John Dysinger

AdAgrA 2023: Digging Deeper

Starting a Market Garden

Pamela Dysinger

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

A Bird’s-Eye View of Market Gardening

Okay, I want to welcome each of you here to the first session of the something about market gardening, the market gardening track.

And so, our first presentation here is just kind of, some of you may not even really understand the term market gardening, and so we're going to try to define that term and, and really focus on why we think you should be doing this.

We're here, We're giving a sales pitch for market gardening here this morning.

Yeah, and for those who don't know us, we farm in Middle Tennessee, outside of Nashville, about an hour.

We came out of teaching and the Lord called us to agriculture for our own good and for the good of our family.

And we have 5 children, blessed to have 4 of them here.

And 2, 2 of our sons are farming full-time with us.

Our farm runs 10 months of the year, so John and I and both of our sons work in the summer, but we lead out in the summer production, and then Joshua and Kelly, his wife, lead out in the winter.

So our farm right now is still in full production and will be till the middle, towards the end of February.

Then we take a short break, we start back in, in April.

So, largely we have a CSA and a farmers market is our main avenues.

And before we get into it any more, I'd like to have a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the privilege of being here, the privilege of learning, and Lord, I just pray that this time will be well spent, that at the end of this hour, people will feel like they have learned and grown and been challenged and I just pray that you would guide Pam and I in what we should say and what we shouldn't say.

And we thank you for doing this in Jesus' name.

So, just before we get started, hold your questions.

I mean, we have a lot of information that we're going to be trying to cover.

And so we don't want to stop the flow, but we also want to, we'll try to leave some time at the end to answer questions.

So just jot your questions down as we go through our presentation and we'll hopefully address them at the end.

Okay, so we'll start with what is a market garden?

And it's not like there's a dictionary definition of what market gardening is.

But I think it's fair to say that it's less than 3 acres of cultivated land and actually 3 acres is way on the upper end.

Most market gardens are an acre and a half or less.

The second thing is it's characterized by intensive beds.

So you're getting multiple high-value crops a year.

You're wanting to try to get as much of the year as you can in production just to level out the cash flow, but also Recognizing that a farmer does need a period of dormancy as well.

If you're going full on year round, you'll burn out pretty quickly.

Those of you who have read our testimony know we've learned this the hard way.

You don't want to put all your eggs in 1 basket.

You want to really, and I'll just throw in this for this year.

Last year, strawberries did amazing for us.

We had a really, really good strawberry crop.

But just in December while we were out visiting our son in Washington, the deer waltzed through the gate of our newly erected electric fence and ate our whole crop of strawberries for this year.

And there was a time when that would have just been like devastating to us.

I mean it's going to hurt us, but it's not devastating.

So you don't want all your eggs in 1 basket.

And our strawberries will grow something.

So you know if they eat the leaves, it really compromises what's left of the plant.

So anyway, don't put all your eggs in 1 basket.

We're not in any way trying to to downplay or Anything you know big farms But we recognize that for for the vast majority of people that's not even an option With the price of land now and the price of equipment, it's just out of the question.

So we love this model because it's attainable.

If you've been blessed with a lot of land and you have tractors and equipment, go for it.

We need There's some crops that don't work well on a market gardening scale, specifically your grains and beans, you need a combine in order to harvest efficiently and that just doesn't happen on an apron.

You couldn't even turn around a combine on an apron.

And I think that the market gardening model fits very nicely with the spirit of prophecy model.

And I just want to, have any of you seen this book, Councils on Agriculture?

If you haven't, it will be available here at the conference in the booth area, and I know It seems a little self-serving since I compiled it, but I can promote it because it's not my words, right?

So the third chapter here is a call for Christian farmers, and I would just really, really encourage you all to read this chapter, because there is an incredible need in Adventism.

I mentioned last night for farmers, for educated farmers who know what they're doing.

