As I've been doing research to start a little business growing produce for sales at a produce stand, or farmer's market, I watched hundreds of hours of video, and studied a LOT! I've been an avid home gardener for decades, but this concept of producing as much as you can in a season for sale, or simply pushing as hard as possible is new stuff for me. Ideas like not planting more than a few different crops so that you can maximize sales were strange. As with most of life, 20% of your effort can produce 80% of the rewards.
On the other side of the coin.... Most of your hard work winds up just being wasted effort. You have to concentrate on what pays!!! This is true with everything in our lives, including business, relationships, and even weeding! I don't just mean money, when I say "Pays". Every reward in life is affected. I've tried to limit my plans for gardening, to just the 20% of crop types that will give me the greatest rewards in sales, as well as reduced effort.
One of the crops that gives a good reward for your effort is tomatoes. Each plant has the potential to produce 10 - 15 - or even as high as 20 pounds of fruit. At Today's Supermarket prices of an average $2 US per pound, you can do quite well. I set out to plant 40 tomato plants, in my little green house, hoping to produce 600 lbs (272 Kg) of fruit. In order to do this, you have to coax the plants to put every bit of energy into making tomatoes. You can do this with pruning!!! Here's a video that I made to show the techniques that I've learned.
