Greens Profits, Winter Growing, and Quality Farm Tools | The Modern Grower #010
The week of May 04, 2025 on Modern Grower YouTube and podcasts.
At a Glance
How Salad Mix Can Drive Your Farm's Profitability - Greens can be your farm's biggest moneymaker, with salad mix alone often accounting for a third of total revenue. High prices ($8-12/pound), year-round demand, efficient growing methods, and superior quality compared to store-bought options make greens the perfect economic engine for small farms. By creating unique, premium mixes with edible flowers or microgreens, you can distinguish yourself from competitors while maximizing revenue per square foot. Watch
Boost Your Farm Income by 30% Without Adding Land: The Winter Growing Advantage - Adding just one more crop rotation can increase your farm revenue by 30% without expanding your acreage. Winter growing—whether through season extension or full winter production—requires more skill and equipment but offers higher prices, less competition, and ongoing customer engagement. New Zealand farmer Jodi Roebuck shares practical strategies for maintaining production despite cold, wet conditions. Watch
Quality Tools, Quality Crops: Why Smart Farmers Invest in Better Equipment - Market farmers often expect customers to pay premium prices for quality produce while hesitating to invest in quality farm tools themselves. Diego explains why this mindset limits farm efficiency and profitability. Investing in well-designed, durable tools may cost more upfront but delivers long-term value through increased efficiency, reliability, and profitability—just like the premium crops you sell. Watch
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How Salad Mix Can Drive Your Farm's Profitability
What if I told you that a single 50-foot bed of kale could bring in over $1,000 of revenue in a season? Or that one-third of your farm's income could come from salad mix and other greens?
While tomatoes might get all the glory at farmers markets, for many successful small farms, the humble salad green is the true profit center. Let me share why greens deserve serious consideration as the economic backbone of your farm operation.
Why Greens Stand Out in the Marketplace
Unlike many crops, locally grown greens offer clear advantages over what customers can find in grocery stores:
Superior Shelf Life: "This is often a huge advantage that I've heard from grower after grower about why chefs buy from them," says Diego Footer of Modern Grower. "Shelf life matters because it reduces waste, which means every dollar you spend as a customer is utilized."
Recognizable Quality Difference: While onions or carrots from the store might be comparable to local versions, the quality gap for greens is immediately obvious. Store-bought salad mix often turns slimy within days, while locally grown greens stay fresh and crisp much longer.
Year-Round Demand: Unlike seasonal crops, customers want fresh greens every week of the year. This consistent demand provides reliable income regardless of season.
Minimal Preparation: In our convenience-focused culture, foods that require no cooking or preparation have a distinct marketing advantage. Greens can be eaten straight from the bag with minimal effort, making them an easy sell to busy customers.
The Economics of Growing Greens
When we look at the numbers, the case for focusing on greens becomes even stronger:
Premium Pricing: While many vegetable commodities sell for around $3 per pound, salad mix commonly fetches $8-12 per pound—a 3-4x price advantage.
Efficient Production: With direct seeding tools like the Jang seeder and harvesting equipment like the Quick Cut Greens Harvester, greens production can be systemized for maximum efficiency.
Multiple Harvests: Certain greens allow for multiple cuttings from a single planting. As Curtis Stone found in his urban farm, Russian kale can yield up to 8 cuts at 12 pounds per cut from a 50-foot bed. That's 96 pounds of product from a single bed!
Space Efficiency: Few crops match greens for revenue per square foot. When compared to space-hungry crops like broccoli, green beans, or kohlrabi, greens are clear winners for small-scale intensive farming.
One Cut or Multiple Cuts?
One fascinating divide in the greens-growing community centers around whether to harvest once from a planting or take multiple cuts. Both approaches have passionate advocates among successful farmers.
The multi-cut approach:
Maximizes the return on transplanting effort
Reduces seed costs
Keeps beds productive for longer periods
The single-cut approach:
Generally provides the highest quality harvest
Avoids declining yields in subsequent cuts
Allows for more precise crop planning
"About half the farmers I've talked to like to do the cut-and-cut-again approach, and half of them do one cut," Diego notes. "The first cut is the best cut—it's not worth the effort to regrow."
For new growers, this presents an excellent opportunity for experimentation. Try side-by-side comparisons tracking:
Yield quantity from each cutting
Time between cuttings
Quality differences in leaf size, texture, and flavor
Labor requirements for each approach
Creating Premium Mixes That Stand Out
Standard salad mix is profitable, but creating signature custom mixes can elevate your farm's brand and command even higher prices.
