Where to Sell Vegetables: 7 Places That Actually Work

It is late July. The zucchini doubled overnight, the tomatoes all ripened the same week, and the green beans need picking every other day whether anyone wants them or not. You gave a bag to the neighbors last week. They asked if you sell.

That question has seven good answers, and they are not equal. Some places pay retail for a $3 bunch of chard, some take 40 pounds at a time at a lower price, and some want an invoice and an insurance certificate before the first delivery. If you want the step-by-step of taking orders online, start with how to sell produce online as a small grower, and for what to charge per pound, how to price vegetables at a farm stand. This guide is about where: seven places part-time growers actually sell, priced against a real $35 box and checked against real listings.

Where Can You Sell Vegetables From Your Garden?

You can sell vegetables in seven places, and a grower with a few raised beds to a half acre can run two or three of them at once. Each one trades price for time differently, and each takes a different cut of the same $35 box.

1. Neighbors, friends and coworkers. Your own circle, where the trust is already built. No booth, no sign, and they come back every week in season.
2. A roadside or porch stand. A table at the end of the driveway, staffed or run on the honor system with a cash box.
3. Your own storefront link with pickup. Regulars order and pay online before you harvest, then collect from your porch, your stand or your market table.
4. A farmers market. The most shoppers in one place, and the most work per sale once you count the booth fee and a morning of setup.
5. A weekly veggie bag. A prepaid mixed bag or box of whatever is ready, sold to a short list of households. It is a small version of a CSA, short for community supported agriculture, where members buy a share of a farm's harvest.
6. Restaurants. Steady weekly orders from a chef who wants what the grocery store does not carry, at a price below retail.
7. Grocery stores, co-ops and food hubs. The biggest buyers and the most paperwork. A food hub is a business that buys from several small farms and sells to stores, schools and households.

Two ideas are left off on purpose. Shipping fresh vegetables by mail is not a real channel for a backyard grower, because greens and soft crops wilt in transit, and overnight postage on a box often costs more than the vegetables inside it. And a terminal market (the wholesale yards that supply grocery chains) pays commodity prices that rarely cover a small grower's time. One more outlet sits outside the seven: a regional produce auction, where buyers bid on growers' lots on sale days. Some small growers use one, but its prices are set by that day's bidding and can swing below what a stand earns.

Which Place Fits How Much You Harvest?

Start with neighbors and coworkers, then add one place at a time as your harvest outgrows it. The right next step depends on how much you pick each week and how many hours you want to spend selling, not on how big your garden looks in June.

Scroll sideways to see every column.

The dollar and acreage ranges are rough planning numbers, not rules. The legal line for produce is set by your state and county and by the federal sales thresholds covered in the license section below.

Most backyard growers never need the last two rows. At $3 to $5 a bunch or a pound, the first three places can move a big garden's surplus for years. They also keep you selling whole, uncut vegetables straight to the people who eat them, which is the simplest place to be under almost every state's rules.

Why Are Neighbors the Easiest First Vegetable Buyers?

Neighbors and coworkers are the easiest first buyers because they already trust you, they already buy vegetables every week, and a garden that is ten houses away is fresher than anything at the store. Most first sales start exactly the way yours probably did: someone got a free bag of tomatoes and asked what they owe you next time.

What makes this channel work:

• One message, not a sales pitch. "The garden is going crazy. Tomatoes, beans and squash most weeks, $5 a bag, want me to save you one on Fridays?" sent to the 15 people you see most is the whole launch.
• A standing order. Ask each regular what they want every week and write it down. A standing order turns "do you have anything this week?" into a list you fill.
• One pickup time. A cooler on the porch Friday after 4, or a handoff at the office on Monday. Pick one and keep it.
• A way to pay that is not "next time." Cash in an envelope works for five people. Past that, a payment link or storefront saves you from chasing $5.

The limit is reach and timing. Your circle fills up fast, and your garden does not care about their schedule: in August you have three times what they want, and in May you have nothing. That is when a stand, or a link your regulars can pass to their friends, earns its place.

Does a Roadside Stand Work for Vegetables?

A roadside stand works well for vegetables, because fresh produce is the reason most people pull over, and a stand sells while you are at work. It works best on a road with steady local traffic, with shade over the table, and with prices written on everything. The full build, from placement to signs, is in how to set up a roadside farm stand.

