Crop Planning Basics
Curtis Stone
Jan 18
Download my crop profile sheets here:
XLS file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/93otazde8bqnvht/Curtis%20Crop%20Profiles%20Sheet.xlsx?dl=0
CSV File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhs9536d8z605g5/Curtis%20Crop%20Profiles%20Sheet%20CSV.csv?dl=0
Has anyone else had trouble downloading the .xls profile sheet?
Hey Curtis Great information!! Thanks so much! You are really helping me get my farm going! I’m Starting a market farm in Caballo NM about 75 miles north of Las Cruces NM its about zone 8a. They have a year round market that I’m signed up for. I’m also hoping to get into some restaurants and grocery stores in the Future. Thanks again and keep up the great work!
Ryan Gott Animas Creek Farm
Hey Curtis!
Thank you, this is awesome! It would be great if you could do a case study of crop planning for someone that is in year 1 and still does not know how much volume of produce is going to sell and where. For example, what would you grow? How much of each? With all your experience, what strategies would you use to minimize risk and maximize income in the first year? Thanks a bunch!
Yes, this could be another great winter subject, we could call it “deciding how much to grow” or “how to figure out how much to grow” or something like that.
This really accelerated my crop planning process to the next level. However, in trying to demystify your local DTM’s and yield projections for the shoulder season, there is a lot of basic plant science that could be added to the discussion. I dug around various online sources and the concept of Growing Degree Days (a.k.a. growing degree units or heat units) came up a lot. This is what the big Ag folks use for their farms, so why not us? With a little data wrangling on the interweb and Excel, anyone can download their local daily climate averages (as if anything is average these days) as well as time series of previous years and calculate their local crop GDD’s. The calculation of GDD is simple math, you can google it but basically it is Daily (Tmax -Tmin) – (Some base temperature Tbase). The base temperature is the temp at which a crop does something awesome like grow or set fruit. e.g. Asian greens start growing at 5deg, lettuce use Base 10 etc. Then you can base your plan around the weeks where your crop’s GDD starts consistently going above 0 (GDD > 0). Eg. GDD-5 is greater than 0 for early greens, GDD-10 > 0 for lettuce and turnips, GDD-18 for tomato fruiting etc. I’ll post my local GDD charts to instagram. @smallcityfarm.
Correction! In my haste I messed up the formula:
Daily (Tmax -Tmin)/2 – (Some base temperature Tbase)
or
Daily Average Temperature – Tbase.
e.g. GDD-10 = Tavg – 10
GDD-5 = Tavg -5
Do you have any examples of crop planning in the Southern Hemisphere in particular Australia? I know the idea of space over time will be the same but there doesn’t seem to be anyone producing content for extensive small scale market gardening in our context. Is there anyone I should be following as an example in our context.
Hey Matt, it’s not really different in any way actually. All that matters is your climate zone to determine average temps and latitude to determine day lengths.
how do you plan or crop rotation when creating your blocks and rows?
Check out the other crop planning video with Erich and you’ll see a little bit more of how we do that.
Please do a video on marketing. Thanks! Love the videos so far!
Any type in particular, or are you thinking something broad?
Anything in specific as it pertains to marketing? I could easily do a broad presentation but it would be hours long, so maybe I could space that out over a few. Open to ideas.
Hi Curtis, GiVHaus. this is a very good idea. Thank you for all the valuable information. I’d like to suggest two topics:
1. Marketing – a deeper video about various market streams. Good way to start based on your experi
2. Pest pressure, control, reactive and proactive measurements to mitigate the damage. Mainly slugs/snails, and any other pests you might think of when it comes to leafy greens.
Yes, you’re not the first one to ask this, so consider it done. I’ll put them both on my list. The marketing stuff is really long, so it might be broken up over a few videos.
As for Pests, yes, I’ve got some good content on that to share as well.
It’s a little dicouraging seeing these mega market gardens. My start up farm is very urban, more like your original content. Also, the more developed my farm is becoming the more my neighbors are starting to reseed their lawns. No one gave a crap about their lawns prior to me buying my property. The baby boomer resistance is alive and cracking lol.
Anyways, my question is:
Would I want single crop rotations such as tomatoes to be in my best beds as far as constant lighting is concerned? Or would it be more profitable to have high rotation crops? I live in Orange County California so I’m kinda lucky where I pretty much can grow anything anywhere during the summer. But some of my bed would get about 3-4 more hours of direct afternoon sunlight.
Really excited to be part of this community and movement.
Thanks again Curtis I’ve been following you for many years. It’s just taken so long because the resistance is pretty hardcore out here in Cali. I’m definitely the crazy neighbor :)
I guess it really depends on what you like doing and what there’s a market for. If you like growing high rotation crops and there’s a market, there’s definietly more money in those.
You couldn’t have put up a better subject right now Curtis, i am about to dive in. Thank you in advance!
With a south slope, should the beds run east to west or north to south
i would have to say east to west..water absorption would go to the beds..also angle rows so that there would be a slight grade south with a main Trench for water run off..