The flexible nature of "salad mix" creates tremendous opportunities:
Seasonal mixes featuring what grows best in each season
Premium mixes incorporating edible flowers, herbs, or microgreens
Specialized mixes like braising greens for cooking
"Why sell the same thing that everybody else is selling?" Diego asks. "When I look around farmers markets, there's a lot of people selling lettuce. Lettuce is lettuce. But if your mix is unique to your farm or you create some branded lettuce mix by putting things like marigold petals in it, it stands out."
Jackie Hinchey built her entire farm brand around a premium salad mix incorporating edible flowers and microgreens—an idea that came from her customers. By taking a basic salad mix and upgrading it with special components, she created a signature product that customers specifically seek out.
Similarly, Jodi Roebuck blends various percentages of microgreens with field-grown greens to maintain consistency year-round, even during challenging weather. Since microgreens can be grown indoors with predictable yields, they help fill gaps when outdoor production fluctuates.
The Washing Dilemma
While everyone must harvest greens, not everyone washes them—and this represents another opportunity to optimize your operation.
"If you're not going to wash, you have to make sure you're selling a product that doesn't have to be washed, meaning it's clean, it's not dirty, there's not bugs in it," Diego advises.
Farmers like Ray Tyler and Michael Bell have eliminated washing from their processes, saving significant labor and infrastructure costs. This approach only works when:
Your growing methods produce exceptionally clean greens
You communicate clearly to customers that they should wash before using
Your market accepts unwashed greens
Washing does provide benefits beyond cleanliness—it removes field heat, which helps maintain freshness. If you do wash, ensuring greens are thoroughly dried before bagging is critical. Wet greens deteriorate quickly, while properly dried greens maintain quality much longer.
Action Steps for Maximizing Your Greens Profitability:
Analyze your current greens program against these benchmarks: Does salad mix account for at least 25-30% of your farm revenue? If not, consider dedicating more space and attention to salad production.
Experiment with unique mixes that incorporate special ingredients like edible flowers, herbs, or microgreens. Track customer response and willingness to pay premium prices for these signature products.
Test both single-cut and multi-cut approaches over a full season. Create a simple spreadsheet tracking yield, quality, and labor for each method to determine which approach maximizes profitability for your specific farm.
The beauty of focusing on greens is that they meet the criteria for an ideal market farm crop: high value per square foot, consistent demand year-round, and a clear quality advantage over mass-produced alternatives. While they do require attention to detail and system optimization, mastering greens production can create a solid financial foundation for your entire farm operation.
As Diego puts it: "If you can master greens and you can build a market for them, they will reward you by bringing a lot of cash flow into your farm. It checks all the boxes."
What steps will you take to upgrade your greens production this season?
Boost Your Farm Income by 30% Without Adding Land: The Winter Growing Advantage
Would you be interested in increasing your income by 30% next year without buying more land? Before you dismiss this as impossible, let me show you the simple math that makes it work.
Imagine two farms, both with 100 beds averaging $500 revenue per bed. Farm A completes three crop rotations per year, earning $150,000 annually. Farm B manages four rotations per year, bringing in $200,000. The only difference? One extra rotation.
This isn't wishful thinking—it's the power of winter growing and season extension.
Why Most Farmers Avoid Winter Growing
Most farmers, from beginners to veterans, focus on the easy growing period from late spring through early fall. It's understandable—nature is more forgiving during these months.
When you venture outside this comfort zone, the margin for error shrinks dramatically. Winter growing demands greater skill, specialized equipment, and precise timing. It's challenging, which is exactly why it offers opportunity.
As the difficulty increases, competition decreases. That's where your advantage lies.
Approaches to Winter Growing
You don't need to maintain full production throughout the depths of winter to benefit from this strategy. Here are three approaches to consider:
1. Season Extension
Add 30 days to both ends of your growing season with simple low tunnels or frost cloth. These extra 60 days can give you an additional rotation without significant investment. Quick hoops with insect netting or frost blanket can be an affordable way to push your boundaries.
2. Full Winter Production
If the numbers pencil out in your market, consider investing in permanent structures like high tunnels that can withstand heavy snow and wind loads. While initially expensive, the return on investment often makes them worthwhile.
3. Strategic Cold-Tolerant Crops
Use what would otherwise be idle beds by planting crops that can survive winter weather. Kale and tatsoi can be harvested throughout milder winters, while crops like garlic use otherwise dormant space during the off-season.