What sells best at a small vegetable stand:

• Tomatoes, sweet corn and peppers in summer. These are the crops people stop for, and they hold up on a table for a day.
• Summer squash and cucumbers in bags of three or four, because nobody needs one zucchini.
• Greens and lettuce in a cooler, not on the table. A head of romaine on a hot table is limp by noon.
• Potatoes, onions, winter squash and pumpkins in fall. They keep for weeks, so a slow day costs you nothing.
• A $5 grab bag of whatever you have too much of, at the front where drivers see it first.

For an unattended stand, keep prices in whole dollars and use a locked cash box plus a payment code, which the honor system farm stand setup walks through. Cash at a stand costs you nothing in fees, so keep the cash box even after you add a card reader or payment code.

How Do You Take Vegetable Orders Before You Harvest?

The best way to take vegetable orders is to sell the harvest before you pick it: post what is ready on Monday, close orders Wednesday night, pick Thursday morning, and hand out paid orders Friday afternoon. For vegetables, a pre-order is worth more than a walk-up sale, because every unsold bunch of chard is a loss by Saturday.

That is the job a Homegrown storefront does for a grower with too much zucchini and not enough buyers. It is $10 per month billed annually with no percentage fees beyond standard payment processing, which is 2.9% + $0.30 per order. Your regulars see this week's list, order and pay, and pick up from your porch, your stand or your market booth; if you drive orders around, you set a delivery fee and keep all of it, minus card processing. Sales tax is calculated and filed for you, and payouts land the next business day.

Here is how it compares with what most vegetable growers try first:

• Venmo or cash plus a text thread costs little (1.9% + $0.10 on a Venmo business profile) but the orders live in 20 separate conversations, and you still count what to pick by scrolling.
• Square's free plan works well for card sales at the stand at 2.6% + 15 cents in person (a reader starts at $59 once, or use Tap to Pay on your phone for $0). Its online checkout runs 3.3% + 30 cents, which is $1.46 on a $35 box against $1.32 on a Homegrown storefront, though Square charges $0 a month and comes out a few dollars cheaper at 50 boxes a month.
• Local Line and Barn2Door are built for farms: price lists, delivery routes, wholesale accounts. Local Line's Core plan is $87 a month billed annually and Barn2Door's starter plan is $99 a month billed yearly plus a $399 set-up fee, and both charge 2.9% + $0.30 on cards, the same as a Homegrown storefront. The subscription alone is 29 to 33 bunches at $3 every month (plus Barn2Door's $399 once) before a backyard grower earns anything.

What Homegrown does not do: your customer creates a Homegrown account to place a first order, there is no timed release feature, and recurring subscription billing is not on the feature list, so regulars either order the bag each week or buy a prepaid run of weeks as one product, the way Breadstreet sells a month of weekly loaves, 4 for $40, on Homegrown (catalog pull, September 24, 2026). Your storefront is listed on the Homegrown marketplace, but plan on most orders coming from people you send to your own link. It also does not accept SNAP (the federal food benefit once called food stamps) or WIC (the program for mothers and young kids) market benefits, run a GAP audit, or handle your county's permits.

If you are tired of guessing how much to pick, set up a Homegrown storefront and post this week's harvest before you pull a single carrot. Your regulars order and pay first, you pick exactly what sold, and the extra goes to the stand.

Is a Farmers Market Worth It for a Small Grower?

A farmers market is worth it for a small grower when you have enough volume to fill a table for four hours and something the other vegetable vendors do not. It puts the most shoppers in front of you in one morning, but the booth fee, the drive and the setup come out before you earn anything, and at a busy market you may share the aisle with other tables selling the same zucchini.

Run the math before you apply. Say your market charges $30 a day (booth fees vary widely; this is only an example). That is 10 bunches at $3 before you have covered the fee, plus gas and a Saturday morning. The real cost of selling at a farmers market lays out every line.

What helps a small vegetable vendor at a market:

• Sell what others do not. Purple potatoes, patty pan squash, Asian greens like mizuna and tatsoi, hot peppers by the pint. A fourth pile of slicing tomatoes has to compete on price.
• Take pre-orders for pickup at the booth. Regulars reserve before the market, so you know your floor before you load the car.
• Bring a card reader and cash. Square's free plan charges 2.6% + 15 cents on a tap, which is 25 cents on a $4 pint of beans.
• Ask whether the market takes SNAP. USDA's SNAP page for farmers explains how a direct marketing farmer or a whole market applies online to accept SNAP benefits, and a market authorized as a whole can hand shoppers paper vouchers (scrip) or tokens to spend at vendor tables.

