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Subject: Market Farming
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- From: Alex McGregor <waldenfarm AT sprintmail.com>
- To: Market Farming <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
- Subject: Re: garden schedule, etc
- Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 12:09:49 -0500
Sharon,
I use MS Access for my crop planning. I have 70- 100 sq. ft. beds and have 2
to 4
crops per bed per season. And I start most as seedlings to transplant; I
direct
seed beans, peas, mustard & turnip greens. (Sounds like a planning nightmare?)
A simple plan has the following fields: Bed Number, Crop, Variety, Plant in
Flats
or Beds, Number of Beds/Flats, Plant date, Transplant Date, Begin Harvest, End
Harvest.
I subtract how long the crops will be grown in flats or cells from the days to
harvest of the previous crops to get the "begin harvest" date. The "end
harvest"
date is decided by how much of the crop I can sell that week- for example 1/2
bed
sold per week of a lettuce variety = harvest Starts on "begin" date and ends 7
days later. For spinach, where I harvest a whole bed at a time, the "begin' &
"end" dates are the same.
The "end harvest" date is the "transplant" date for the next harvest. I
subtract
2 weeks (or whatever) from this on the next sheet for that bed for the "plant
in
flats" date for the next crop. That way, the seedlings are ready to go in
the day
the previous crop is harvested. If it's a direct seed crop, the "plant in
beds"
date is the same as the previous crops' "end harvest." Make sense?
This works for me because I have permanent beds that never get tillage beyond
the
initial tillage. We remove any crop residue, do surface cultivation to knock
down
any weeds and break up any crust, rake, then plant or transplant. Takes
about 10-
30 people minutes per bed to prep. In a perfect world, we plant or transplant
beds
the same day a crop is removed. You'll have to adjust things for other ways
of
growing.
You can add other info when planning, such as seed source, amount of seed per
bed,
amount to order... to do planning for things like seed orders.
Caveat- what I tell all students and workshop people is that you make out this
schedule in the winter and then throw it away when spring comes. ;>) Meaning-
you'll have to adjust for weather, miscalculations, poor germination and all
those
things that can change the dates. but, it's a good working outline- at least
for
me.
And with Access, you can use fields like "marketable produce/ bed," various
inputs... to track what works. But this takes a good education and
background in
Access data base to be able to set it up.
Hope this helps.
Alex McGregor
Walden Farm
-
garden schedule, etc,
Sharon Gordon, 02/20/2001
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
- Re: garden schedule, etc, Alex McGregor, 02/20/2001
- Re: garden schedule, etc, HMSTDFRMS, 02/20/2001
- Re: garden schedule, etc, HMSTDFRMS, 02/20/2001
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