If you have a little green space outside your home, you may be able to turn it into a thriving business. Urban farms and small country holdings can easily become a place where you grow fresh fruit and vegetables for people to buy. With little more than a third of an acre on your hands, you will have all the space you need. Here is how you should use it wisely.
Prepare Your Space
As with any business venture, preparation is key. When you have plants which are going to be grown, you need to make sure that they are in exactly the right sort of beds for maximum growth. Before you plant one seedling, make sure you spend adequate time carving out your land. You can use solutions like a precast retaining wall to quickly divide up your land, especially if it is uneven. If you have chosen to make raised planters, make sure they extend far enough down into the ground to accommodate the roots of your plants.
Research the Plants
It can be tempting to fill your new farm space with every vegetable imaginable but this is not going to be profitable. While you may decide to dedicate one bed to plants that take a long time to grow, like potatoes, your best bet would be for salad and other similar plants which grow very quickly. This allows you to have a quick turnaround of stock – sewing multiple harvests over the course of the year.
Research carefully what these plants need before you sow them. You might not have many opportunities to get a harvest depending on the size of your space so you need to make sure that you are getting healthy plants each and every time. From the quality of the soil to the amount of water to how much sun they need, each plant is different. You need to make sure that you are meeting the needs of each one for a good harvest each time.
Get the Gadgets
Urban and small-scale farming is a growing industry and therefore there is a lot of new technology being brought out to meet the needs of the new farers. You should take a look at some of this gadgetry and work out if any of it would be right for you. From mini tractors to harvesters, there is a lot out there which can be used to speed up the production of your farming.
Of course, you may decide that you want to do everything by hand, just like you might decide to be an organic farmer. There will be a market out there who prefer their crops to be cared for by hand and you could appeal to them with your produce.
Gardening and farming require a lot of technical knowledge and a lot of time and energy. If you are willing to put in the effort needed then you will hopefully have a profitable business before long. Is farming right for you? Take a look at how you could transform your garden to accommodate this business today!