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The Market Gardener: A Handbook for Successful Small-Scale Organic Farming

Jean-Martin Fortier,

Severine von Tscharner Fleming, The Greenhorns (Foreword)

4.51 · Rating details · 1,002 ratings · 69 reviews

Les Jardins de la Grelinette is a micro-farm located in eastern Quebec, just north of the American border. Growing on just 1.5 acres, owners Jean-Martin and Maude-Helène feed more than two hundred families through their thriving CSA and seasonal market stands and supply their signature mesclun salad mix to dozens of local establishments. The secret of their success is the ...more

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Paperback, 240 pages

Published March 4th 2014 by New Society Publishers (first published February 17th 2014)

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Dec 07, 2020 Tuck rated it it was amazing

Shelves: western-rural-with-tractors-horse, farming-books, wine-and-food, north-carolina-nonfiction

considered a classic of how to organic small Farm since it published in 2014? goes through planning, tools, soil, crops, harvesting and lots of techniques. though very site specific, still has lots of good advice and how-to. line drawing pictures, good short bibliography, informative appendices.

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Feb 24, 2018 January rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own-hardcopy, non-fiction, own-audiobook, food, gardening, homesteading

Probably the biggest impact this book had on my gardening was that, reading it in January (thankfully), I immediately drew up my year’s production goals, though not monetary like Fortier’s. I then created a bed plan based on these goals, which was an enlightening task. I drastically reduced some crops and significantly increased others. In the past, my goal was always to just grow something, anything. I’ve never had specific crop goals per se and have been more lackadaisical about how much of th Probably the biggest impact this book had on my gardening was that, reading it in January (thankfully), I immediately drew up my year’s production goals, though not monetary like Fortier’s. I then created a bed plan based on these goals, which was an enlightening task. I drastically reduced some crops and significantly increased others. In the past, my goal was always to just grow something, anything. I’ve never had specific crop goals per se and have been more lackadaisical about how much of this or that I’ve planted. As a result I’ve been disappointed or overwhelmed by the volume I’ve gotten from a particular crop. (Yes, talking to you, mutant zucchinis.)

The second most important thing I’ve gotten is a reframing of how I manage my beds. I initially got into gardening using the Square Foot Gardening method but as my garden has grown to almost 1000 sqft, this system has become a bit hard to scale up. I was actually losing crops (Where did I put that eggplant?) and the SFG direct sowing method just did not work in non-virgin soil. My beds are 36”x14’ and 24”x12’ so Fortier’s 30” wide raised row system can easily apply to my beds with a little fiddling. This year I’ll be focusing on planting plots (beds) not squares.

Thirdly, I’ll be investing in a number of new tools this year. Namely tarps, insect netting (for my broccoli particularly), a 30” bed rake with marking tines (genius!), and some long-handled stirrup hoes.

The crop appendix here is invaluable and I’ll be trying some new crop specific techniques this year.

Cucumbers: I loved the “umbrella” system he describes for cucumbers, a two leader system, with the second younger leader taking over as sole leader once the first has reached the top of the trellis and flopped over. Also having issues with cucumber beetles, his advice to plan a second planting to replace the first, inevitably diseased plants is so simple that it’s genius.

Tomatoes: I’m intrigued by the V-trellis system he describes but I feel like my current system is more productive. He advocates 24” beds with tomatoes in the center every 9” with two leaders, each coming towards the walkway, which is 36”. Including the walkway though I am able to squeeze almost double the plants in half the space with plants trellised to a single stem. Maybe a test row is in order, with total yield being the deciding factor. It might be that less densely spacing my tomatoes but allowing them two stems will increase overall yield per square foot.

I got this book from the library but I referred back to it so often to create my crop plan, I plan on purchasing a copy.
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Feb 09, 2014 Anna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: gardening-homesteading

I put off picking up this book because I have no inclination to sell any of my food, even though I devote quite a lot of time to producing all the vegetables my husband and I eat in a year. I shouldn't have delayed. Because Fortier's beautifully illustrated and easy to read book fills in gaps in my production campaign, giving me ideas for streamlining production so my crops will be more bountiful with less work. His focus on hand tools and on high-density production makes this a book that will s ...more

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Dec 23, 2017 Mike rated it it was amazing

This is one of my favorite gardening books, due to Fortier's excellent writing and practical knowledge running a small organic farm. It goes to show that you can be a very profitable farm on small acreage without the pesticides, without the chemical fertilizers and without the giant tractor/combine systems (not to mention the accompanying financing and debt) used by standard commercial farms. As my garden has grown from backyard plot to mini-farm size, I've increasingly incorporated the techniqu ...more