The Hidden Advantages of Winter Production
Beyond simply increasing revenue, winter growing offers several strategic advantages:
Keep your customer base active instead of disappearing for months
Attract customers from farms that close for winter
Command premium prices when supply is scarce
Maintain marketing momentum year-round
Reduce pest pressure during cooler months
Create more comfortable working conditions compared to summer heat
Learning from New Zealand's Winter Growing Expert
Jodi Roebuck farms in one of the wettest regions of New Zealand, facing winter challenges most of us can't imagine: 12 inches of rain monthly, powerful winds, and minimal sunlight.
Despite these conditions, winter production accounts for a significant portion of his annual income—between $4,000-6,000 weekly through the winter months. Here's how he makes it work:
1. Adjust Your Planting Area
"Our planning is simple," Jodi explains. "Crops take 2.5 times longer to grow outdoors in winter, so we plant 2.5 times more area to maintain consistent weekly harvests."
Key winter crops like mizuna go from 17 days to 45 days growth time, coriander from 45 to 90 days. By tracking these changing maturation rates, he can plan accordingly.
2. Protect Everything
Jodi keeps about one-third of his farm under hoops with insect netting year-round. The netting provides a 10-15% shade factor but crucially protects crops from driving rain.
"I call our row covers our insurance," he says. "Consistent light rain is fine; it's the driving torrential stuff that impacts both crops and soil."
On rare sunny winter days, Jodi temporarily removes covers to give plants direct sunlight before replacing them ahead of the next storm.
3. Maintain Plant Access with Smart Tarping
Rather than using large tarps for occultation, Jodi uses smaller tarps as "raincoats" to keep individual beds ready for planting. When weather clears, his team can immediately lift a tarp and plant into dry soil.
4. Maximize Protected Growing Space
Winter microgreens production becomes critical during difficult seasons. While field production slows dramatically, microgreens grown under protection maintain a relatively quick 12-day growth cycle.
"Microgreens are our 'get out of jail free' card," Jodi says. "We can increase volume super quick." His farm produces 2.5 tons of microgreens annually, with winter production matching or exceeding field salad volume.
5. Focus on Soil Drainage
With three meters of annual rainfall, soil that can't shed water quickly would become a pond. Jodi's success depends on excellent infiltration achieved through:
Deep soil preparation with broadforks initially
Building organic matter through compost additions
Maintaining permanent beds that act as "sponges"
Using pathways to channel excess water away
Action Steps:
Calculate your potential revenue increase by determining how many additional days or weeks of production you could reasonably add next season. Even extending by 4-6 weeks can boost annual income by 10-15%.
Start with cold-hardy, quick-maturing crops like spinach, kale, and certain Asian greens that perform well in lower light conditions. Track days-to-maturity carefully as they'll lengthen significantly in winter.
Experiment with a small protected growing area before making major investments. Try covering a few beds with quick hoops and appropriate fabric to assess how the system performs in your specific climate and market.
Winter growing isn't for everyone. It demands more attention, skill, and sometimes investment. But for those willing to push beyond conventional growing seasons, it offers a path to significantly higher farm revenue without expanding your footprint.
As Jodi observes, "The faster we can grow stuff, the better the farm business is." By understanding seasonal cycles and adapting your approach, you can keep crops—and income—flowing year-round.
Quality Tools, Quality Crops: Why Smart Farmers Invest in Better Equipment
There's a striking irony in how many market farmers approach their businesses. We expect customers to pay premium prices for our carefully grown produce, but when it comes to our own purchasing decisions, we often hunt for the cheapest option.
"Market gardeners expect the public to pay a premium for their products," observes Diego Footer, founder of Modern Grower (formerly PaperPot Co). "Their tomatoes might be $2.50 each versus $1.00 at the grocery store because they taste better. Yet those same farmers want to pay below market for the tools they buy."
This disconnect highlights an important question: If you understand why your crops command premium prices, shouldn't you apply the same logic to the tools you use to grow them?
The Hidden Cost of Cheap Tools
When starting out, it's tempting to look for the lowest-cost option for every farm purchase. After all, cash is tight and there are dozens of tools to acquire. But this approach often leads to frustration, inefficiency, and ultimately higher expenses.
"At some point, you get what you pay for," Footer explains. "I've seen farmers buy the cheap option, break it, buy it again, break it again, and finally break down and buy something good."
