'Next most profitable' cash crop in greenhouse?

[maryjaneismyfre]

Yeah, also check out growingpower.org.. Remember, people have gotta eat and have to shit..so if you are in the business of toilet paper or growing food, there is money to be made just dependent upon your marketing, entrepeneur and cultivation skills.

Fish troughs or IBC's with tilapia and aquaponic greens and herbs are winners. Feeding the fish with maggots, BSF larvae, homefarmed snails and earthworms eliminate the feed cost and add value. If one has a cow, sour solid milk can feed maggots, or crushed excess snails can, or waste from local sources can. Fish and chicken guts, offal and cullings get cycled back in through the crawlies. A well fed and well plant-filtered kilolitre IBC can produce 30kg of fish in 12 months. If this is all greenhoused, the water mass creates an incredibly humid environment with stable temperatures which can also be taken advantage of for mushroom production side by side or growing out specialty plants for market like orchids etc.. Make friends with your local tissue culture lab.. Or learn how to do at home yourself ( like I still must haha) and propagate plants. Look for value where no one has seen it before..

 

[skyview]

Look to health food stuff, like goji berries. Heck, shiitake and other mushrooms as well, don't need a green house.
Or get into kettle corn and farmers markets/fairs. I know a lady that makes a killing with kettlecorn alone.

For the fist time, I'm growing goji berry bushes in my greenhouse now. There was an early attack of aphids but I sprayed them with insecticidal soap and they seem to be fine now but not really flourishing. I have some outside grown from cuttings that did well last summer. Besides selling the berries, I think people would be like to buy the seedlings too.

 

[skyview]

It's tricky, but Wasabi.
http://www.realwasabi.com/cultivation/index.asp

I've been growing some wasabi outside. It's doing fairly well but I haven't figured out how to process it yet.

 

[trichrider]

decorative hanging baskets. fuschia clones well.

 

[ronbo51]

Grow your own food and pretend you had to go through the trouble to haul it somewhere and sell it. The money you save by providing your family with fresh year round greens and other crops will be just like money in the checking account.

 

[itisme]

AQUAPONICS! Youtube it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYR9s6chrI0

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Grow your own food and pretend you had to go through the trouble to haul it somewhere and sell it. The money you save by providing your family with fresh year round greens and other crops will be just like money in the checking account.

Not to mention the money you won't have to spend on illnesses.

Don't want to be rich... just want to be super healthy and have an abundance of rich foods available.

I like your thinking.

Stay Safe!

 

[theJointedOne]

chinese medicinal herbs

 

[BasementGrower]

dude the big thing making money is wood.. start collecting and harvesting trees. season it . sell it . while ur doing that.. u can use the bark.. for a nice compost mix.. u could start a worm farm.. for worm castings.. i mean its endless.. u have land.. u have greenhouses.. if i had that room . id have 10 businesses !!! str8 up. get on that . start composting grass and leaves.. making black gold. then u can sell bags of it to local stores n such.. go around and ask ur local garden stores what they need... and what they need at a better rate?

 

[skyview]

chinese medicinal herbs

Chinese vegetables could also become popular. I'm growing Allium tuberosum (韭菜) in both my greenhouse and outside. It's an amazingly flavorful plant something between leeks/garlic/onions/chives. It's very popular in the Asian stores but I've never seen it anywhere else. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allium_tuberosum

 

[theJointedOne]

Skyview- cool, yeah a buddy is looking into the medicinal herb scene. Supposedly the herbs need to grow together in harmony and cannot be mono cropped, which is cool. There is a high demand for these from what I hear. When i get some specifics I will post them up

 

[skyview]

theJointedOne - I visited a hospital in China on my first trip there in 1980. They had a medicinal herb garden in the back and after examining a patient would go back and pick fresh herbs for them. I have a picture of it on my FaceBook page, not sure if the link will work but it's:

http://facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=19027087304&set=a.19026817304.8025.684822304&type=3&theater

 

[Sinkyone]

There is a local farm in my area that has been having great success with organic aquaponic lettuces.

 

[keifsweat]

Ive heard potted bamboo

 

[coldcanna]

Ditto on the aquaponics, tilapia are very resilient and can eat almost anything. A couple years ago I saw an article about Haitian farmers that put their pig manure into the tilapia pond causing algae to grow, which in turn feeds the fish. And as far as high quality protein goes, tilapia have an exceptional feed conversion rate and therefor your doing your part to improve the food chain.

Have you looked into community supported agriculture (CSA's)? There's a big push of consumers trying to buy directly from the grower. I think if you network in your community and build a strong base you'll know exactly what and how much to grow, since your responding directly to your customer base. I think the stability of knowing that you have a buyer is more profitable than just growing a more expensive plant and trying to peddle it after the fact.

 

[wintergreens]

I grew wheat grass for pet stores for years! Hit up a few taco trucks, i know you could do good on radish, carrot, cilantro are all fast crops with a high demand.

 

[skyview]

It seems like the real challenge is finding high demand but low supply. With things like lettuce, there's high demand but so much supply the price is low. I'm thinking more about finding things we can grow for Asian grocery stores - they have a high demand for things that most people have never heard of.

 

[foomar]

dude the big thing making money is wood.. start collecting and harvesting trees. season it . sell it

An unused greenhouse or polytunnel certainly makes an efficient dryer for fast seasoning wood , six weeks in the summer is as good as kiln dried.

Done the maths on last years greenhouse related fundraising activities , even in a poor economy the hanging baskets still did the best , close second was a trial batch of tobacco plants that sold out fast at a sunday market , doing a lot more this season as i could have sold ten times more or priced them higher.

Have started some early potatoes in the unheated greenhouse , they will crop when the market price for earlies is at its highest for our own use , and aim to have 500 Herb plantlets for sale by Easter , easily sold at a good profit from cuts.


If you can take a long term view and will be there for some years , running in a Grapevine offers some value , climate and space permitting.

 

[coldcanna]

An unused greenhouse or polytunnel certainly makes an efficient dryer for fast seasoning wood , six weeks in the summer is as good as kiln dried.


Brilliant foomar! So simple but such a great idea, never heard of or seen anybody do that... Over here that can make the difference of $150/cord... Looks like I know what I'm building whenever the ground here dries up

 

[foomar]

With our soggy climate it takes a full year minimum drying as cordwood to get to 25% with any species worth burning , cut and split when wet then a couple of months under an open ended polytunnel got it down to 13%.

Firewood business is a bit dodgy here now , hard to find real quality seasoned hardwoods , and worth good money if you can source it cheap or fell it yourself.


Have an arrangement with local tree surgeons who are free to tip anything burnable without charge , usually the gnarly crotch pieces they cant be arsed to saw up or thinner limbs that are perfect firewood unsplit , even the chippings get 50 quid a tonne as power station carbon offset fuel now.

What they dont seem to realise is the high value of many of these ugly pieces to woodturners and sculptors , have sold upturned root boles as landscape features for more than a load of logs would fetch.



Sounds a bit old fashioned but still very easy to sell , house number and/or name plates made from a nicely figured hardwood made me some cash a few times , and some dreadfully amateur chainsaw carveings were brought by a dimwitted garden centre manager for serious money.

If these profitable items and others like rustic furniture etc , are not being stocked at local garden centres then there could be money there.