794: John Collet on Growing From Home Gardener to Market Gardener

Encouraging people to grow food and sell their extra produce at a farmers market

In This Podcast: John Collet is a long distance runner that decided after a lifetime of hobby gardening to jump all in to market gardening, without knowing he was doing it. After successfully growing a ton (literally) of food and listening to the Urban Farm Podcast he decided to jump in to his local farmers market and boy was he surprised and pleased.

Our Guest: John is a 5 Time NCAA Div 3 All American in Cross Country and Track who has Gardened off and on over the last 30 years. When he turned 50, he got serious about gardening and now has a 50’ x 100’ vegetable garden along with a separate space for apples, peaches, raspberries, black currants and cherries.

He and his family grow and eat from his garden year round in Zone 5B where he grows lettuce, kale, collards, spinach, carrots, beets, garlic, onions, leeks, peas, beans, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, turnips, kohlrabi okra and more. And then he found the problem with a garden that big…What to do with all the extra produce.

After listening to our podcast he was inspired to start selling his extra produce at the Farmers Market and found it was easy and a lot of fun. He interacted with people who are interested in healthy local food. Plus providing a service of locally grown food without synthetic chemicals means way more to him than anything he did in his prior career.

Book Recommendation: American Assassin by Vince Flynn

Visit www.UrbanFarm.org/JohnsHeritageGarden for the show notes and links on this episode!

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