I I Make a statement and I stick to it that small-scale Agriculture is the world's best hope for the future And now notice I said the world's best hope, because we know that there's a better hope outside of this world.

But as far as the world goes, small scale agriculture is the answer to our problems.

You know, our social problems, our emotional problems, our physical problems, our spiritual problems even.

Our spiritual problems even so we're pretty passionate about this that This kind of agriculture is so holistic and so Well, it's the answer So we are very passionate about it and and here's some why's and excuse my lack of finishing this slide.

This is 1 we were adding in and I got distracted and went to bed last night.

So you know, 1 of the whys is for us was definitely families working together.

When our kids were young, I mean, they were a part of our team.

You know, too many children today don't feel apart.

They feel like they feel isolated or they feel like they're in the way.

And parents feel they're in the way and they're unneeded.

But let me tell you, from the time our kids could stand on a chair and sift peat moss, that was their job.

So, you know, there's always work for everyone to do.

But hey, That's a better way to air, Mrs.

There is so much evangelism that can be done through agriculture.

I really, really appreciated the message this morning.

Could have just stood on my seat and said, yes.

People have no idea that evangelistic opportunities through agriculture.

But I confess that we have been that person, oh, I just don't want to, I'm afraid to hurt that relationship, so I don't want to bring the light at the wrong time.

But we have customers that have been with us for 20 years.

You know, so this is 1 of our interns from this last year.

You meet that smiling face at the market and they are kind and intentionally thoughtful.

You know, we try to train our people and encourage them.

We, well, I can't get into the marketing side you can come to my marketing class But I forget I'll just go off on that.

That's not what we should be going There's 1 more thing on this family's working together.

Special Interests

Berry Basics for Beginners

Welcome to Berry Basics for Beginners, a brief look at growing blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries.

So hopefully from the title, it's clear that this is basics for beginners.

You know, there's no way we can go into this in very much depth in an hour, but we're gonna, it's gonna be fairly fast-paced.

We'll try to get through it in time to to have some time for some questions at the end.

But let's just begin with a word of prayer.

Dear Lord, we thank you for another opportunity to learn and grow.

We love them and we know they're good for us.

So I just pray that you would bless this time.

May it be an encouragement to those who are here and may they go back and grow berries, we pray.

Start with this interesting quote, wherever fruit can be grown in abundance, a liberal supply should be prepared for winter by canning or drying.

Small fruits such as currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries can be grown to advantage in many places where they are but little used and their cultivation is neglected.

Are any of you familiar with the publication that James White wrote on berries?

It's actually like a 40 page pamphlet on growing berries.

Well, I think it may be called small fruits or something, but that's basically berries.

It's on your Ellen White apps and that kind of thing.

I can't prove it, but she mentions more about strawberries than any other fruit.

And so I'm pretty sure it was her favorite fruit.

We started out as a strawberry farm, and I wish I had time to tell you that whole story, but I don't.

We now are much more diversified than that for many reasons.

I don't think we need to spend much time on this.

They can be grown in most areas of the US.

Compared to a lot of fruit, that's just not the case.

Of course, we know in the last few years, there's just so much research about the health benefits of berries.

And conventional berries are often highly sprayed, especially strawberries.

Strawberries are the number 1 most toxic fruit or vegetable in the US.

Don't ever buy strawberries from ever buy strawberries from the store unless they're organic or you're filling yourself with toxic who knows what.

It's a relatively small investment in quick return compared to other fruits.

Now notice the term relatively, I'm not saying it's a small investment, and it's, but compared to tree fruit, it's a much quicker turnaround.

You know, especially if you're trying to do this commercially, you got to get a return on your investment as quickly as possible.

And I would say you have a better chance of success with berries than with other fruits, especially in the South.

You know, it kind of hurts me when I see all these people coming out of the cities and the first thing they do is they plant their orchard the Ellen White way and anybody who's done that knows it's a huge amount of work.

And then They don't have success with their orchard.

