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The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower's Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming?
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The great news is your goals and dreams are super realistic. Even a home on the smallest amount of land can be turned into a farm.
There are lots of good books on the subject, but check this one out.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865717656/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_P6xlFbG6FJHFF
Personally, I've turned my small lot into raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and grapes. All super low maintenance and all super rewarding with how much they produce.
I would highly recommend at least checking some of the ideas by this guy and his great book:
Jean Martin Fortier - The Market Gardener
“Grow better not bigger with proven low-tech, human-scale, biointensive farming methods
Making a living wage farming without big capital outlay or acreages may be closer than you think. Growing on just 1.5 acres, Jean-Martin and Maude-Helene feed more than 200 families through their thriving CSA and seasonal market stands. 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...”
Yes, there's a good book on this. The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower's Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865717656/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glc_fabc_X864GB7VGS8M5F1R2J9Y?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
From what I've seen, cut flower gardening is more profitable than vegetables, mainly because it's more difficult. I'd start with what you know, and expand from there.
I will for sure! Will likely post to /r/homesteading, but that's not for a while to come yet, haha.
A book that is well worth reading for small scale farming is The Market Gardener. Although much of this book is geared towards food production for sale, there is a wealth of information in there about how to manage weeds, improve soil, and maximize production without any use of synthetic additives (fertilizers, herbicides, etc).
To reduce your weed pressure, you might consider placing a large, black tarp over your growing area for a period of time. If you cover for 2 weeks, that should be enough time for many weed seeds to germinate, but then fail to grow because of lack of sun.
Just something to consider to work smart instead of hard!
The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower's Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865717656
It's focused on food crops you can grow at home (even in very small plots) but the techniques of gardening for high yield per area are extremely useful.
If you get some heirloom crops you like, this would be a great way to get started while giving you a great long term growth strategy.
thank you for your reply it always seems like there is way more to consider than trying to get a straight answer. Ill keep this in mind In the market garden book https://www.amazon.com/Market-Gardener-Successful-Handbook-Small-scale/dp/0865717656/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529224875&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=nmarket+garden
he states that a well wont cut it and you should be thinking about making a pond as a reservoir. It didnt really state how many gallons you would get out of it but I know my city doesn't like ponds or even big water holding tanks
First thing I would do is map the property. You can do some pretty good mapping with just some basic tools. I'd also map elevations as well with a transit. Once again, pretty easy to do if you do a little research.
Second would be to come up with a plan. Write it down and the prioritize what you would like to be done when. Since we all need to eat I would focus on food. By the time you get the mapping and planning it might be too late to plant anything this year. However, that shouldn't stop you from getting some infrastructure in place for next year. Setup your beds, run waterlines if needed, etc.
I would suggest you checkout The Market Gardner. Even if you aren't looking to sell produce it has some great ideas on gardening in general.
Hey there! So the broad fork is a tool used by a lot of organic and no-till/low-till to avoid conventional tilling and more destructive practices. After a few seasons of broad forking and proper compost amendments a lot of growers find the soil structure has improved so much they can retire the broad fork. The broad forks loosens the soil to about 8-9inches, but it doesn’t churn or turn it. Doesn’t destroy soil organisms and doesn’t expose underground carbon to the air, thus stopping the soils ability to sequester carbon.
I highly recommend doing some reading into the broad fork, or grelinette as it’s originally known as. Definitely check out The Market Gardner by Jean-Martin Fortier, a well known organic no-till farmer from Quebec. And The Living Soil Handbook by Jesse Frost, a well-known no-till farmer from Kentucky, he is also the host of the No-Till Market Garden podcast and YouTube channel.
Both sources talk about no-till/low-till and how the broad fork/grelinette fits in to those systems.
My personal background is in organic/sustainable production horticulture and ag.
https://www.notillgrowers.com/livingsoilhandbook/d9z5gkf1bbnhu0w5xxb3trngiqhwgo
For urban gardening, The Squarefoot Gardening books are great. Also The Market Gardener or The Urban Farmer. The author of that last book also has a youtube channel with lots of great videos (but stick to the playlists from a few years ago because recently he has gone full-on crazy conspiracy theorist since the pandemic hit.)
>The dream is a full homestead with chickens, bees, etc but it seems like this might be prohibitively expensive here in the UK given that I own no land.
Both bees and chickens are portable. But they also do not require lots of land. I have both here on my small urban homestead. Even a small yard has enough room for both.
The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower's Handbook for Small-scale Organic Farming https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865717656/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fzm-ybSPDRHKH
Here's the book from Amazon, called The Market Gardener
Where are you thinking about doing this?
I would suggest the following books to answer a lot of your questions:
The New Organic Grower http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Organic-Grower-Techniques/dp/093003175X/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1Q29EJFXDB0X0AXJXMM1
The Organic Farmers Business Handbook http://www.amazon.com/The-Organic-Farmers-Business-Handbook/dp/1603581421/ref=pd_sim_b_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=07V043P8X0847ZEHBGHT
Good Luck!
Here is another good read: https://www.amazon.com/Market-Gardener-Successful-Handbook-Small-scale/dp/0865717656
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