Recommendations for a 500 Acre Organic Farm
Answered by: Conrad Richter
Question from: Lindie
Posted on: June 20, 1999

I am getting ready to start a organic farm of 580 acres. I am interested in buying some seeds from you. I would like to know first if you have any recomendations as to what is going well on the market. Second why is the ‘Spicy Globe’ basil so much more then regular basil?

‘Spicy Globe’ is a special compact cultivar that is intended for the commercial horticulture market. This market includes potted herbs and the herbs included in the spring bedding plant programs of many greenhouse nurseries and garden centres. The higher price reflects a number of important factors: smaller overall market volume (hence higher costs per pound to produce); more uniformity needed for pot herbs than for field produced herbs (more work to maintain the high uniformity of this variety); and the original breeding cost for the variety.

Making recommendations on what herbs to grow is hazardous because there are so many factors to consider. To properly answer your question requires much more information about your specific available resources, skills, interests, and your potential market. The best approach for you is to do more study and read the available books and growing and marketing herbs. We list several excellent books in our onlien catalogue at http://www.richters.com. You should also consider attending a few conferences dedicated to commercial herb production. Our conference in October attracts between 300 commercial growers from all over the world. The conference will give you a good idea of which herbs are hot and which are not in a market that is ever changing.

From the books and the conferences you will be able to narrow down the herbs that are most promising for you. Once you reach that stage that we can provide more support on how to grow and we can supply the propagative material you will need to get started.

You should also go to the "Q&A" section of our webiste (http://www.richters.com) and go to the "Commercial Growing" area. You will find a lot of very useful information there.

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