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Feb 29, 2020 Pam Dawling rated it it was amazing

Book Review, The Market Gardener, Jean-Martin Fortier
Jean-Martin Fortier’s The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming, has recently been published in English by New Society Publishers. It has been available in French since 2012, and has sold over 15,000 copies. Jean-Martin and his wife Maude-Hélène Desroches run an impressively productive, tiny bio-intensive vegetable farm in Southern Quebec, Canada. They use low-tech and manual farming methods (no tract Book Review, The Market Gardener, Jean-Martin Fortier
Jean-Martin Fortier’s The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming, has recently been published in English by New Society Publishers. It has been available in French since 2012, and has sold over 15,000 copies. Jean-Martin and his wife Maude-Hélène Desroches run an impressively productive, tiny bio-intensive vegetable farm in Southern Quebec, Canada. They use low-tech and manual farming methods (no tractors), and have found some unusual and successful high-yielding techniques.
They grow on just 1.5 acres, arranged as 10 plots each of 16 raised beds 30” x 100’ long. The paths are 18” wide. The garden plots surround the building, which was a rabbit barn before the farmers converted half of it into their house and half into a packing and storage shed. Their planning is a wonder of considered efficiency and function. I hear it’s also beautiful.
This book will be an inspiration to all those hoping to start in small-scale vegetable farming but lacking land and money. If you can gather the money to buy a small amount of land (or find some to rent), this book will provide you some of the expertise to make your very small vegetable farm successful, without tractors or employees. Neither Jean-Martin nor I would claim it will be easy, but this book shows that it is possible, given hard work and smart work. So don’t believe those who say it can’t be done. The tips from this book will ease your way, once you have served an apprenticeship on another farm.
Their small farm is called Les Jardins de la Grelinette, which translates as Broadfork Gardens, giving you a clue to one of the tools they value. In many ways, Jean-Martin is in the school of Eliot Coleman, producing top-notch vegetables and books from a small piece of land with only a small workforce. Even the drawings remind me of those in Eliot’s books. Biologically intensive production can feed the world, as well as provide a decent living for farmers. Attention to detail is required, as there is little slack for things to go very wrong.
They run a 120 share CSA for a 21 week season and sell at two farmers’ markets for 20 weeks. They grow a ponderous quantity of mesclun (salad mix)! They even sell it wholesale. Jean-Martin and Maude-Hélène studied the value of all the crops they grew, comparing sales with labor and other costs, including the amount of land used and the length of time that crop occupied the space. They provide a table of their results, assigning profitability as high, medium or low. A quick glance shows you why 35 beds of their 160 bed total grow mesclun – number 2 in sales rank, despite being only number 19 in revenue/bed. This is because salad mix only takes 45 days in the bed, and then another crop is grown. This book deftly illustrates the importance of farming to meet your goals and to fit your resources. My climate is very different from Quebec. I’m providing 100 people for a 52 week season. We don’t want 300 pounds of salad mix each week! We do want white potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and winter squash to feed us all winter.
And yet I find more similarities than differences. We both want high-yielding, efficient farms that take care of the planet, the soil and the workers as well as the diners. We value quality, freshness and flavor. We do season-extension to get early crops in spring. When novelty is important, we grow several varieties of a crop.
The start-up costs at La Grelinette ($39,000) include a 25’ x 100’ greenhouse, two 15’ x 100’ hoophouses, a walk-behind rototiller and several big accessories, a cold room, irrigation system, furnace (remember they are in Quebec!), a flame weeder, various carts, barrows and hand tools, electric fencing, row cover, insect netting and tarps. Jean-Martin sets out all the costs, all the revenue from each crop – valuable solid information for newbies or improvers alike.
I came away from this book with several ideas to consider further. Jean-Martin recommends a rotary harrow rather than a rototiller. It has vertical axes and horizontally spinning tines, and stirs the top layers of soil without inversion, being kinder to the soil structure. It comes with a following steel mesh roller, which helps create a good seed-bed. Earth Tools BCS in Kentucky sell Rinaldi power harrows that fit the bigger BCS walk-behind tractors. The Berta plow is another BCS accessory that Jean-Martin favors, in his case for moving soil from the paths up onto the raised beds. I think we could really use one of those too.
Broadforks and wheel-hoes are already in our tool collection, but the use of opaque impermeable tarps to cover garden beds short-term between one vegetable crop and the next is really new to me. These tarps are sold as silage/bunker/pit covers, and are 6mm black, UV-inhibited polyethylene. Weeds germinate under the plastic, where it is warm and moist, and then they die for lack of light. Earthworms are happy. The tarps can be cut to the width of one bed, and rolled after their 2-4 weeks of use. This could be a useful alternative when there is not enough time to grow a round of buckwheat cover crop (or it is too cold for buckwheat, or your tiller is in the shop). Weed pressure on following crops is also reduced. Tarps can be used to incorporate a flail-mowed cover crop as an alternative to using a tiller.
At Twin Oaks, our gardens are in many ways like a CSA with one big box for the whole community, but in other ways we are more like a self-sufficient homestead – we try to keep our bought-in inputs to a minimum, so producing our own compost and growing cover crops for increasing soil nutrients are valuable to us. They do not fit so well for a micro-farm in the cash economy. For La Grelinette, it is better to buy in compost and poultry manure and keep using all the land to grow more vegetables.
The book includes tables of which crops go where, when to plant in the greenhouse and outdoors, pest control options, and lists of what to grow. The appendices include brief bios of 25 crops, and a short list of the crops they don’t grow and why (potatoes, sweet corn, winter squash, celery and asparagus).
Jean-Martin is obviously very particular about running their farm as efficiently as possible, but don’t make the mistake of thinking he must be a grim workaholic! He is very funny with his iconoclastic sidebars. “Crop rotation is an excellent practice . . . to ignore.” (He is addressing new farmers who will likely find plans need to change to improve productivity. He doesn’t want slavish dedication to a crop rotation to prevent someone seizing on a better idea.) His paragraph on the hazards of inexperienced workers with insufficient training and oversight was so good I read it out to my crew. We have never had leeks sliced off at the surface or pea plants pulled up as harvest methods, but we have had carrot seedlings pruned to a uniform height of an inch, rather than thinned to a one inch spacing! If you get a chance to hear Jean-Martin speak, don’t pass it up. He is fully fluent in English as well as French, and does a hilarious skit of French people living in Quebec who found it hard to buy good leeks (until they discovered La Grelinette). His spoof of French-accented English has to be heard!
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May 06, 2019 Kate rated it it was amazing

