New crop planning tools - how much to plant and when

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA EXTENSION - www.extension.umn.edu

Extension has a new set of tools to help you plan just how many plants or beds you need to achieve your yield or market goals. Let's say you have a contract for 300 lbs of tomatoes, or 150 lbs of carrots, or that you hope to sell 25 lbs of cucumbers each week in July at the farmers market. How do you plan backwards to figure out how many plants you'll need, and when to start growing?

Our new webpage on crop and field planing for vegetable farmers has tables to help you estimate how many plants or beds you need to achieve a certain yield, recommended plant spacing, seed or transplant needs, as well as timing recommendations (how early to start seeds indoors, how long it takes to produce a crop, harvest window). 

We also have some guidelines on the webpage to help you choose which crops to grow. Many farmers grow a wide variety of crops for fresh markets (e.g. farmers markets), but when growing for a wholesale market, it becomes more important to choose crops that are lower risk, higher value, and less labor intensive in order to be profitable. 

Check out the new website here. 

(We realize these tools are coming out a little late in the season and many of you already have crops plans and seeds / transplants for the year. However, we hope that these can be helpful for planning later successions and for next year!).  

Image: Cory Ryan