And I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that, but the reality is much, I mean, where we live, it's just not a good tree fruit growing area.

You know, we've been growing, we've had a market garden for 25 years and we have yet to plant our first apple tree.

Now I'm not, I'm not proud of that, but that's just a reality that I, I have to do things that I can make money on.

And I'm not sure I can make money on apples in our area.

I still, you know, I'm gathering information.

I have all these ideas in my mind of how I can do it, but I haven't done it.

I mean we literally have, I mean I was in the fig thing this morning because we have 3 fig trees that we're growing and you know we're trying to do a few persimmons but We don't have fruit, I mean tree fruit, but we've got the small fruits.

So I'm gonna go through a few things here to kind of compare the different crops.

Just for you to think about, how quickly can you expect to harvest.

With primocane bearing blackberries and raspberries, you can actually get fruit in 4 to 5 months, a small first harvest, and then every fall, late summer fall after that.

Strawberries, if you do the annual system it takes about 7 months.

You plant them in the fall, harvest them the next spring.

Now, if you do the matted row system, it's going to take a year.

You plant them 1 spring and they start bearing the next spring.

But that's still a relatively quick turnaround.

Blueberries take at least 3 years to the first small harvest and 5 plus years to full production.

And so notice this is what's cool about berries.

So strawberries come in the spring and if you get the right varieties of blueberries, your blueberries can be starting as your strawberries finish up.

And then your blackberries come in and your raspberries come in So you literally, if you do it right, can have berries from spring.

And if you use hoop houses or caterpillar tunnels, I think with not a lot of effort, you could have fresh berries from your garden from the beginning of April to into November.

Okay, so this this 1 is easiest to hardest to grow, in my opinion.

So blackberries, I would say, is the easiest, followed by blueberries, followed by raspberries.

And unfortunately, strawberries, in my opinion, are the most difficult to grow.

You know anybody can plant a strawberry plant but to really do it successfully.

This probably is not really useful to you, but the point here is just to give you an idea of the cost.

So this is the average cost of planting and this is just, I took the cost of what it would take if I bought them from Norse farms up in Massachusetts to plant an acre of berries.

Now, most of you are not going to be planting an acre of berries.

And of course you understand that this is assuming you're buying 1, 090 plants.

Obviously the fewer plants you buy, The prices are going to be a little higher than that.

You average around 14, 500 plants for strawberries.

The “Up and Up” on Greenhouse Trellising

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the privilege of being here.

We know each of us has an individual story and a testimony of your leading and guiding, but Lord, while we're here, I just pray for your spirit.

I pray that you would guide and direct in this class, that it would be meaningful and helpful and that I would only say those things that you would want me to say and we thank you for this in Jesus name amen.

So this is called the up and up on greenhouse trellising.

My name is John Dysinger and we have a farm in Middle Tennessee.

Been doing it long enough to know a lot of what doesn't work and a little bit of what does work and so we're just gonna share today and I'm not claiming to be an expert in greenhouse trellising but we have tried a lot of things through the years and I'm just going to share what we are learning.

But I want to first get an idea of the audience that I have.

I get that So that seemed like the majority so that's good I Am this I mean the topic they gave me was on greenhouse trellising, so I'm definitely going to be focused on that.

But some of the methods, and I'll try to point them out, some of the methods don't require a greenhouse.

So some of these things you can do outside and if we have time we can talk about adapting some of them to that.

So a Greenhouse, even a small 1, is not a cheap investment.

You want to get the most you can out of it.

And that is part of the reason for trellising.

Well there's there's actually a lot of reasons and we'll just name a few.

It increases yield by going up you can maximize the space and get more yield out of a small footprint.

Decrease disease by allowing more sunlight and airflow to the plants.

By having them up off the ground you're allowing the air to flow through and the sunlight to get to it And you have less disease pressure than just everything sprawling on the ground.

Okay, increase harvesting efficiency and ease.