I started reading another "market gardener" book at the same time, but found Fortier's book to be far easier to read, and the language far more accessible (perhaps due to the original being written that way, or the translator). Even if you have no intention of selling anything you produce, this book provides great information on crop rotation, organic methods of fertilization, and successive planting - basically everything needed to keep your garden organic as well as maintaining the highest pro ...more

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Nov 17, 2017 Nick Neaton rated it it was amazing

Amazing. Life changing.

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Jan 12, 2018 Andrew Welleford rated it it was amazing

This is truly an exceptional book, one that I refer to regularly as a home gardener. It is full of concise, thoughtful, and practical information related to growing high-quality vegetables. The charts and illustrations are simple but clear and effective. Fortier is on the cutting edge of small-scale growing, and I look forward to learning more about his new research farm in his next book.

If I have one small quibble, it's that the actual shape of the book is slightly awkward: its wide pages flop ...more

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Mar 05, 2017 bibliotekker Holman rated it really liked it

Too many organic farmer memoirs are airy affairs about hugging trees and communing with nature, it is good to finally see something "nuts and bolts" that puts aside sentimentality. Fortier illustrates that a profitable small-scale operation is possible even in cold northern climates like Quebec. I may never get further than the garden that is about all I can handle, but Fortier shows that more is possible. ...more

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Oct 19, 2017 Paula rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Informative

Good food, organically and locally grown is the trend of the future. The market garden satisfies our needs and benefits the environment as well. You won’t get rich, but you will have a fulfilling life. This book will definitely set you on the path with enough detailed information to make a viable business. I wish I’d read this many years ago. I highly recommend it to everyone who wants to make a positive impact on the world.

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May 12, 2017 Amy Beasley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017

Love this text

When I retire, I am going to be a full time market gardener. Informative and inspiring, this book is a treasure.

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Sep 27, 2019 Keen Chew rated it it was amazing

