3.3 The Process
3_Creating-a-Growing-Schedule
7a - Crop Planning COPYRIGHTED
7a Vegetable Planting and Transplanting Guide APPROVED and copyrighted
Creating a Growing Schedule
Overview
Title image "20120414-DM-LSC-3040" by USDAgov is licensed under CC PDM 1.0
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Introduction
Lesson Objectives
Create a controlled environment growing schedule.
Explain the use of days to maturity in creating a controlled environment growing schedule.
Differentiate the needs of warm season and cool season crops in creating a controlled environment growing schedule.
Key Terms
days to maturity - can be compared with the number of growing days to ensure that enough growing days are available for the crop to come to maturity
warm season crops - plants that prefer temperatures above 70⁰F and are planted after the last frost date
cool season crops - plants that prefer temperatures below 70⁰F and generally are planted in early spring or fall
Introduction
The practice of horticulture is a marriage of science and business. Growers must be able to meet deadlines in order to make a profit. This lesson will provide information about the goals of planning, modern tools, and the planning process. A producer can appropriately time planting, maintenance activities, and harvest by having a working understanding of the type of crop (warm season or cool season, annual or perennial, etc.), its growing requirements, and the number of days to harvest.
For example, pumpkins are typically cultivated as annual plants that have a growing season of one year or less. Pumpkins are warm season crops, and their seedlings require temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit to thrive. A farmer who wants to maximize their yields of Jack-o-Lantern pumpkins could plant seeds early in the season under protected culture before transplanting outdoors. On average, this variety requires at least 120 days from planting seed before it is ready to harvest (also called days to maturity). If this farmer’s goal is to have a pumpkin patch ready for the Halloween season, they should plant seed at least 120 days before the pumpkin patch is scheduled to open for business.
The principles outlined in this lesson apply to any grower, regardless of method, including nursery managers, Controlled Environment Agriculture farmers, and traditional field growers.
Goals in Planning
Excerpts used with permission from "Crop Planning" by T. Dupont & L. Stivers, PennState Extension. © PennState Extension.
Goals in Planning
Time management is my major reason for doing extensive crop planning. The more I can organize during the winter, the smoother things go during the season. Another important piece is good data collection. We all want to continually improve our production. But if we don't know what we did last year, it is hard to access what worked and what did not work. Of course, there are plenty of farmers who are able to hold the important information in their heads. But when you are getting started it is often helpful to have a few things to go by namely: the seed order, bed preparation schedule, greenhouse seeding sheet, direct seeding and transplanting schedules, a harvest record sheet and a detailed map.
Why Spreadsheets
"I want to be a farmer because I don't like to sit in front of a computer," you say. Well, everything we are going to talk about today can be done with a piece (or 10) of graph paper and a calculator. John Jeavons book "How to Grow More Vegetables," (Jeavrons, 1982) does a nice job of putting a lot of relevant information on a few pieces of paper in graph form. This is a handy reference. But what it does not do is allow you to reformat the information according to what data you really want to see, or easily update it year to year.
Josh Volk frequent contributor to "Growing for Market" says if you were going to do something similar on paper you would put each row of the spreadsheet on an index card. There would be an index card with each planting on it and all the corresponding yield, planting, seeding and ordering information. You could then arrange the index cards by planting date, by crop, by variety or by seed company order form. But it would take some time considering that you would have hundreds of index cards (Volk, 2010). With the computer you can just sort the rows depending on what you are interested in looking at.
The Process
Excerpts used with permission from "Crop Planning" by T. Dupont & L. Stivers, PennState Extension. © PennState Extension.
The process outlined here is adapted from a process shared by Josh Volk from Slow Hand Farm, frequent contributor to Growing for Market. When one of the farmers I work with asked what he does differently than they do, Josh responded, "Probably not much." This outline just gives those of us not familiar with forming spreadsheets and crop plans some handy steps and formats to use. The key here is we will form something Josh calls a "crop master" or master spreadsheet with all the information about our crops. From there we can create the seeding, transplanting and greenhouse charts and easily update them when we get new information.
Step 1 - Collecting the Data
What data is available and where to find it will of course depend a little bit on where you are and what sort of operation you have. But there are a few likely places to look. The Extension offices have a lot of information about growing crops in their production guides, but to get more specific information one of the best places to look is often the seed catalogs. They usually put very specific information about everything from the number of seeds per ounce to plant spacing. Knott's Handbook for Vegetable Growers (Maynard, 1997) is a good all-around source for vegetable information such as germination temperatures, plant spacing, scheduling successive plantings and more. I like John Jeavons' book as well, though his plant spacing are designed for intensive raised bed systems that don't work in my field.
