Whether you are a seasoned pro, or if this will be your first year of gardening or farming, a solid plan will help you succeed in growing more food. Planning a productive vegetable garden, farm, or CSA can be easier than you think. In the past, my home vegetable garden had always been been a bit of a guessing game in regards to how much I should plant vs. how many people it would feed. Sure, over years I figured out potential yields and how many people I could feed, but what if a person doesn’t have years to experiment? Or what if they want to grow more in order to feed more people? Trying to figure out all the details can be a tedious task. That is where a good garden and farm planning program comes into play.
One such program is the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator which was designed specifically for home gardeners, market gardeners, farms, and CSA’s who want to simplify the planning process and maximize their production. The Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator was originally created for our own small CSA farm, HeartEye Village CSA, and quickly proved to be an incredibly useful tool for planning and documenting each growing season. Many other gardeners and farmers around the country are also seeing how useful the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator is for planning their growing seasons.The Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator was designed with biointensive methods in mind, but plant spacing is fully adjustable to allow you to use it for traditional plant spacings, or your own custom spacings.
The Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator will help you determine:
- How many people or CSA members you can provide for
- Potential yields for a wide range of vegetables and herbs
- Number of plants required
- Row space required for each plant
- Fully adjustable plant spacing (default is biointensive spacing)
- Planting and harvest dates for your area
- Successive plantings
- Intercropping (growing 2 or more crops in the same space at the same time)
- Retail sales calculator for market gardeners & farmers
Future upgrades to the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator will include:
- The ability to input actual harvest totals as well as totals given to CSA members.
- Retail sales totals to help you keep track of sales and related harvests.
- Online personal journal to help you document each growing season in detail.
To learn even more about the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator, try the demo, or to sign up and start planning your garden, urban or rural farm or CSA, visit www.landshareco.org
Last 3 posts by Jim Sincock
- New USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map - January 26th, 2012
- Britta Riley: A garden in my apartment - Video - January 9th, 2012
- Willie Nelson wants you to "Occupy the Food System" - December 20th, 2011