The Market Gardener is a guide written by Jean-Martin Fortier, an organic farmer based in Quebec, on how to start and establish a successful market garden. A market garden is defined as a place where vegetables and fruits are grown for direct sale to the consumer. In The Market Gardener, Fortier shares valuable insights concerning major aspects of starting and maintaining a market garden, such as site management and selection, soil fertility, and his methods of growing healthy, delicious produc The Market Gardener is a guide written by Jean-Martin Fortier, an organic farmer based in Quebec, on how to start and establish a successful market garden. A market garden is defined as a place where vegetables and fruits are grown for direct sale to the consumer. In The Market Gardener, Fortier shares valuable insights concerning major aspects of starting and maintaining a market garden, such as site management and selection, soil fertility, and his methods of growing healthy, delicious produce. He stresses the importance of soil quality, and touches on ideas such as cover crops, the benefits of compost, and weed management strategies. For aspiring farmers, Fortier’s advice on site selection is indispensable, and his insights into choosing the right piece of farmland helps combat potential problems. His farm, Les jardins de la grelinette, is only on a ten acre plot of land. Even so, Fortier is able to make a living as a farmer by implementing his intensive growing practices.
Although The Market Gardener is a comprehensive guide on how to start a market garden, only some of the considerations presented in the book are applicable to a home gardener. Some proposed ideas, such as building a hoop house, are not only too much of a time and space investment, but aren’t practical for the average gardener. However, many of the main ideas Fortier presents are.
Methods to increase soil fertility and biology are some of the most prominent ideas in his book, because better soil and conditions go hand in hand with better produce and healthier plants. Adding compost to beds is one way he does so. In The Market Gardener, he asserts that, “the organic amendment we use in the greatest quantity is compost, as we believe it is the best ingredient for building and maintaining a healthy soil” (Jean-Martin 61).
Fortier lessens his workload with targeted weed control methods, such as the “stale seedbed technique” (105), in which prepared beds are left fallow for ten to fifteen days so that dormant weed seeds germinate, then lightly worked under so as to leave them nearly weedless for a future crop. Another method he describes is covering the area with a black tarp. When weed seeds germinate from the heat created by the tarp, they eventually die from the lack of light. These practices are easy-to-do and low-tech, and using them, even novice gardeners can diminish weed pressure in their own gardens.
Caring for the soil’s integrity is yet another guideline Fortier follows when operating his market garden. Because the biology of the soil is so closely linked to soil health, destroying its structure can be detrimental to its quality. Light cultivation of the soil is sometimes recommended, but he warns that working the soil too heavily and too deeply can damage its biology and structure, negatively affecting plant health, thereby reducing potential yields.
In The Market Gardener, Fortier also covers the plants that are grown on the farm, and gives important details on how they grow them, such as the recommended distance between plants, harvest, and general guidelines. Many of these ideas, such as intensive spacing, where plants in cultivation are planted close to each other to maximize yield, are especially applicable to a home gardener, who might want to grow more with less space. The harvest and general information could help gardeners find and decide to grow new plants, or just improve and adapt their current, preferred growing methods.
The implementation of some of these ideas into a farm or home garden shows promise. After following these general guidelines for over ten years, Fortier asserts that, “A better understanding of what enhances soil fertility can translate into better growing practices. We see the proof of this when we harvest high yields of top-quality vegetables, at the same time as we see our gardens getting ever more productive, and with increasingly less effort” (54). Although a home gardener might not find all of the suggestions from The Market Gardener useful, many of the core ideas and principles will be of great use to any gardening audience. Furthermore, they are realistic to implement and the techniques mentioned are proven to work. If you want to garden successfully while caring for yourself and the earth, you’ll find that The Market Gardener is a must-read.
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Apr 12, 2020 Lauren rated it liked it

I appreciate Fortier authoring such a comprehensive handbook about his growing operations, and I certainly learned a lot, but I doubt I will use many of his methods in my future vegetable farm because I disagree with his basic principles about what small-scale organic farming should be. To Fortier, efficiency and high yields are the gods that determine his every decision. This is the wrong way to try to model some new, better version of society. Because it’s precisely these “easy way out” approa ...more

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Jan 18, 2019 Zora rated it it was amazing

I'm not a market gardener, though I may be a one-crop one in the future. Still, I find the entire back-to-local organic small-farm movement heartening and am very interested in it. The information here is clearly presented, and as I'm an intensive-planting, seed-starting home gardener, there was useful information for me in here as well. (I push spacing with square-foot gardening concepts, and it looks like I can push it even harder)

Fortier is smart, a good planner, and the smart and thoughtful ...more

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Jun 07, 2017 Luke Merrick rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 25, 2020 Melissa rated it really liked it

A pretty comprehensive guide if you're starting a market garden. I really appreciated the templates and examples they included for crop planning and crop rotation in particular--even if you're using very different crops in a different climate, seeing those types of hands-on templates is really useful.

The most useful part for me was the crop rotation section. I'm nowhere near market gardening, just doing raised beds in my backyard, but the level of complexity that went into their crop rotation p ...more

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Oct 04, 2020 An Te rated it really liked it

A splendid book full of notes on what it takes to grow your own organic gardening business. As my family has already gathered, the techniques are similar on the most part and the plants capable of being sowed and reaped very much depends on the climate of the area and the soil structure.

