Jean-Martin Fortier

Jean-Martin Fortier is the practitioner who put rigorous economic numbers on the modern small-market garden. The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming (2014) does not just describe a method — it shows the gross revenue, the labor hours, the bed dimensions, the crop rotations, and the cost structures that make a 1.5-acre operation generate ~$150,000 in annual sales with two full-time workers.

The book made the form newly credible. A generation of beginning farmers who would otherwise have started larger and capitalized heavier scaled down to 1–2 acres of intensively-managed bed instead. That shift is largely Fortier’s.

What he actually grows

Les Jardins de la Grelinette is on 1.5 acres of intensive market-garden production in southeastern Quebec (zone 4b–5a, with significant snowpack). The operation produces a typical Quebec market-garden mix:

• Salad greens (multiple varieties, succession-planted)
• Tomatoes (hoop-house production)
• Carrots, beets, salad turnips
• Brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, kale)
• Garlic (a major crop)
• Herbs and specialty crops
• Squash, cucumbers, beans (in season)

Sales channels: CSA (the major revenue line), restaurant accounts, on-farm market.

What he formalized

The signature elements of Fortier’s method:

• Permanent 30-inch beds, 18-inch paths — the dimensions worked out for hand-tool management
• No-till management with broadfork-and-tarp — soil never plowed; biology preserved
• Caterpillar tunnels — low-cost season-extension structures (10–14 ft wide, walkable height); intermediate between low tunnel and hoop house
• Silage-tarp occultation for weed management and bed turnover
• Precision direct seeding with a six-row Jang seeder
• Wheel hoe + stirrup hoe as primary weed-management tools
• Heavy use of paperpot transplanting for greens and brassicas
• Disciplined record-keeping — every bed planted on a known date, every crop tracked to revenue

The book documents all of these in operational detail with photographs, dimensions, and cost figures.

Beyond La Grelinette

Fortier subsequently:

• Founded the Ferme des Quatre-Temps (FQT) — a larger research/demonstration farm in Quebec
• Created the Market Gardener Institute — online course platform; tens of thousands of students worldwide
• Wrote The Winter Market Gardener (2022) — focused on cold-season hoop-house production
• Wrote Market Gardener’s Cookbook with Catherine Sylvestre (2024) — connecting growing to using

The educational reach is large. The Market Gardener Institute graduates form a substantial portion of new small-farm operators across North America and Europe.

Where he sits in this wiki

Fortier is referenced from [[market-garden|market-garden]], [[no-dig-gardening|no-dig-gardening]], [[silage-tarp|silage tarp]], [[broadfork|broadfork]], [[wheel-hoe|wheel hoe]], [[low-tunnel|low tunnel]], and [[transplanting|transplanting]]. He is part of the small group of modern practitioners — alongside [[eliot-coleman|Eliot Coleman]], [[charles-dowding|Charles Dowding]], the [[singing-frogs-farm|Singing Frogs]] team, and Conor Crickmore (Neversink) — who have demonstrated and documented the modern small-market-garden form.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

• Shares approach with: [[charles-dowding]]
• Member of: [[person]]
• Pioneer of: [[market-garden]]
• Practitioner of: [[no-dig-gardening]]

Sources

• Jean-Martin Fortier, The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming (New Society, 2014)
• Jean-Martin Fortier & Catherine Sylvestre, The Winter Market Gardener (New Society, 2022)
• The Market Gardener Institute — online course catalog and graduate testimonials

Rooted in life.