Farmer D Organics

1/10/2010

4/5 stars

This certainly is a boutique with high prices, but that's part of the marketing. They're not targeting people who build their own raised beds or visit (real) farmer's markets regularly. They are, however, providing information and *stylish* options for people on the upper income scale to work good food into their landscaping options.

Towards that end, they have some very nicely constructed raised beds. The beds are bolted together from quality wood with a nicely shaped lip. These are beds that would fit right into a magazine gardenscape. They also have a small, focused variety of soils and natural fertilizers and even sell starter kits combining beds, seeds, tools, and soils.

More importantly (imho), they have compost items. Again, most of these are not meant for DIYers but for people who would rather spend money than time. If you want to get started with composting easily, they have bins that save turning effort, worm bins for vermiposting, some odd "automatic composter" for inside that kinda scares me, chickens (and a stylish mobile coop) for that style of composting, etc. The variety can help people remove artificial fertilizers from their landscaping regimen regardless of what's grown.

(I do wish there were an inexpensive worm bin program around here akin to the ones around the SF bay area. Vermiposting is a great option for apartment gardeners… And if you like to fish, you're raising excellent bait.)

While I rather doubt we'll be shopping here too often (we're more the DIY/cheap/seed saver types), the information they share seems good. I haven't attended any of their workshops, but definitely will be keeping track of what's offered. The folks at Farmer D (including Farmer D) were friendly and talkative. It'll be interesting to see how they grow.

Yelp tags: Local Flavor Food