LOUISVILLE, Ky. — George and Barb Gagel operate a city farm in Louisville. They sell flowers, fruits and vegetables from a 10-acre plot, which is surrounded by a two-lane street, two public schools and a residential neighborhood.

Gagel Truck Farm is a highly diversified operation with six acres in the field and up to 50 greenhouses under cover, all situated next to the family home.

The Gagels operate a state-certified Kentucky Roadside Market store on their farm. That area combined with the greenhouses makes for 100,000 covered square feet.

But that is how George Gagel does business. He keeps a virtual blueprint of the operation in his head, and has every inch mapped and every hour planned there. “It comes from 50 years of farming,” Gagel said. “My wife wants me to write this stuff down because if something happened to me everybody would be lost.”

The Gagels do wholesale and retail selling plus local farmers’ markets in the spring and summer months.

They produce bedding plants, hanging baskets, green beans, beets, cabbage, carrots, collard and kale greens, cucumbers, eggplants, hot and sweet peppers, different varieties of squash, ripe tomatoes, blackberries and raspberries – and more.

Twenty years ago Gagel and others in the area collaborated on growing strawberries, but all were unsuccessful in getting them to do well in the low-lying area of southwestern Louisville.

A few miles away from Gagel’s farm, his friend Bill Dohn operates Dohn and Dohn Gardens on another 10-acre city farm.

Dohn is the primary seller of mint to Churchill Downs for its world-famous Mint Julep cocktails. Gagel said he and Dohn are the only farmers still operating in the area.

Reminiscing, Gagel said, “It used to be that from here to 18th Street, to 7th Street and all of Shively and the Pleasure Ridge neighborhood, was nothing but produce back in the (19)40s.”

He also remembered how in the late 1970s the original family farm on Greenwood Road was sold and he bought the current site on Lower Hunters Trace from a cousin. “I was farming on 30 acres and seven greenhouses, but we moved up here and only had 10 acres,” he said.

With less land he turned to increased greenhouse production. The price of energy is always an issue and Gagel’s farm is no different. Therefore, he tries to make every inch of the greenhouses count.

“In the houses we have triple-crop,” Gagel said.

“We plant lettuce in between the rows of tomatoes. We have our tomatoes starting in January and February and then we have hanging baskets in here, also. We try to get three crops out of this house in the springtime.

“In our field here, for our farmers’ market, we grow produce, including peppers. We grow a Black Beauty pepper, red bell pepper, yellow bell peppers and, of course, your green bell peppers. We also grow about five or six varieties of hot peppers – hot bananas, sweet bananas, habanera and jalapenos. Cheyenne and peperoncini are new ones this year.”

It is not surprising that when the Southwest Farmers’ Market opened June 2 at nearby Valley High School, Gagel was on hand trucking the farm’s red, vine-ripened tomatoes; kale; collard greens; onions; hanging baskets; herbs; and vegetable seedlings.

He is also a 46-year member and past president of the Jefferson County Farm Bureau in Louisville.