seem to do pretty well selling them.

Boulderbelt: I couldn't agree more about building a customer base. This weekend my wife and kids split up and sold at two different markets. My wife stayed in my home town and I went to a larger town that I sell in on Wednesday. It was a beautiful day, in the 80's. We split the harvest and headed to market.

Another friend who only sells at the other town, sells out of salad mix 40-50 bags each week and I sold 6, well really 5 I gave a customer two (it was a friend). I brought home 23 bags. I did sell more spinach, but still brought home half.

I guess I am better known for squash, tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.

Bagardens: Mixed cherry tomatoes are a big seller for me.