I’m filling an area next to my neighbors woods that gets a fair amount of shade. The fruit will be sold at farmers market and need advice on what you think would sell the best. Hazelnut, Persimmon, Pawpaw, other suggestions.
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Depends on your local customer base, but hazelnuts have the best name recognition if you can convince farmers market customers your product is as good or better than the inexpensive grocery store hazels. Hazels are very time consuming to harvest and process without mechanization. Pawpaws are increasing in popularity, and can command high prices with consumers who are familiar. Persimmons have a lot of potential, but would likely require more customer education.
If currants and gooseberries are an option where you are, they grow well in part shade and are likely to sell well with a decent price to effort ratio.
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Your assessments sound right. With the rising popularity of native plants pawpaw might be the best route and they are the best shade fruit as well. Do you think there is a market for Elderberry? Heard they also do well in shade.
yes elders grow quickly and health food stores would likely buy them from you. arctic or hardy kiwi is another option. takes 2 -3 yrs to get fruit but once in full production produce alot of fruit that you eat like grapes. easy to harvest off a trellis and the leaves hide the berries from birds.
I have made a good amount of money with all sorts of fruit trees and bushes. Selling the plants that is. Honestly with global commodity prices (local costs, global prices) retailing the fruit is an extremely tough proposition.
When you say ‘sold at farmer’s markets’ you mean selling it yourself or sold to somebody to sell at them markets? There is a huge difference between those two propositions. There is stuff I do where I’m way ahead of the game selling at wholesale pricing rather than dealing with the nightmare of retailing it. Maybe your area is difference, and there is enough patronizing of farmer’s markets, but where I’m at it would take me a while to sort out the risks of a highly perishable product. In that sense hazelnuts would get my vote, they are not as perishable.
Another outlet for locally produced produce is restaurants, bakeries, and people making end products to retail. I haven’t approach them but I know the local cidery would love to pick my apples (sorry, need to make my own cider), one bakery loves to get locally grown stuff for their pastries, and several restaurants also like to partake on that game.
Also a you-pick has a ton of appeal because it allows you to get retail pricing with a lot less labor. It is not free money, it has its own drawbacks.
To put things in perspective: I have a reasonably large (for a household) raspberry patch. I sell raspberry starters, usually $10 for a potted cane. Potting, raising, and selling 20 plants would net me $200 dollars with not much effort. Making $200 with the fruit at say $5 a pound would take 40 pounds. I could pick, pack, and hope to sell it all at the next farmer’s market, where if it doesn’t sell the extra retailing effort would be wasted. I could do a you-pick where there would be a lot less labor, but it would still take time and loses from careless you-pickers. I could harvest and transport to a bakery where the profit would be less, but the labor and time effort would also be significantly less.
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Yea, I was about 250 fruit and nut trees in before I discovered selling the plants themselves made more money. I’m selling anywhere I can, but farmers markets are big here and there are a lot of them. So until I can find more outlets to sell to that’s one of my options. I’m starting the tree nursery next though. I have a source at Southern States to sell the trees to, plus private sales.
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