Crop Planning Tools & Strategies

Lisianthus “Feminine”

Photo by Stephanie Rosenthal

How I Plan Out My Seasons, Keep Track of Orders, and Forecast Bloom Times:

This question came up on my Instagram Q&A box and I couldn’t wait to answer, because I personally love planning and putting systems in place to bring some semblance of order to a very chaotic and unpredictable business haha. Anyone who has placed an online order months ahead of when you actually need to plant ‘the thing’ knows that all of those email receipts floating around your inbox can cause some serious subconscious stress. It’s so easy to forget when you ordered, how much, and when it’s supposed to arrive.

I started using a spreadsheet to track all of my orders my second year of growing, and have never gone a year without using it since. Each time I place an order or start a tray of seeds, I add it to the spreadsheet on the appropriate tab. I will have one tab specifically for fall orders, since that is when the bulk of my bulbs, corms, and plugs come in, and then I’ll usually do a tab for spring shipped things/summer seeds that I start and need to make sure I plan space for. I’ll guesstimate when each crop will bloom on the “Bloom Schedule” tab, which helps me see where I have holes in color palettes and focal vs. filler flowers. I made a blank template for you to copy and use for your own farm/garden if you too would like to tame the insane inbox and see all of your money (I mean plants) in one space. 

Link to my crop planning template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/104cV7oMdHAAsMSP7CaV8uchtbi544F2gCEeK7xbtpRs/edit?usp=sharing

Planning out Bed Space:

For space planning, I actually love using google sheets for this too. I draw out little boxes with the “outline” tool on google sheets and then merge the cells to create “beds”, then fill in the approximate portion of each bed with what crop I’m planning to put there. My field is a little under a quarter acre but you’d be shocked just how fast I forget what I planted where, so this tool has been helpful for me.

Other Tools:

I also use Rooted Farmers’ (the platform I use to sell my flowers by the bunch with our local collective during the growing season) analytics to look back on my previous season’s sales and see what crops did well, and which ones I spent way too much money on and need to dial back for the next year.