Bryan Hoffman

Hello! I want to get some seeds in and let winter take care of the stratification. Paw paw and persimmon are of particular interest to me, but hey I'd be happy to plant some peaches and plums too! Really anything that does well in zone 5. I did bury some peach pits already, but my community garden has room to spare and this feels like the right time to get seeds in. Unfortunately, I'm not established enough to trade much of anything yet, but I'd be happy to pay for some seeds.

Howdy!

If I have an abundance of asparagus berries, would it work to simply scatter them on a new plot in fall? My hope is that in great enough number, some amount would come up next spring. Most everything online seems to be trying to dissuade that approach.  Can anyone speak from experience on this matter?

Thank you! Health and blessings to you and your loved ones!

Howdy!

Guerilla gardening aside, I am only able to engage in developing land according to permaculture principles due to community membership. I'd probably not be able to afford it otherwise. Communities have to make decisions, and that's challenging. Even as an individual, making decisions can be hard. But with regards to my community: Everything has been "smooth-ing sail-ly [sic]" so far, but will it always?

I've seen decision making done on a big scale before. I imagine a lot of you are familiar with Rainbow Gathering/Family. Well the way they decide the next place to meet is by consensus. Everyone who wants to speak can come and a totem is passed around in one direction in a circle so that only one person is speaking at a time and there's an order to the process that ensures everyone will be heard. A gathering is not "organized" but it certainly has politics, and you can imagine that stuff akin to filibustering happens... and you'd be correct. But so far, with one year as the exception, this process has generated consensus that thousands have stuck too since the early 70's.

Preparing for weather is one thing, but how do you prepare for the human element?

Kevin Wilson wrote:You don't say where you are

I'm in the Chicago suburbs.

Illinois has the Cottage Food Law that makes local food product sales easy to engage in. If I got up and running making kombucha I could sell at farmer's markets, but international seed sales? I can see how that'd be an entirely different, legal beast now. Thank you! I'll have to seek additional counsel before I set up shop.

I would think going WordPress + Woocommerce would work well enough. That's what I'm most comfortable with so it works out nice. For others, maybe someone running a CSA, I could see a more custom web app being worthwhile where WordPress wouldn't cut it. Your point about photos taking the longest makes sense.  Since I'm very much a hobbyist at this point, it'd grow piece-wise and I'd manage adding two products at a time. Doing all of it in one go for a large nursery with many offerings could be a nightmare. It feels honest to display a plant you actually grew/cared for, rather than stock photos, but in any case the pictured plant is very likely not the one someone would receive. Do people get this or would it be worthwhile to include a small bit of copy explaining: "Every plant is unique therefore yours will be different from the one photographed" or something better but to the same effect?

John F Dean wrote:Not for me.   I have had two pros with excellent references design web sites for my organization that were hopeless.   A canned program would have been better ..... and that is what I went with.

Any chance you'd reveal what tool you used?

Kevin Wilson wrote:The main problem is getting traffic to the site… traffic that will buy. If you already have a local following who will respond to your ads and social media posts, that can work. But setting up a whole shopping cart site just for local sales is a lot of work (I’ve done it), you might be better off just attending local gardening events and holding a plant sale.

Thank you! Your explanation makes sense. I'll probably end up building an e-commerce site for seeds just for the fun of it. I know shipping plants is possible, but I'm not sure how much of a hassle it is. I can't afford a brick and mortar shop yet, and directing people to meet me in an apartment parking lot to buy a snake plant is a funny image. Oh I'd play it up. Sneak the plant to them under a coat and announce "I've got the goods."

Full disclosure: I guess I'm doing some market research as I'm a web designer. But that's not my only angle on this topic!

I have enjoyed propagation and seed saving and have thought about setting up an online site to sell seeds and also as a storefront for locals to buy plants. At this stage, for myself, it would mostly be for fun and learning, but deriving a full-time income from this sort of work eventually would be a dream come true.

Has a website helped you make monies? If so, is your site just informational in nature, or do you sell online too?

Mk Neal wrote:I’m also Illinois zone 5b!

We're neighbors!

I'm very interested in the ground nut. It looks like a great candidate for the vine layer of a food forest around here.

Eric Hanson wrote:

Actually blueberries like acidic soil, as in so acidic other plants frequently can’t survive.  That’s part of what makes Saskatoon berries so odd.  

Eric

Oh oops thank you for the correction! That is odd.

Thanks for replaying Eric. I'm thrilled to be doing this sort of stuff.

Eric Hanson wrote:
I did try growing Saskatoon berries a few years ago but they flopped for me on account of acidic soil and neglect.  I wish you better luck.

I was aware that blueberries liked alkaline soil, but didn't know saskatoon were the same way. It makes a lot of sense. I'm thinking I ought to run around with some pH test strips soon. I live right next to a saskatoon bush and it puts out a lot of root suckers. It'll be free to try propagating it this year.