Grow Together
A food and farming project in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. The service pays for it; a community farm and teaching site is the longer plan.
Ben Martel
I spent fifteen years in web production in New York, at Michael Kors and David Yurman, and moved to the Monadnock region to grow food. Vegetable-Starters.com started in 2021, selling plants I raised under lights. The service came after, because people kept asking for the garden, not just the starts.
Since spring 2026 I've run the fourteen-bed portfolio garden on Abbott Hill in Wilton, with two farmers who have worked that hill for years advising on timing. Grow Together is the umbrella for all of it.
The idea
Make it easier for people to grow their own food and less dependent on a supply chain that has shown its cracks. Do it on their land, with their leaves and their kitchen scraps, and teach them enough along the way that they could carry it on. Relationship with the land over extraction from it.
The other ventures
Vegetable-Starters.com
Starts each spring since 2021, grown under lights: micro dwarf tomatoes, seasonal vegetables and herbs, paired with local pottery.
Brine & Blend
Lacto-fermented hot sauces from peppers grown here, each ingredient fermented separately in glass. Ginger Snap, Reaper Beet, Aji Apple.
The seed library
About 450 packets across 120 crops, tracked in an app built for the job: what's on hand, germination tests, sowing dates, and the plan for each bed.
Contact
Call or text 603.801.3344, or email bdmartel@gmail.com. I'm in Wilton and Peterborough and work the towns around them. Tell me roughly where you are and what you'd like to eat, and we'll set a time to walk the property.