how to make money with midget vegetables

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Fresh okra is another vegetable difficult to find in good quality at the market. But — given a warm summer — it grows productively in the home garden, and is a good plant to look at. The Dwarf Green Long Pod variety, topping off at about two feet, starts giving you succulent pods in approximately 50 days, and then goes on and on.

The first-of-the-season, vine-ripened tomato always seems the peak of perfection . . . and the new midget — Pixie hybrid — is not only ready 52 days after the plant is set out, but has the luscious flavor of a big tomato. The plant grows only 14"-18" tall, and each one produces a large crop.

Sweet corn in a mere two months? Yes. Golden Midget's two-to-three-foot-tall plants produce their delicious four-inch-long ears that quickly. Let your customers know you can have fresh corn ready at a particular time, and you won't be able to keep up with the orders. One otherwise pretty sedate seed house grows lyrical about this little golden corn: "Acclaimed the sweetest, tenderest, most flavorful corn ever grown!"

Then — in time to round out the season at Halloween — there's the midget pumpkin, Cinderella, which grows 10-inch-wide fruits for jack-o'-lanterns and delicious pies. Cinderella needs only a little garden space, too.

The "carriage-trade" food stores — those that take telephone orders, deliver and carry charge accounts — are always searching for specialties they can offer their customers. Here, the first-of-the-season produce fetches premium prices, as does the unusual . . . midget Tom Thumb lettuce for individual salad servings, little dollar-size St. Pat scallop squashes and the rarely seen Nosegay pepper (perfect for a relish tray).

These markets often have many customers among the higher-income couples who want just enough to serve two. The miniature cantaloupes and watermelons that store easily in a small refrigerator and that provide two servings with no leftovers have great appeal for such buyers . . . as do such gourmet items as the Spinel beet and Sucram carrot, bred in Europe fur the fancy-restaurant trade.

You should let any quality market in your community know you can supply these unusual vegetables, and tell then) the approximate dates you can have the produce ready. Payment arrangements vary, but a fairly common one is cash on delivery . . . and if the price is right, you can't beat that.

In addition to the midget produce itself, there's a potential market for the miniature plants on which such produce is grown . . . especially for the vegetables — such as tomatoes and peppers — that are usually started early and then transplanted outdoors. "Remember those darling little tomato plants you gave me last year? That I grew on my porch in flower pots?" a friend asked us early one spring. "Each time we had people to dinner, everybody would go pick their own tomato appetizers!"

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