Markets also bring shoppers with WIC market benefits. Under USDA's WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program, which runs in 49 states, many families on WIC get extra benefits for fresh, unprepared, locally grown fruits and vegetables. They can spend them only with farmers, markets and roadside stands their state agency has approved, so ask your state's program office how a grower signs up before the season opens.

How Does a Weekly Veggie Bag Work?

A weekly veggie bag is a prepaid mixed bag of whatever is ready, sold to a short list of households for the same price every week. It turns an unpredictable garden into a known number of orders, and it lets you pack what is at its peak instead of promising a customer three pounds of tomatoes in a week of cold rain.

Two real listings show the range on Homegrown. Harvest House Foods sells a $15 Small Veggie Share of "3-4 seasonal veggies and herbs" from Blue Coyote Farm in Montana. Albritton Produce Co. sells a $35 Harvest Box of fruits and vegetables with Saturday doorstep delivery. For how to set the price of a bag, how to price a produce box subscription does the math, and a micro CSA with 10 members shows the smallest version that works.

• Pick one size and one price. A $15 bag for one or two people or a $25 to $35 box for a family. One size is easier to pack than three.
• Promise a count, not a list. "Four to six kinds of vegetables" keeps you honest in a slow week. Never promise a crop you have not picked yet.
• Set the cutoff and the pickup. Orders close Wednesday night, pickup Friday from 4 to 6 on the porch. Same day and time every week.
• Start with 5 to 10 households. Enough to learn how much a bag holds; few enough that a bad week does not strand anyone.
• Tell them what is coming. A short Monday text or post with a photo of what is ripening keeps people ordering every week.

Can You Sell Vegetables on Facebook Marketplace or Nextdoor?

You can post vegetables on Facebook Marketplace, in local Facebook groups and on Nextdoor, and for a gardener with a one-time glut of 20 or 30 pounds they are a fine way to find buyers nearby. Most local pickup sales there are paid in person, in cash or through a payment app, so the cost is whatever that payment method charges you.

What works on these sites:

• Post the harvest, not the garden. A photo of this morning's basket with a price and a pickup window gets replies. "Selling vegetables, message me" does not.
• Give a pickup window. "Porch pickup Saturday 9 to noon" stops the late-night "is this still available?" messages.
• Move the regulars to a list. A buyer who comes back twice should get your weekly text or storefront link, so you are not re-posting to find the same people.

The weak spot is repeat business. A marketplace post gets buried under newer listings, and the buyer who liked your tomatoes has no easy way to find you again next week. Use these sites to find the first customers, then give every repeat buyer one place to order.

How Do You Sell Vegetables to Restaurants?

You sell vegetables to a restaurant by bringing a chef samples of two or three crops the grocery store does not carry, then delivering the same order on the same day every week at a price below what you get at your stand. Restaurants will not pay retail, but they buy in pounds instead of bunches, they reorder every week, and they will take the odd crops your neighbors ignore.

SARE's guide to wholesale marketing for vegetable growers lists what wholesale buyers may require: liability insurance, a food safety plan and other documentation, plus an up-to-date availability and price list. A restaurant or store may ask for the same. It also says to confirm each order, send a pending invoice, pack a packing slip with the delivery and follow with a final invoice. And it is plain about the trade: wholesale prices "will not be near direct market prices," so you make it up in volume.

• Pick the right kitchen. A farm-to-table restaurant, a cafe with a changing menu or a food truck that writes specials on a board. Chains usually buy through a distributor.
• Bring samples, not a pitch. Two or three crops in a small box on a weekday between 2 and 4, when the lunch rush is over and dinner prep has not started.
• Send a weekly availability list. Crop, pack size, price per pound or case, and your order cutoff. A one-page list, sent the same day every week.
• Deliver clean, cold and on time. Washed of field dirt, packed the way the chef asked, delivered on the day you promised.
• Invoice every delivery. A packing slip in the box and an invoice that matches it. Chefs change jobs, and the bookkeeper who pays you has never met you.

How to sell food to local restaurants and cafes covers the pitch in more depth, and a wholesale price sheet for restaurants shows how to lay out the list. Watch the distance: a restaurant that orders two pounds of salad mix across town is rarely worth the drive. Set a minimum order, like $40 or 10 pounds, before you add a stop.

Will a Grocery Store, Co-op or Food Hub Buy Your Vegetables?

