we are off topic so ill stop.
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Goats as well!
Yes, they are profitable and your grocery store will buy them.
However the sprouts have a extremely high spoilage rate and the grocery store can fuck them off by not storing them right and you eat the loss.
We prefer baby greens which take a week longer but were alot less likely to spoil.
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A good production and distribution strategy will be dependent on your personal business goals and situation. If you just want it to be a side gig youād go about it differently than if you wanted to live off the income. But google some other successful farms who are doing what you wanna do an emulate them, no need to reinvent the wheel.
Funny I was thinking of this cause Iām down near Palm Springs and trying to get something new started on the side. Palm Springs is like the perfect market, shit load of foo foo high end restaurants and hipster custys from OC and LA everywhere. Two weeks ago Iām getting my truck washed and I see this sketchy kinda ghetto looking dude in a hoop roll up to the parking lot, then I see this truck roll up they get out shake hands start talking etc than I see the dude hand old buddy a nice wad of cash that he counts and puts in in a bank bag. Iām thinking damn this is some kind of weird dope deal or something. The old guy opens up his shell and starts packing this dudes car full of micro greens it was a big ass order lol since then Iāve been thinking about it so it was funny to see this post.
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If you utilize coco coir mats and reusable led trays, storage gets taken out the equation.
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Itās usually a post harvest storage problem
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who wants day old microgreens? thats liek me and beer, freshness is important.
There a huge overlap of people in the āeats microgreens/rabbitsā camps
We did like a dozen meat rabbits for a year or two on a 6āx6ā rack using simple cedar slat boxes. The primary plant we grew was sunflower, usually to about 3" tall. Soaked em in a bucket of water/compost tea overnight, then just spread out over the tray and on to the rack, which was all done in a greenhouse.
You can also just sprout the seeds in a 6" thick layer in the bottom of a bucket with some holes in it.
In the spring/summer/fall they got supplemental whatever green plants were growing around as well.
Compost was ācoldā and phenomenal stuff.
Personally disliked rabbits in a cage, but you could do quail on the same system, in a small garage under Leads and produce local: microgreens, quail eggs, quail meat, and ānaturalā fertilizer. All of that stuff sells for a premium, especially in a bougie ass desert.
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Been buying sprouts/microgreens for a few years at the local farmers markets.
There has been a big influx of sprout only vendors at the market in the past year. Some sell whole trays, some will snip the sprouts fresh in front of you and then most everybody has baggies or plastic deli clamshells that are ready to go.
The average price for the baggies/clamshells is $5 and they vary on how filled up they are. I will say though that the majority of sellers are really skimping on product.
All these people seemed decently profitable until one of the Farmers who normally grows full sized veggies got into the game and started selling sacks that were 5x bigger for $3. At that price itās not even worth running lights to grow my own.
This is why diversifying is Important. I donāt just sell cucumbers, I also sell three different types of pickles. I donāt just sell tomatoes, I also sell tomato sauce. I donāt just sell hot peppers, I also sell hot sauce and pickled peppers. All made in our commercial kitchen right here on the farm where the base ingredients are grown. I do source a few ingredients like honey, but only from local farmers. I push the farm to table thing hard and charge more as a result. I also target the farmers markets in more affluent areas.
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Thats why you send premature crops in coco coir mats with little led lit trays so the end retailer can harvest when needed.
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Iāve received mache this way, and I fully agree
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I almost forgot. I never fail to sell out of heart and star shaped cucumbers. I was looking for a picture and canāt find any. They sell plastic molds you just slide over a cucumber while theyāre small and they grow in to the mold.
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Have you found those molds for cheap? All the ones Iāve seen are stupid expensive for what they are.
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$4 or so, but I recoup that the first time I use it. Is it too expensive for what it is? Most definitely. Has it paid for its self and is making money after two weeks? Yes. I get a couple seasons out of them also.
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2by10-cucumbermoldbottom.stl (75.7 KB)
2by10-cucumbermoldtop.stl (74.9 KB)
=
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Thanks for the STL!
Never heard of or seen this before, but now I want to play around with fusion360 and see what kind of crazy cucumbers I can get going this year
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I think this would really be well suited for vacuum forming, 3d printed positives would make that easy. Would almost certainly yield better results than a printed mold
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Square watermelons and bonzai kittens come to mind.
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