- Nebraska Couple Develops Thriving Business with Vegetables at Markets
- By Mary and Bill Weaver
Pennsylvania Correspondents
- Gene Karstens and his wife Cynthia have developed a thriving business growing vegetables for their stands at two Lincoln, Neb. farmers’ markets. They began this venture after Gene retired from his position as a bank president when he was 46. Doing nearly all the work themselves, they approach their vegetable growing with an energy and enthusiasm more frequently associated with folks in their 20s than folks in their 50s.
The excellent prices at the farmers market fuel their enthusiasm. The Karstens are sticklers for quality, rigorously separating their first quality vegetables from their seconds, which they sell at a lower price.
“Our first-quality vegetables are perfect,” said Gene. “There’s not a mark on them.”
The Karstens’ care pays off. Last year, their season price for first quality green beans at the market, for example, was $2.25 to $2.50 a pound. All their green beans are sold in pre-weighed one- and two-pound bags. Seconds are sold for half that price.
To have a steady supply of vegetables for the market, the Karstens make regular succession plantings, with the size of each planting determined by their careful records of how much of that vegetable they sold in a given week the previous year.
Radishes, for example, are an excellent seller at their market stand, sold with the tops on. “In a normal weekend, I sell between 2,000 and 5,000 radishes,” explained Gene. “We grow Cherry Belle, Snow Belle, French Breakfast, and Fuego. The Cherry Belles sell best. We generally make a weekly planting of radishes in a strip six feet wide by 300 feet long, with the rows three inches apart.”
All plantings are made with a one-row Earthway push planter on their five acres of vegetables. They succession plant their radishes through the spring, and double crop the land by making succession plantings for fall harvest also, starting in August.
Like all their root vegetables, their radishes are picked fresh the day before market, bunched as they are pulled, washed by hand with a pressure hose, dried on screens, and taken to market in 32-quart coolers packed with ice at 4:30 a.m. on market day.
Beets are also excellent sellers, again sold in bunches with the tops on. “A lot of people at the market like baby beets for salads, so we don’t thin them, and as we bunch them, we separate the sizes,” said Gene. “We have beets for sale the first eight weeks of market.”
Normally they also make succession plantings of beets starting in August for fall sales, but this summer was exceptionally hot and dry, with temperatures 20-25&Mac251; higher than normal. The August-sown beets failed to come up.
Turnips are succession planted, with three plantings in spring and again for the fall, and are harvested with tops cut off.
“One of our best sellers is Texas l0l5Y sweet onions,” Gene continued. “We got l4,000 plants from Texas, and planted them by hand beginning on March l2 last spring. I can plant a crate of plants in 2 l/2 hours, but after eight hours of that you’re tired and sore!” All the onions were harvested by July 4, and, “We had onions that weighed l 3/8 pounds,” Gene added.
They also plant, by hand, l2,000 onion sets, succession planted to give a steady supply of scallions through the spring and early summer. “We know from our records that we can sell from l,000 to l,500 scallions a week. All the onion sets are white. We used to grow yellow ones too,” said Gene, “but the white ones wash up easier and sell twice as well, so we dropped the yellow ones.”
Problems with root maggots on the root vegetables and with onion maggots are avoided without spraying by careful rotations, which are somewhat complex to figure out due to all the double cropping and triple cropping. “We use at least three year rotations,” said Gene, “and five year rotations when we can.”
The Karstens have plenty of water for irrigation. A former hog farmer, Gene has water sources scattered over the property, and he uses both drip and overhead irrigation. But all the irrigation is done by moving hoses to the various crops, which takes a lot of time and effort.
Green beans are a big item at the stand. Their beans are so popular that many customers have standing orders for them so the Karstens don’t sell out before the customer gets to the market.
With careful succession plantings every week to 10 days, the Karstens have a steady supply of green beans through summer and fall, although this year, they had an early freeze with 10 hours of 12° temperatures, so they were without green beans for the last few weeks of market.
“We had the beans under row covers,” said Gene, “and the covers generally protect them down to about 24 degree, but they couldn’t handle those extended 12 degree temperatures.
“The best green bean variety for us has been Asgrow’s Strike,” said Gene, “which is a very good producer here. Bronco and Tema also do very well in our area. Last year, my wife and I handpicked over 2,000 pounds of green beans.”
To get the green beans (and their other vegetables) germinated and up in spring for early market sales, the Karstens use glass windows to warm the soil.
“We have about l,000 feet of windows,” said Gene. “We lay them right on the ground to heat the soil. Two to three sunny days is enough to do the trick with our very dark soil. The soil temperatures can rise 20-45 degree under the windows when the sun shines. Then we move the windows to another crop, and cover each planting with a three foot tunnel.”
Their area of Nebraska is very windy, with 50 to 60 mph winds in the spring. So for the tunnels, hoops must be set deep in the ground and close together, and the plastic must be anchored with lots of clamps. “You earn every penny you make growing vegetables in Nebraska,” chuckled Gene. “The weather in spring is very changeable.”
Last summer’s extremely hot, dry, windy weather did in most of the Karstens’ vine crops, which normally sell well at he market. “We irrigated, but we just couldn’t get enough water on fast enough,” commented Gene.
Sugar peas, sugar snap peas (Sugar Anns, which don’t need trellising) and hull peas are succession planted in spring, and again for fall sales. All the vining varieties are trellised with wires on eight-foot stakes. Tomatoes are all in cages, but not typical cages.
For starting tomato plants for their own use and for sale, as well as other bedding plants for sale at the market, Gene again used hog fencing. “I hooped l6-foot hog panels over for the supports of the greenhouse,” Gene explained. “We have three greenhouses in use now, and each one cost only about $85 to put up. The houses are heated by kerosene. They’re not sophisticated,” Gene noted, “but they are profitable.”
The greenhouses are also used to grow house plants, like aloe vera and jade plants, which also find ready customers at the market. “Eighty-five percent of our sales are vegetables,” said Gene, “and about l5% are bedding plants.”
The Karstens are now attending two markets a week in Lincoln. Competition is considerable, with l20 vendors total, and of that number, “Probably 40 to 60 are selling the same vegetables we are,” said Gene. But their quality counts. “Our competition can be selling their green beans, for example, at a lower price,” explained Gene, “but because of our quality, ours will sell out first.”
