The market garden micro-farm

Since 2012, Les Jardins de la Valette have been exploring the limits of small-scale organic intensive market gardening.

Les Jardins de la Valette was created in 2012, on my grandparents' land in a small French village. Although I don't come from a family of market gardeners, my grandparents were farmers. After completing my studies in electrical engineering, I felt the need to return to something more concrete, closer to the land. So I turned to agriculture.

Sylvain Couderc

After training in horticulture, I had the chance to travel and discover many farms in Australia and New Zealand. This journey, which lasted several years, enabled me to understand and learn the principles of permaculture, and above all to discover the man who would be one of my guides a few years later, Eliot Coleman.

This discovery of intensive organic market gardening led me, by the merest chance, to a farm which, at the time, didn't yet have the international reputation it has today. I'm talking about Jardins de la Grelinette, founded by Maud Hélène Desroches and JM Fortier. At the time, I was able to do an internship with them and confirm my career plans. Back in France, I had only one idea: to set up my own farm.

This has been the case since 2012.

History of Gardens

That's how my agricultural career began. With a BPREA diploma and a few years' experience under my belt, I literally embraced the bio-intensive model. In the same year, JM Fortier published his first book, which naturally became a support in my choices.

In 2018, once the DJA had been completed and a viable market gardening structure established, my partner and I decided to move to create Jardins de la Valette V2. We didn't go very far, only a few kilometers away. But the move was a significant one, as we left clay-limestone soil with limited water resources for land more suited to market gardening in the Ségala region.

Today, the farm is perfectly balanced, with two weekly markets, a permanent employee and a seasonal worker during the busiest period. This allows us to achieve what many would think impossible on less than 5000m2.

Organic-intensive market gardening in a nutshell

Small-scale organic farming is a method inspired by the market gardeners of the 19th century. In a nutshell, the main idea is to cultivate on a small area while obtaining high yields. This system, which relies on the absence of a tractor, allows space to be optimized and vegetables to be grown intensively per square metre. The use of large quantities of compost, following the example of 19th-century market gardeners, also promotes increased production per square metre. Every available space is used throughout the season, thanks to a rigorous cultivation schedule drawn up each year.

To optimize and organize the season, the garden is divided into identical blocks that rotate over a 7-year period. Each block is subdivided into permanent plots 75 cm wide, for a total of 126 plots 20 meters long. In the Jardins de la Valette, this represents just under 5,000 square meters.

The soil is only worked on the surface, at a depth of no more than 8 cm, to preserve the soil's biology. The earthworms take care of the rest. To prepare the surface, we use a rotary harrow mounted on a rototiller, our only mechanized tool. As the cultivation beds are permanent, we never walk on them to preserve their structure as much as possible. A massive input of organic matter, up to 100 tonnes per hectare of compost, maintains and improves the fertility of our soils over the long term.

All other tasks, such as hoeing and harvesting, are carried out manually. When we speak of "manual" work, we may think of an archaic system, but in reality, many high-performance manual tools have been developed in recent years. Constant thought and attention are given to our daily tasks, with the aim of constantly improving and optimizing our work.

This system, brought to light by Eliot Coleman and JM Fortier, co-founder of Les Jardins de la Grelinette, is an ecologically sustainable model that doesn't lose sight of profitability and financial objectives. Thanks to this method, which we've been applying since 2012, we produce over €90,000 worth of vegetables on less than 5,000m2, taking a minimum of 6 weeks' vacation and working 40 hours a week at the height of the season.

We feed around 120 families every week, and our market garden isn't going to get any bigger. It's more than big enough. Although its surface area has remained the same since the beginning (5000m2), our production increases every year.