In the Press
Thank you to Adrienne with Brevard Business News and Pam with Florida Today for writing two very nice articles about our business! If you missed these articles, go to the BBN website and download the August 15, 2011 issue and to the Florida Today website to view our articles.
Gardening Class
Mark your calenders! September 24, 2011 we will have our first class at the new facility! We are working on the agenda and will be sending that out in the next newsletter, but for now you can plan on being at the shop from 10am-12pm. More info to follow.
Become a Friend of the Farm
We are now accepting memberships for the farm. There is a $25 dollar annual fee to help with start up costs around the shop. Membership forms will soon be available online, but for now we are happy to meet you at the shop to take care of this. This membership is a work in progress and all benefits may not be available right away. We appreciate all of your support!
Member Benefits Include
First access to what’s growing at PBP
Gardening classes
Discounts at EastCoastHydro.com
Private dinners at Potbelly Farms
Access to Deep Roots Meat
Access to raw dairy products
Live video feed from the farm
Advanced growing information and videos
Access to other farms within our network
Donations
We still have a long way to go to make all of our dreams come true. We have had some interest in investment and donation. We extend the invitation to any that wishes to see this business grow to feel free to contact us or visit PotbellyProduce.com and click the ‘Donate’ button. Make an appointment and see what we are doing and where our visions put us in the next 5 years!
Posted by happle on August 15, 2011 at 10:35 pm under Farm, Hydroponics, News.
Cooler full of fresh green! Still alive and going to a local restaurant.
Dealing with Mother Nature, this is why we need to go indoors!
Our new production facility?
This will be prime farm land soon!
Hello fellow gardeners! We took a break to work on some other ventures but we are back in action now! We are currently working on a Kickstarter project to raise funding for our new urban garden project. A 5000 sq/ft climate controlled warehouse to install our NFT system into. This will solve one of the main problems that we ran into last year which was mother nature. The temperature shot up quickly and put us out of business for the season and left us with wilting and sick looking plants. This season was some of the same stuff, freezing one day and 85 degrees the next. That put us behind a month and a half. So we decided to upgrade our situation with a proper growing environment that will allow us to churn out around 1400 plants a week! Also to turn the greenhouse into a shade-house and grow tomatoes and peppers in there instead of delicate greens. Our other problem last year was we didn’t have an outlet for all that we grew, that is covered this year, we found buyers for everything that we can possibly grow. We will be supplying local business’ with beautiful local produce. Check back soon to see our project listed on kickstarter.com
until then, happy growing!
Posted by plantman on March 21, 2011 at 11:44 pm under Farm, News.
We have Basil, Romaine, Cilantro and some Butter Head lettuce ready for market. The basil is loving the warmer weather but the lettuce not so much. Stay tuned to see our upcoming mods to cool down the greenhouse.
Here is a dish inspired by meat! I made some chicken stock the other day and got some beautiful true free range beef from the farmers market @ wickham park on Thursday. The cut I bought was a rump roast which was weighing in at 3 lbs. It got broke down to chunks, sprinkled with French gray sea salt and braised in the cast iron pan to a nice dark brown. That got tossed into the chicken stock along with some onions, fresh fennel, carrots, rosemary, oregano, garlic and some parsley. This will simmer down for about 6 hours and get nice and tender. Check back later for the next step….
Just to let everyone know we sell our lettuce to anyone who wants it! If you want to have some delivered email us or give us a call. We are working on some programs to make it easier for people to have acess to local produce. So if you think you can move some of this fantastic local green we want to talk to you. We are currently looking for local outlets for our products.
Good day fellow farmers! Today I put some Roma tomatoes into the raised bed garden. These were started in coco fibre and transplanted into a soil mix. To the existing soil there I added:
1 (714303) bag Ocean Forrest Potting Soil
2 (720425)scoops earthworm castings
1 handfull Azomite
1/2 bag (720695) Ancient Forest 100% pure forest humus
I’ll keep you posted when I give them some supplements, for now just plain water to start.
NFT is the style of system that we use in the greenhouse for all the lettuce’s. NFT stands for Nutrient Film Technique and describes the feeding system for the plants. We fill the reservoir with rain water or RO (reverse osmosis) water which is the purest water with a TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) of around 0 ppm (parts per million). It is important not to have any elements in the water before adding your nutrients as it will be unclear to what is already in the water. (For example: tap water is full of chlorine, fluoride, and numerous pharmaceutical drugs as well as toxic waste, all which are poisonous to our plants, as well as us!)
Once we have filled our reservoirs with water, we then add the nutrients. For the lettuces and herbs, we use a Grow formula which is high in Nitrogen which plants require during their vegetative (or growth) state. Since lettuces and herbs do not need to flower for consumption, we only need to use this one formula, we just increase the strength as the crop grows bigger. We did purchase a crop specific nutrient from the manufacturer of the system, American Hydroponics, but have not begun to use it yet. We’ll update you when we do.
Back to NFT, now we have our water and nutrients mixed and the system is running. Nutrient Film Technique sort of speaks for itself. The water/nutrient solution is pumped to the “top” of the system and then uses gravity to flow down the gutter. This creates a “film” at the root zone soaking the media (we use rockwool, as this is the most efficient media for the NFT system). The water then flows into a gutter at the “bottom” of the gutters and drains back to the reservoir, creating a recirculating system.
We were there on the first day of this new market and the response was awesome! Big thanks to Barbara for getting us out there. We will be out at the corner of US1 and 192 every Saturday from 10am – 3pm. Stay tuned as in a couple weeks we will be out at the Avenues in Viera for an even bigger market. The Viera market runs Tuesday evenings officially from 4pm – 8pm but there are vendors set up as early as 1pm! Come out and support us at these two wonderful markets! (Give us a couple weeks to ge out to Viera. Our target start is February 16.) Thanks to all of Pam’s friends that stopped by from Lou’s Blue’s in Indianatlantic! And special thanks to grandpa for stopping by too!!!