The book was very useful for ecological insights and organization of the business, to avoid excessive toil. This was extremely helpful. Furthermore, the breakdown of crops by profibtality, ease of growth, cold ha ...more

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Sep 17, 2019 Lgordo rated it really liked it

I'm not a market gardener, I'm a backyard gardener in search of real information. Most of the stuff for hobbyists is thin and dictates rather than explains. There's also a ton of crap info out there.

This book was not crap info. True, his analysis of mechanical equipment and heated greenhouses was not relevant to me, but his discussion on soil amendments, crop rotation, and succession planting certainly was.

This is not a book by someone who has gulped down the organic kool-aid. Fortier does his ...more

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Jan 19, 2018 Jessica Ferguson rated it liked it

This book is full of information, but for the time being, my gardening is still more of a hobby than a thriving farm, so some of the techniques and tools mentioned in this book are too expensive or large-scale. For example, I do not think it would be wise for me to purchase hoop houses or extensive watering systems. (maybe one day!) I do recommend the book for those wanting to have a garden for income, but maybe not for hobby gardeners.

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Aug 15, 2018 Dave Allen rated it it was amazing

Fantastic. So much information packed into this book - my head was spinning.

Fortier details the basic through the intricate here, from business planning to soil quality to pest control and beyond. Without a doubt, this book is worth it's weight in gold whether you're planning to start-up a full-blown farm, or just planting a couple of tomatoes in the backyard. It's only summer, but I can't wait for next spring to put a lot of his advice into practice. ...more

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Oct 30, 2018 William Guerrant rated it really liked it

The author's success is inspiring, but like Joel Salatin's it is not (in my judgment) normative. There is a risk that books like this will give aspiring organic farmers unrealistic expectations. Having said that, there is lots of valuable practical advice and information here. Growers in warmer climates should be careful however to keep in mind that the specifics of planting/scheduling etc. will not apply to them. ...more

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Feb 21, 2017 Justin rated it liked it

Seems more of a guide for professionals than for people trying to start gardens at home.
I think I am at a tough place as more of the beginning gardening books are too high-level.
This seems like it would be a better fit, but I didn't see to much here that jumped out at me as something I should be doing now. ...more

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Jun 03, 2017 Matt Parker rated it liked it

Shelves: diy

Definitely an interesting addition to the field. Makes a useful complement to Eliot Coleman's New Organic Grower, but I'd start with that one - it's more comprehensive.

(Disclaimer: I am not a market gardener, so I don't have the scale to try most of what they talk about, nor the economic motives to want to) ...more

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Dec 25, 2018 Jacob Peanosky rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: farming-gardening

Very informative book on starting your own high intensity market garden. I loved to see how J.M. grew his garden into a business that sets the trend for future food growers. There are a few methods in this book that I will avoid implementing into my own garden. But nevertheless, this book is a must read for anyone serious about growing food.

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Dec 13, 2019 Renaud Vincent rated it liked it

Highly interesting if you’re looking forward to farm on the short/mid-term. This not being my reality, I ended up reading through sections quickly as the author went quite in the details. The information provided are of quality, but most time the language used is familiar. I will surely appreciate this book, coming back to it, when I plan on growing vegetables.

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Jan 20, 2020 Nancy added it · review of another edition

I love reading about those who are 'doing it', and especially 'outside the box'. This kind of knowledge may become invaluable in the future we all face. 'JM' gives us all the info one needs to 'do it ourselves'... and in chilly Canada! I found this book very inspirational... plus, you can check him out on You Tube : ( ...more

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Apr 07, 2020 Sujith Padaru rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Beuatiful, concise and precise book about small scale organic vegetable gardening.
Everything here comes from the experience of Jean, there are no superlatives here, no magic tricks, just observations, and technique that has made his farm profitable.
A must read for anyone interested in organic farming.

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Mar 12, 2018 Erin Casteel rated it really liked it

Shelves: garden

Would probably be indispensable if I wanted to earn money growing vegetables. Seems like a very helpful, thorough, evidence-based guide to profitable small-scale farming. I'm a hobbyist, though, so I didn't find much tailored to my interests and needs. Still, an interesting and engaging read. ...more

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Sep 21, 2018 Andrea rated it really liked it

Wonderfully informative, and breaks things down in manageable chunks. Perfect for referencing at a moment's notice. Geared towards both beginners and experienced farmers. The charts and guides are extremely helpful! ...more

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Apr 25, 2019 Carolyn Semple faucher rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned, garden

A must read for anyone considering a career in agriculture. It is ‘the’ how-to manual of starting a small vegetable farm. JM has been extremely profitable and successful with his techniques. I have been trying many of his techniques, and I have found them helpful. Easy to read & navigate.

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