The pattern is familiar to many farmers:
Buy the inexpensive tool to save money
Experience performance issues or breakage
Lose time and crops due to equipment failure
Eventually purchase the higher-quality option
Realize the "expensive" option would have been cheaper in the long run
This cycle doesn't just waste money—it wastes something even more valuable: your time and attention during critical growing seasons.
Tools That Transform Farming
Not all farm tools are created equal. Some represent genuine breakthroughs that can dramatically improve efficiency. Diego's "Mount Rushmore" of essential market farming tools includes:
1. Caterpillar Tunnels - For the cost-to-return tradeoff, these provide incredible season extension capability at a fraction of the cost of traditional high tunnels.
2. Jang Precision Seeder - "You can't farm without it," Diego insists. The precision and efficiency gained compared to hand seeding is transformative—imagine trying to hand-seed a 100-foot bed with 10 rows. Many farmers remember the exact moment they switched from hand seeding to a precision seeder, and how it completely changed their operation.
3. CoolBot - The wash/pack area is "10 out of 10 important, but people starting a farm think about it 2 out of 10 percent of the time." A CoolBot allows farmers to create affordable cold storage essential for maintaining quality and extending shelf life.
4. Quality Hand Tools - For daily tasks, quality matters tremendously. A premium stirrup hoe might cost three times as much as a hardware store version, but it lasts for years while maintaining its edge and efficiency.
The Modern Grower Approach
When selecting tools to offer farmers, Diego applies a specific philosophy: simplification through curation.
"People don't want choice," he explains. "We might think people want all these choices, but they don't."
Rather than overwhelming farmers with dozens of options, Modern Grower focuses on tools that have proven their value across many farms. This approach reduces decision fatigue for farmers who already have enough decisions to make each day.
For example, when selling the Jang seeder, they offer a starter kit with just four essential rollers rather than forcing new farmers to navigate a spreadsheet of dozens of roller options. This simplification helps farmers get started with confidence rather than wondering if they've made the right choice.
Quality as a Through-Line in Your Farm
The most successful farms maintain consistency in their commitment to quality—from the seeds they purchase to the tools they use to the marketing materials they create. This creates a cohesive brand experience that customers recognize and value.
"It's all gotta match," Footer notes. "You can't sell good quality produce and have a bad-looking booth and look dirty or not be conversational. It's all gotta fit together."
This perspective echoes what many experienced farmers eventually discover: when quality is your brand promise, it must run through everything you do. The tools you use to create that quality are not an exception—they're foundational to delivering on that promise.
Value vs. Price: A Farmer's Calculation
Smart tool investment isn't about buying the most expensive option for every task. It's about understanding the relationship between value and price for your specific operation.
Consider these questions when evaluating any farm tool purchase:
How frequently will I use this tool?
What is the cost of failure or inefficiency in this task?
Will this tool still be useful as my farm scales?
What is the per-use cost over its expected lifetime?
How much time will this save me compared to alternatives?
"If you're a mechanic and use a certain tool every day, then maybe you think about buying the best one possible," Diego suggests. "But if you're barely using it, then fine."
Action Steps:
Audit your most frustrating farm tasks and identify where better tools might eliminate problems. Focus first on daily-use items where quality differences compound over time.
Calculate the true cost of your current tools by documenting failures, repairs, and replacement rates. Compare this to the upfront investment for higher-quality alternatives.
Test before investing by borrowing quality tools from other farmers when possible. Many seasoned farmers are happy to demonstrate their favorite equipment and explain why they chose it.
Perhaps the most valuable insight is recognizing that farms operate in an ecosystem of quality. When you ask customers to pay premium prices because you grow premium food, you're acknowledging that quality inputs create quality outputs. The tools you use are part of that same equation.
As Diego puts it: "Why would I want to invest in tools that are going to break down when I'm counting on them most? That's just like saying to customers, 'My vegetables might be good, they might not be—roll the dice!'"
Quality isn't just about what you sell—it's about how you grow.
Check out podcasts on the Modern Grower Podcast Network:
🔊 Carrot Cashflow: A farm business podcast
🔊 Farm Small Farm Smart: A market farming podcast
🔊 Farm Small Farm Smart Daily: Daily market farming clips
🔊 The Growing Microgreens Podcast: A microgreen farming podcast
🔊 The Urban Farmer Podcast and The Urban Farmer Rewind: The 10-Year Anniversary
🔊 The Rookie Farmer Podcast: Farmer Alec Smith talks about modern market farming with growers and other farming specialists.
🔊 In Search of Soil Podcast: An in-depth soil science podcast