A grocery store, co-op or food hub will buy your vegetables if you can deliver the same crop, in the same pack, on the same day every week, and if you have the paperwork their buyers ask for. Food co-ops and independent grocers are the realistic start; a regional chain usually buys through a distributor.

What these buyers commonly ask for:

• A food safety audit. USDA's Good Agricultural Practices audits, called GAP, check that fruits and vegetables are grown, packed and stored to keep germs off them. USDA calls them voluntary, but its own page says your customers may require one, so ask each buyer before you plan around them.
• Liability insurance with the store named on the certificate.
• Standard packs. Cases or bunches of a set size and weight, so the price on the shelf tag is right.
• An invoice and a steady schedule. Same delivery window every week, and payment on the buyer's schedule. SARE notes that when you get paid varies by buyer, so ask before the first delivery.

Selling through someone else's storefront is a middle path. On Homegrown, Harvest House Foods lists vegetables "Grown by Blue Coyote Farm in Stevensville + Victor, Montana": beans at $4 a pint or $25 for a 4 pound bag, cherry tomatoes at $5 a pint and summer squash at $4. That is the food hub idea at its smallest: one business sells, another grows. Selling through a food co-op explains how co-op buyers pick new local suppliers.

Where Can You Sell Vegetables in Bulk?

You can sell vegetables in bulk to home canners, restaurants, food hubs and other farm stands, and to households who buy by the bushel for freezing, pickling and sauce. Bulk is where a glut of one crop goes: 40 pounds of tomatoes in the same week, or more sweet corn than any stand can move. For tomatoes, that bulk buyer is usually a home canner, and a standard half-bushel basket (about 26.5 pounds) lets you sell tomatoes by the basket instead of by the pound, with no scale needed.

Real bulk listings on Homegrown show the shape of it. Produce with Purpose Marketplace lists sweet corn at $30 for four dozen ears, and Harvest House Foods sells beans by the 4 pound bag for $25 to people who want to "process" them. Good places to sell in bulk:

• Home canners. Post "canning tomatoes, 20 pound box" in late summer. Seconds (cracked or odd-shaped fruit) sell here for less, which the ugly produce business model prices out.
• Other farm stands. A stand that sold out of sweet corn on Saturday may buy yours by the dozen. Agree on price per dozen before you pick.
• Restaurants and caterers, for a single big order: a caterer doing a wedding may want 30 pounds of zucchini once.
• Food hubs, if one runs near you and your packs meet their spec.

Price bulk below your per-pound stand price, since the buyer does the sorting and takes it all at once. And watch what you make from it: once you cut, cook or can the vegetables yourself, you are selling a processed food, not produce. Salsa, for example, falls under the rules in can you sell homemade salsa.

What Does Each Place Cost You on a $35 Vegetable Box?

On a $35 vegetable box, card processing costs you between $0.77 and $1.46 depending on how you take the payment, and cash costs nothing; the bigger difference over a month is the subscription. A month of 50 boxes ($1,750 in sales) costs $75.75 through a Homegrown storefront on the annual plan, $72.75 through Square's free online checkout and $152.75 on Local Line's Core plan.

Swipe the table left to see all eight columns.

We checked every fee on the company's own pricing page on September 24, 2026: findhomegrown.com/signup, squareup.com/us/en/pricing, venmo.com/resources/our-fees, localline.co/pricing and barn2door.com/pricing. Card processing is figured on the $35 price; the 50-box column adds one month of the subscription at the annual rate, with monthly billing in brackets. Square Plus ($49 a month per location) lowers online processing to 2.9% + 30 cents.

Three things stand out for a vegetable grower:

• Order size matters more than the platform. The same 2.9% + $0.30 takes 3.8% of a $35 box, 11.5% of a $3.50 bunch (the middle starting price in the Homegrown catalog) and 17.9% of a $2 cucumber. Bundle before you charge a card.
• Farm software costs more a month. Local Line and Barn2Door carry wholesale price lists, delivery routing and more, and at 50 boxes a month their subscription is $87 to $99 of the bill.
• Cash is free and costly. It saves the fee, but it only works when you are standing there or trust an honor box, and it does not let anyone order before you pick.

What Do Real Vegetable Listings Charge?

Real vegetable listings on Homegrown mostly start between $2 and $5: in the September 24, 2026 catalog pull, 51 of 61 fresh vegetable listings started at $5 or less, and the middle starting price was $3.50. Greens and squash are the most common listings, and boxes, shares and mixed listings the least, though that group holds the biggest single price, a $35 box.

