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Which vegetables sell best from a small plot?

Grow what your buyers want, in the amounts they buy, ready every week. Plant small batches often instead of one big planting, and you will have steady sales instead of a glut.

Ask the buyers first

Before you choose crops, visit the people who will buy them: spaza owners, hawkers, school kitchens, restaurants, caterers, churches and neighbours. Ask:

• Which vegetables do you buy most often?
• How much of each, and how often?
• Where do you buy now, and at what price?
• Do you want bunches, loose, bags or crates? Washed or unwashed?
• When are you short, and when is there too much?
• How and when do you pay?
• Would you buy from me if I delivered on time every week?

Write the answers down. Look for vegetables that several buyers want every week, at a price that leaves you a margin.

Good crops to start with

Times run from planting seedlings unless the crop is sown directly, and they vary with region and season.

• Spinach (Swiss chard): 50 to 60 days, then picked weekly for months. It is the best beginner cash crop.
• Morogo and other indigenous greens: 30 to 40 days from sowing in the warm season. They are popular, cheap to grow and tolerate heat.
• Cabbage: 80 to 120 days. Demand from households, schools and crèches is steady.
• Onions: 120 to 150 days. They keep for months once dried.
• Tomatoes: 70 to 90 days. Demand is high, but so is the risk from gluts and pests.
• Green peppers and chillies: 70 to 90 days, then picked for months. They fetch good prices in small amounts.
• Butternut: 100 to 120 days from sowing. It keeps for weeks to months.
• Beetroot: 60 to 70 days from sowing.
• Carrots: 70 to 90 days from sowing, in loose soil.
• Green beans: 50 to 60 days from sowing.

Indigenous vegetables such as morogo, spider flower, cowpea leaves and pumpkin leaves are often hardy and need little water. Some buyers pay well for them because shops seldom stock them.

Plant for your region

• Summer-rainfall areas with frost: plant warm-season crops after the last frost, often in September or October. Plant cool-season crops from late summer through winter.
• Winter-rainfall Western Cape: cool-season crops through the wet winter, and warm-season crops in summer with irrigation.
• Frost-free coast and Lowveld: many crops grow for most of the year. Tomatoes and cool-season crops do better in the cooler, drier months.

Shade cloth of about 30 to 40% over leafy crops in the hottest months extends the season.

Build a crop mix

• Quick cash crops that sell within two months: spinach, morogo, beetroot and green beans.
• Steady weekly crops: spinach and cabbage.
• Keeping crops that can wait if the price is poor: butternut and onions.
• Higher-value crops in small amounts: peppers and chillies.

A mix means that one glut does not ruin the season.

Succession planting

If you plant all your spinach on one day, it is all ready at once. There is too much for your buyers in the first weeks and nothing later. Plant a small batch every two to four weeks instead, so that each batch is ready as the last one slows down.

To work out how much to plant, start from what your buyers take each week:

beds in harvest at once = weekly demand ÷ weekly yield of one bed

Then plant a new bed often enough to replace each bed as it finishes.

This guide is based on Chapter 4 of Market Gardening in South Africa.