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  • From: "David Inglis" <mhcsa AT verizon.net>
  • To: "'Market Farming'" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Yield Estimates
  • Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 12:25:12 -0500

Detailed planning is great but to start out you need to get as close as possible then double it. Especially for the crops that are cheap to grow. What is essential for a beginning CSA is having too much food to choose from so you have enough to be able to choose the best. There is no such thing as just the right amount, only too much and too little and I know which of those you would prefer. The planning goal should be to reduce the amount you throw away, or not harvest, as harvesting is typically a third to half your costs. But, it is a good thing to ‘waste’ some food.

This initial plan wont be very useful but will become increasingly useful as you adjust it based on actual yields and sharer preference. We adjust based on the past seven years of yields per row foot by discounting the top and bottom yielding years or any yield we know was an aberration. This is the important part of the planning and I highly recommend you stick with the process until you are getting meaningful figures because you will be tempted to abandon the planning when things are out of wack. To purchase an effective computer planning aid go to: http://www.brookfieldfarm.org/

The other factor you will need to find a way of systematically incorporating into the plan is sharer preferences. This is much more difficult if  you are filling boxes rather than offering free choice as we do but you have to find a way of getting accurate feedback. When we switched from allocated shares to free choice in ’98 our planning had got to the point that we had to make only two changes to the row feet of crops: less cabbage and more beets, lots more beets which I never would have guessed. This crop also pointed out one difficulty of allocated shares because when we surveyed each year many wanted more beets and many wanted none. The only way to please one group was to alienate the other. With free choice the beet people get beets and the others don’t. Unfortunately free choice only appears to work at the farm site. I would like to know of examples of free choice working at a drop off site, and how.

It is hard to assess your numbers not knowing your conditions and growing regime but some of them look optimistic for continuous  weekly figures.

All the best.

David

Mahaiwe Harvst C.S.A.

W.Mass

Z5

 

-----Original Message-----
From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Matt Cheselka
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 10:39 AM
To: Market Farming
Subject: [Market-farming] Yield Estimates

 

Howdy everyone,

 

I'm trying to figure out as accurately (and conservatively) as I can per plant per week yields.  For instance, I think I can harvest at least 10 tomatoes per plant per week.  Here's my list:

 

Peas: 10 pods

Spinach: 6 leaves

Mustard: 6 leaves

Arugula: 6 leaves

Chard: 6 leaves

Vitamin Green: 6 leaves

Collards: 6 leaves

Tatsoi: 6 leaves

Tomato: 10 fruits

Beans: 10 pods

Summer Squash: 5 fruits

Okra: 5 pods

Peppers: 5 fruits

Cucumbers: 5 fruits

Melons: 5 fruits

Winter Squash: 5 fruits

 

My question to you is: are these reasonable estimates?  Too low?  Too high?

This ties into helping me calculate how much to grow starting next spring and how much growing area I'll need prepared.  And this, of course, allows me to determine how many CSA customers I can manage.  So for instance if I decide that I'm going to put 30 pea pods into each CSA box, then I'll need 3 pea plants for each box.  Each pea plant needs about 0.11 sf to grow, so 3 pea plants need 0.33 sf.  If I then decide that I'll need to supply 20 CSA boxes, I know that I'll need to be growing 60 pea plants that take up 6.6 sf of growing area.  It gets a little more complicated than this becuase I'm also having to plant in succession, but this is the general idea.  It turns out that my effective growing area (which includes taking into account succession planting) for peas is about 1.07 sf per CSA box.  So for 20 boxes per week I'll need 21.4 sf of growing area.

 

If anyone wants to see my calculations in detail, please visit my website (www.cosmiclettuce.com) where I'll lay it all out.  I'd actually like to hear from those more experienced in such things if what I'm calculating seems to be close to reality.

 

I've also decided that plants that produce over an extended period of time (I call them "many timers"), like those listed above, can do this for at least four weeks.  So for example once a tomato plant begins to produce ripe fruit, I can count on at least four more weeks of fruit production from that plant.  Same for all those plants listed above.  Does this sound reasonable?  I actually think, in fact, that as long as the plant doesn't get sick or infested, that four weeks is an underestimate, but I'd like to know if you think that four weeks is a good minimum number of weeks to expect.

 

Thanks for the info,

 

Matt Cheselka

Cosmic Lettuce< /DIV>




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