On a phone, slide left for the vendor, price and unit.

Listed prices as they appeared on Homegrown when we pulled the catalog live that day, starting price shown first with a larger size in brackets. These are what vendors ask, not what they sold for, and they span several states and growing seasons.

Use these as a sanity check, not a price list. What sells in Dahlonega, Georgia at $3.99 a pound may sell for more or less on your road, and the farm stand vegetable pricing guide shows how to set yours against your local grocery store.

Do You Need a License to Sell Vegetables?

Whole, uncut vegetables you grew yourself and sell straight to the people who eat them sit under lighter rules than almost any other food, but your state, county or city decides whether you need a business license, a sales tax permit or a zoning permit for a stand. The federal rule that matters most is the FDA's rule on growing and handling produce, and small growers sit below it. That federal line sat at $34,324 a year in produce sales for 2023 to 2025, so the rules that decide your answer are your state's, and the guide to whether it is legal to sell vegetables from your garden quotes six state agencies on whole versus cut produce, scales and selling to restaurants.

Here is what the FDA's page on that rule says, checked September 24, 2026:

• Farms that sold an average of about $34,000 or less of produce a year over the previous three years are not covered by the rule at all. The rule sets that line at $25,000 in 2011 dollars and adjusts it for inflation; FDA's inflation-adjusted cut-off page lists $34,324 for 2023 to 2025, which is roughly $660 a week, every week, all year.
• A qualified exemption covers farms with food sales under $500,000 a year in 2011 dollars (about $686,000 after FDA's inflation adjustment for 2023 to 2025) when more than half goes to qualified end users: consumers, or a restaurant or retail food establishment in the same state or within 275 miles.
• Qualified-exempt farms must show their name and complete business address on the produce label or at the point of purchase, such as a sign at the stand.
• Crops rarely eaten raw are exempt, including asparagus, dry beans like pinto, kidney and black beans (not green beans), beets, sweet corn, eggplants, okra, potatoes, pumpkins, winter squash and sweet potatoes.

Sales tax is the other one people miss. Whether fresh vegetables are taxed depends on your state, so check with your state's revenue department before your first sale. If you sell through a Homegrown storefront, sales tax is calculated and filed for you on those orders; at your stand and market table, it is on you.

What Do You Do With Vegetables That Do Not Sell?

Vegetables that do not sell should go, in this order, into a marked-down grab bag, to a canner or another stand in bulk, into your own freezer or pantry, and then to a food pantry, before anything goes on the compost. Every grower has a week when the table is still full at closing time.

• Mark it down the same day. A "$3 bag, take what fits" basket at closing clears a surprising amount.
• Call a canner. The customer who asked about 20 pounds of tomatoes in July may take the soft ones in August for sauce.
• Give it away where it is needed. AmpleHarvest.org lists 8,571 food pantries in 5,691 communities across all 50 states that take fresh produce from gardeners. The registry is free, and you drop off on the days and times the pantry sets.
• Plant less of it next year. Your notes on what did not sell are worth more than any seed catalog.

The better fix is upstream. When regulars order before you pick, the harvest follows the orders, and a slow Saturday leaves you with a few pounds of extra zucchini instead of a truckload.

How Do You Add a New Place to Sell Vegetables This Week?

You can add a new place to sell this week with five steps and about two hours of work. Pick one place from the list, not three, and run it for a month before adding the next.

• Count what you really have. Walk the garden and write down what will be ready in the next 7 days, in pounds or bunches. Sell from that list, not from hope.
• Pick one place. Neighbors if you have never sold, a stand if you are on a busy road, a veggie bag if you have steady weekly volume.
• Set prices in whole dollars. $3 a bunch, $5 a bag. Check two grocery stores and your nearest market first.
• Choose one way to get paid. Cash box, card reader or storefront link. One, clearly posted.
• Tell 15 people by name. A text with a photo, the price and the pickup time. Then keep the same day and time next week.

After a month, look at what sold out first and what came home, then add a second place that fits the gap: a stand for the volume the neighbors cannot take, or a restaurant for the crop nobody at the stand buys.

What Do Growers With a Waiting List Do Differently?

Experienced vegetable growers plant for their buyers, not for their garden, and they decide where each crop will sell before the seed goes in. The difference shows up in August, when a beginner has 60 zucchini and an experienced grower has a waiting list.