It's a lot easier harvesting up here than bending over and searching through the vines on the ground trying to find your cucumbers, right?

And of course, a lot of this is kind of geared towards market gardening where you're trying to be as efficient as possible.

Because you're going up and utilizing the vertical space, you can get more plants in a given space.

Easier balancing of the plant between generative and vegetative growth.

Now that's getting a little bit beyond the scope of this class, but I'll just say this and I'll refer you to a book if you really want to learn about this.

There are a lot of things that if you have a controlled environment and that really means having heat and fans and stuff, but if you have the ability to control the temperature in there, you can actually steer, they call it steering or balancing the plant between vegetative and generative growth.

Generative means fruit bearing and Vegetative of course is referring to the plant itself.

If it's too, I'm sure some of you have experienced this.

You have this super healthy lush plant that's not producing hardly any fruit, right?

And then the other extreme is you have these spindly, anemic plants that are trying to put out a lot of fruit, and that's too generative.

I don't want to go into it any deeper than that.

And there's this book that I'll refer you to can take you as deep as you want to go.

Have you, you know, suckering and trellising?

I mean, when you do it for hours and hours, it might start feeling like it's not quite so fun.

And that's 1 thing I really want to emphasize here.

And when you're busy on the farm, you have to really weigh.

Well, the big 1 that everybody I'm sure thinks of is tomatoes Tomatoes is the number 1 crop that that is trellis.

The other 2 big ones I would say are cucumbers and peppers.

And so we're going to talk about all those.

But then there's you can and there are people who do it, trellis melons, you know, like little Charentais kind of melons that you can trellis up.

And if you've got the market for it, that's a good thing.

Of course, green beans, pole beans have to have some kind of trellis.

That's not usually done in a greenhouse, but it can be if you have the space.

And peas, again, you know, sugar snap peas.

Pardon me for, you know, I'm coming at it from a market gardening point of view so I'm always thinking about, you know, ways to make money kind of thing.

So if that doesn't apply to you, just understand that that's the way I think as a market gardener.

But this is a key point I want to really bring out here.

You have to look at the potential yield increases versus the time involved in trellising and decide whether it is worth the additional effort.

I have a friend who grows or at least he used to grow hundreds of acres of paste tomatoes up in New Jersey, all on the ground.

They literally planted them and left them.

Come harvest time, they have machines that come through, makes you question your paste tomatoes, but comes through and pulls up the plant and takes everything off of it.

And so you don't even have to trellis tomatoes, but you're gonna, if you live in a place where you get much rain You're gonna have a lot of rotten fruit and stuff so you just have to weigh it and You know for us as market gardeners.

We tried for a number of years to really sucker and trellis peppers and eggplant, but we just couldn't surround it all.

So we we do a much simpler way of trellising them now that I'll talk to you about.

So anyway, as you think of all this, it's like, okay, is this worth the additional effort for me?

If you're a home gardener, yeah, you have another job.

So 2 main types of trellising we're gonna talk about.

And then at the end, I'll just mention a third type.

The first is called stake and weave or the basket weave or Florida weave.

Those are all terms for the same kind of thing.

Back to Menu

Presenter

John Dysinger

All Recordings

A Bird’s-Eye View of Market Gardening

1h 3m

Berry Basics for Beginners

1h 24m

The “Up and Up” on Greenhouse Trellising

1h 1m

Hosting Interns

1h 5m

04 Unearthing Our Hidden Treasure

53m

02 Meet the Farmer: John & Pam Dysinger, Bountiful Blessings Farm

1h 14m

Meet the Farmers— Market Gardening Panel Discussion

1h 2m

The What & Why of Market Gardening

1h 3m

Healthy Profits: Growing Ginger and Turmeric

1h 2m

02 The Backyard Garden Blueprint

1h

01 The Backyard Garden Blueprint

56m

You Can Grow Healthy Transplants!

51m

Sound Doctrine