Growing White Currant Tomatoes: Pleasure verses Production

White Currant Tomatoes

Like last summer, I’m learning a lot about starting a Market Garden. The newest revelation has to do with our White Currant tomatoes. These little gems are the most delightfully tasty cherry tomatoes I’ve ever eaten. Everyone who has tasted them agrees so I thought, why not grow them in bulk and sell them? Conceptually it sounded brilliant, I’m realizing that the delicate nature of these tomatoes makes them not a great candidate for mass production.

Yes, this tomato plant provides a high yield of fruit, I have close to 100 plants in the garden so you can imagine the quantity of tomatoes I am harvesting! However, they are a delicate fruit and removing them from the vine is tricky in that they often split. When this happens, they are still edible of course, but visually they are not as pretty which will impact sales.

I’ve also realized that due to their small size, it takes quit a few to fill the pint containers I purchased to hold them. A half pint is more reasonable but then the container looks less full, and from a marketing standpoint that is not a good selling point. I could of course sell them as bag your own but again because they are a delicate fruit, this will lead to product damage which brings us back to square one on the salability of them.

So, what I’ve learned from this is that growing these tasty morsels would be better suited for personal consumption. This means next year, I will plant fewer plants, say four verses 100, and focus on growing them for us. In reflection, this seems to be the path I’m gravitating toward for the whole Market Garden.

My original idea was that it would be a unique amenity for Posh Cottage, a feature that sets our Airbnb apart from others in Palisade. Then the idea of selling our produce to the community took over. Although this later idea is a valid one and there are many Market Garden farmers in Palisade, I’m realizing it is too much for one person to manage and farm, way too much pressure and a real crap shoot regarding growing what will sell? Perhaps if I were selling at farmers markets, it would make sense, but that is not something I was ever interested in doing. That would be even more of a time commitment which would take me away from running the Airbnb which was my initial business plan. It would also keep me out of my art studio which was one of the primary reasons for starting Palisade Posh… creating passive income that would give me more time in the art studio and in the garden!

This might sound corny, but I truly believe in signs, and I think, as with my whole gardening experience this summer, that our beautiful White Currant tomatoes are yet another indication that I need to refocus my endeavors in the Market Garden and concentrate more on the pleasure of gardening verses the production. It will still provide the unique farm to table experience for our guests, while providing Andy and I with fresh produce each summer.

However, while I’m not so interested in mass production of fruits and vegetables, I do enjoy selling my flowers! Once, I get the cutting flowers section established, I do want to pursue that marketing endeavor.  Flowers offer a whole range of possibilities, I could sell bouquets, offering floral arranging workshops and host artists’ retreats that focus on painting flowers! These last two concepts fall within the four main pillars of Palisade Posh, art studio, Post Cottage, Posh Market Garden and Artists Retreats.

So my takeaway from growing White Currant tomatoes in bulk? Life lessons come in many forms, and these beautiful little tomatoes are a perfect example of one such lesson!