• They grow what the store does not have. Purple carrots, patty pan squash, Asian greens, heirloom tomatoes. It is easier to sell a crop than to win a price war on one.
• They stagger plantings. A row of beans every three weeks instead of one big row means steady picking, not one overwhelming week.
• They sell by the bag or bunch. Whole-dollar bundles make stand change easy, and a $15 bag or bigger keeps card fees near 4% to 5% instead of the 18% on a $2 cucumber.
• They keep a buyer list. Names and phone numbers from every sale go into one list, so next season starts with customers, not with a sign.
• They pick to orders. Pre-orders on Monday decide what gets picked on Thursday.
• They write down what came home. Unsold crops by week, so next year's plan fixes this year's glut.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I sell vegetables from my garden?

You can sell garden vegetables to neighbors and coworkers, at a roadside or porch stand, through your own storefront link with pickup, at a farmers market, as a weekly veggie bag, to restaurants, and to grocery stores, co-ops and food hubs. A good order for a backyard grower is neighbors and a stand first, then pre-orders once you have regulars.

Do I need a license to sell vegetables from my garden?

Usually not a food license, if you sell whole vegetables from your own garden straight to customers. The FDA's Produce Safety Rule does not cover farms averaging about $34,000 or less a year in produce sales ($25,000 adjusted for inflation), but your state or county may still require a business license, a sales tax permit or a stand permit. Verify your state's current rules before you sell.

Where is the best place to sell vegetables online?

The best place to sell vegetables online for a small grower is a simple storefront where local customers order and pay before you harvest, then pick up or get a local delivery. A Homegrown storefront is $10 a month billed annually with 2.9% + $0.30 card processing; farm platforms like Local Line start at $87 a month billed annually, and Barn2Door's plan for part-time farmers is $99 a month billed yearly plus $399 once, each with the same 2.9% + $0.30 card processing.

Can I sell vegetables to restaurants without a license?

It depends on your state. Federal produce rules skip the smallest farms, but your state can set its own rules, and the restaurant may ask for liability insurance, a food safety plan and an invoice with every delivery. Check your state department of agriculture and ask the chef what their buyer requires before the first delivery.

How much money can you make selling vegetables from your garden?

It depends on how many regulars buy from you each week: 10 households buying a $15 veggie bag is $150 a week in sales, before seed, water and card fees. Vegetable listings on Homegrown mostly ask a few dollars: the middle starting price of 61 listings was $3.50 on September 24, 2026. Selling vegetables in bundles, like a $15 bag or a $35 box, is how small growers raise each order and keep card fees under 5%.

Is it better to sell vegetables at a farmers market or a farm stand?

A farm stand is usually better for a small grower because it has no booth fee and sells every day, while a farmers market puts more shoppers in front of you once a week. Many growers run a stand for surplus and add a market only when they have enough volume and something the other vegetable vendors do not.

Related Reading

Five guides that answer the next question once you know where to sell vegetables. Start with the online guide if you want regulars ordering before Thursday's harvest, or the pricing guide if your $3 bunches are selling out by 10 a.m. and you suspect they are too cheap. The stand guide covers the table at the end of the driveway, the platform comparison lays out what each ordering tool costs a produce grower, and the herb guide maps where the basil next to your tomatoes sells.

• How to sell produce online: pre-orders, pickup windows and listings built around a harvest that changes every week.
• How to price vegetables at a farm stand: per-vegetable prices and how to check them against your grocery store.
• How to set up a roadside farm stand: placement, signs and payment for the stand at the end of your driveway.
• The best platforms to sell produce online: side-by-side platform costs for produce growers.
• Where to sell herbs: the seven places herbs sell, for the basil and parsley growing next to your tomatoes.

Sell the Harvest Before You Pick It

The best place to sell vegetables is the one where the order comes before the harvest. A neighbor list, a stand and a weekly bag can carry a big garden all season, and every one of them works better when regulars can see what is ready and pay ahead. Picking to orders is how a grower turns a $3.50 bunch into part of a $15 bag or a $35 box, and how the Thursday harvest matches Friday's pickups instead of the compost pile.

You do not need a farm, a website or a wholesale account to start. You need a list of what will be ready in the next week, a price in whole dollars, a pickup time, and one place to send people. Keep the stand for drive-by buyers and the market for new faces, and give every regular a link they can order from on Monday. Start your Homegrown storefront, post this week's picking list, and send the link to the people who keep asking if you sell.