Everyone's brain works differently which makes it hard for us to use each other's spreadsheets. I have included a sample here and there is another nice example available online from Roxbury Farm. For me it makes the most sense to gather all the data in the first part of my spreadsheet. Then I can work to process it into the other information I need. I love sitting down with my seed catalogs and thumbing through them to decide what I want to grow this year. The first 21 columns in my spreadsheet are all the data I think I might want about each crop. Everything from crop and variety names to plant spacing, seeds per ounce, and ordering information. This may seem a little overwhelming at first. But the nice thing is you won't ever have to do as much work again. You will probably grow many of the same crops and varieties next year and you will have all the data right there.
Step 2 - Calculating Yield Needed
Whether you plan to grow for a market or for a CSA it is important to try to grow an appropriate amount for that market outlet. In the case of a CSA this can be more than a little nerve wracking because you have pretty well guaranteed a certain number of people produce every week and they are hoping they don't just get swiss chard every week. Yield calculations are never going to be perfect. But every year you will be able to get closer if you have a starting point. There are a few ways to do this but this is a feasible option.
For a CSA the data you will need is the # of CSA shares, the quantity you will give each shareholder in a given week, the unit, the number of weeks you expect a specific crop succession to produce, the # of varieties if you plan to plant more than one thing and give people a mix of say tomatoes, and whether the crop received multiple harvests or not.
Crop yield per planting you need = (# CSA shares) x (quantity/ share) x number of weeks
Step 3 - Bed/Row Feet per Planting
Next, we want to know how much to grow to get that yield. I calculate this in bed feet. But if you are not in a bed system it works the same to calculate in row feet.
1. Row feet per planting = target crop yield ÷ crop yield per 100 ft row ÷ 100 ft
2. Bed feet per planting = row feet/planting ÷ # rows/bed Step 4 & 5 - Timing Direct
Seeding & Transplanting
To figure out when to plant each of these crops I work backwards from the target date I want to harvest. It may make more sense to you to work forward from the target seeding/transplanting dates to find the harvest date. If you work back from the target harvest date you will probably have to adjust for what is reasonable in your area in terms of frost-free dates etc.
1. Seeding date = target harvest date - days to maturity
2. Transplant date = seeding date + days to transplant
Step 6 - Harvest Dates
You will need columns for seeding/transplanting date, days to maturity, weeks to maturity, and weeks of production.
1. Estimated 1st harvest date = seeding/transplanting date + days to maturity
2. Estimated last harvest date = 1st harvest date + weeks of production x 7
Step 7 - Additional Transplanting Information
It is nice to gather here the information you will need when you are in the greenhouse - i.e. how many plants, the tray size and number of plants.
Step 8 - Seed Ordering Information
For this section you will probably want to make columns for the company, the number of seeds, the oz you need, seeds/ oz, minimum germination, cost and unit code.
Step 9 - Field Prep/Cultivation
Field prep timing always depends on the weather, but it is nice to have target dates set for when you will want to do your field work. This is especially important when you have a cover crop to work in. Based on your experience of how long it takes for that cover crop to break down after you plow it in and if you plan to make beds you may want to have columns for 1st tillage, 2nd tillage, bed preparation, 1st cultivation and 2nd cultivation. I find it really important to have those 1st and 2nd cultivation dates on my calendar. With a hundred plantings to manage it is easy for me to forget to do that first cultivation when the weeds are tiny and then they get out of control.
Dig Deeper
"Crop Planning" by T. Dupont & L. Stivers, PennState Extension. © PennState Extension. Used with permission.
"Vegetable Planting and Transplanting Guide" by E. Sanchez, PennState Extension. Copyright © PennState Extension. Used with permission.
Attribution and References
Attribution
Excerpts used with permission from "Crop Planning" by T. Dupont & L. Stivers, PennState Extension. © PennState Extension.
Title image "20120414-DM-LSC-3040" by USDAgov is licensed under CC PDM 1.0
References
Jeavons, J. (1982). How to grow more vegetables than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine: A primer on the life-giving biodynamic/French intensive method of organic horticulture (Rev. and enl.). Ten Speed Press.
Volk, J. (2010). Tips of Using Spreadsheets for Crop Planning, in Growing for Market. Fairplains Publications Inc.
Maynard, D.N., Hochmuth, G. J., & Knott, J. E. (1997). Knott’s handbook for vegetable growers. (4th ed. / Donald N. Maynard, George J. Hochmuth.). John Wiley.