How to Grow Vegetables for Profit
If you’ve ever thought that you would like to grow a garden, but you don’t believe you have enough space (or know-how), it’s time to stop making excuses and get started! Growing a garden is an easy pastime that you can do in your spare time, with just a few resources at your disposal. Not only can you grow food to feed yourself and your family, when you join in to a simple program you can take advantage of the experience of others and have access to their entire recipe for success.
Gather Gardening Tools
A few simple tools are needed when growing vegetables. Most of them are probably already in your garage or tool shed. (Or you may even be able to borrow them from a neighbor who had good intentions but never actually planted a garden)!
You’ll need: shovel (tiller if you have a large area to till), spade, garden rake, hoe, hose, and pruner.
Other helpful tools include: compost bin, harvest baskets, rain barrel, trellis, or wheel barrow
Prepare Soil
When you’ve chosen a spot for your garden that will receive at least 6, preferably 8, hours of sunlight per day, you’ll need to prepare the soil. If the soil has grass on it, you can either dig up the grass or use a newspaper cover over the winter to kill the grass and allow it to become nutrients for the soil. Once you have the grass removed, use your rake or tiller to break up the large clots of dirt and mix in some fertilizer or potting soil to increase its richness.
Plant Seeds
Choose which vegetables you want to plant, or go with a system such as Seed to Cash, in order to make the best profit. Choose fast growing vegetables that offer a high yield in a low amount of time. Sow your seeds directly into the soil after the final frost, according to directions on your seed package. Water and keep your seeds warm while they develop under the soil. When the plants pop through the soil and show two or three leaves, loosen the roots and separate them, giving them the room they need to grow. As the growing season continues, just be sure to water (assuming it doesn’t rain) and keep the weeds from choking out your plants. Otherwise, you can take it easy while your plants do all of the work on their own!
Harvest and Sell Your Vegetables
In as little as two weeks, depending on the vegetables you grow, you’ll find yourself with a harvest of veggies that you can take to the farmers’ market or sell to friends and neighbors. With as little as 100 square feet of growing space you can get up to $200 return on your investment with a Seed to Cash pilot guide. And that’s only the beginning!
Once you realize how easy it is to grow your own vegetables for profit, you’ll find yourself developing a larger garden plot, having fun watching your vegetables grow, and making a wheel-barrow full of money doing it.
