Crop Planning & Data in the Market Garden
Sharing an overview of how we use Airtable for crop planning and data gathering during the season. Links to accessible, open source data and databases at end.
Having a decade working in tech companies before switching to full time market gardening means I have a not so secret love for a spreadsheet… and now databases (having switched to Airtable which is way more powerful when trying to use it for more complicated planning and management). Not only are they a great tool to have in our work kit, but I love the sense of calm a good plan gives me.
Successfully producing a diversity of crops each with individual growth cycles, planted at different times of the year, to ensure delicious and nutritious veg for our CSA members and market over our target 20+ week season, expanding into wholesale crops, offering volunteering opportunities and participating in developing the wider farm cooperative whilst also trying to make the whole thing profitable is a challenge! I have a terrible memory, so outsourcing that part of my brain to a database means I can feel more confident in my decisions - or unpick why and how I might have messed something up and come up with a plan of what to do differently next time and hopefully become a better grower.
The aim for our crop plan is to determine all our seasons plantings in advance, both spatially (where in the field it will grow) and temporally (when each selling needs to be started in the poly tunnels, transplanted or direct seeded) so the crop is available at the right time. We then want to be able to track against this plan to see what the reality of planting and harvest was. A solid plan along with visibility of what actually happened is a great learning tool to help us become better growers.
We also want the crop plan to be accessible and visible across the team to help us stay on track, enable agency and effective team collaboration and resilience (as well as manage complexities and decision fatigue when we are fully in the throws of intense growing seasons).
Ultimately we want to grow more delicious, nutritious food on less space with fewer external inputs whilst increasing biodiversity, food security and joy. Growing beautiful veg is an art as well as a science, but solid, informative data really helps; especially having growing data that is relevant to us growing in Scotland vs more southern climes.
I’ve benefited so much from the generosity of people sharing their knowledge about growing. So having built our own little database world, I am sharing it in case it could be at all useful for anyone else interested in using it to help their growing.
Feel free to copy data or databases that are useful. Any feedback or updates on crop estimates and data, ideas etc warmly welcomed.
Overview
(WORK IN PROGRESS) Documentation of how the various databases hang together to assist with our planning / tracking.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tHXv_JKWstH0dRxZzSZWF-d82u6qSQ9dfBeHxFXu8cU/edit
Crop Reference Guide
This is the Master Reference Guide for all our crop information. Probably the most useful database if you’re just interested in growing estimates etc. The data here feeds into all our planning assumptions and we aim to refine it each year.
Information about spacing on the beds, days to maturity etc and our best guess about yields to help refine our plans to ensure we produce enough to feed everyone without overproducing. Also trying to build up our wider databank of useful information like how much seed we can produce on a bed etc. Our goal with much of the data we record is to refine our estimations, spacing and timings to optimise production and planning specifically for growing crops in Scotland.
Also includes a base list of all varieties we grow/have grown that we can refer back to helping to inform crop variety selection
CSA Planner
Used to map out target CSA veg shares for a season to generate a recommended planting plan.
A bit of a ‘dummy’planner to make an initial crop plan. We set our base assumptions e.g. number of target production weeks, number of targeted shares etc. then use simple interfaces to build our perfect veg share by week and it will autogenerate a suggested planting plan with sowing dates and volumes to sow
We built our target plan based on looking at last years veg shares, what worked well and what we got feedback to change. We also used it to review how many times we are targeting crop appearing in shares over the season and to ballpark estimate value of the shares we intend to grow for our members to sense check our pricing.
Crop Planner
Makes a finalised planting plan for our season combining our CSA, Market and Wholesale target crops. Generates a planting plan schedule, seed order requirements and bed map for growing locations.
Based on our targets for CSA and wholesale we put plan what we actually want to grow and combine e.g. we’ll only plant kale once or twice but want to ensure our supply through the whole season. You could ignore the CSA planner and just start here
Map views help check this fits our available bed space and make a plan to optimise bed use temporally (e.g. which crops follow which to optimise production and sense check rotations or companions)
<iframe class="airtable-embed" src="https://airtable.com/embed/appMs0HtlBwiUIPiE/shrUaGKqkujO9WE00?backgroundColor=greenLight" frameborder="0" onmousewheel="" width="100%" height="533" style="background: transparent; border: 1px solid #ccc;"></iframe>
It generates a sowing/transplant timeline with seed tray numbers, varieties and and seed order list.
<iframe class="airtable-embed" src="https://airtable.com/embed/appMs0HtlBwiUIPiE/shr0hatgJT7gp8o5r?backgroundColor=greenLight&viewControls=on" frameborder="0" onmousewheel="" width="100%" height="533" style="background: transparent; border: 1px solid #ccc;"></iframe>
<iframe class="airtable-embed" src="https://airtable.com/embed/appMs0HtlBwiUIPiE/shrnEDKjnY2YYPiOt?backgroundColor=greenLight&viewControls=on" frameborder="0" onmousewheel="" width="100%" height="533" style="background: transparent; border: 1px solid #ccc;"></iframe>
Crop Tracker
[NB> COMBINED WITH THE CROP REFERENCE INFO PROBABLY THE MOST USEFUL DATABASE] If you’re interested in tracking your crops and collecting data over the season this is the most useful database for you (no need to use airtable for planning). Just edit your own Crop Reference Database e.g your varieties, beds etc and link it to this one. Then fill this in as you go through the season.
We use this to track the reality of what we’re growing. Easy to use forms to keep track of actual sow dates/transplant, record crop notes, track days to maturity and harvest yields etc during the season so we don’t have bits of paper floating about or forgotten observations or notes
CSA member view: Based on what we harvest we can automatically surface views for our members of exactly what is in their share that week - along with extra information like crop photos, recipe suggestions, storage tips or even who planted/picked it etc.
<iframe class="airtable-embed" src="https://airtable.com/embed/app8dFD8HA5anLzMP/shrn96jOhmHVpcOce?backgroundColor=cyanLight&viewControls=on" frameborder="0" onmousewheel="" width="100%" height="533" style="background: transparent; border: 1px solid #ccc;"></iframe>
Market tracker: enables us to log and review what crops go to market . what gets sold to help keep an eye on income and refine our offering.
Wholesale tracker: enables us to log what crops are going to which wholesale customer and automatically generate invoices
Data Insights: Gathering the data in this way means we can generate nice stats automatically e.g. How many metres of veg are we growing? What’s our yield per metre for different crops or varieties or the same crop sown at different times? How does that compare to our target? Are we optimising our bed space? How much food are we producing? Where is it going (amounts/value to different sales channels or donations)? How many portions of veg did we gift? How do different varieties perform against each other? Having all this data easily to hand also means we can refine our reference assumptions to improve next years plans. Also good for reporting ‘Market Garden Year in Review’ type info for investors and community members
<iframe class="airtable-embed" src="https://airtable.com/embed/app8dFD8HA5anLzMP/shrFTcVTcEzEj6wQe?backgroundColor=cyanLight" frameborder="0" onmousewheel="" width="100%" height="533" style="background: transparent; border: 1px solid #ccc;"></iframe>
Any suggestions for improvements (both to functionality & crop assumptions) warmly welcomed. Happy Growing!
Hello! Wondering if you can make the crop reference guide link available?
This is a truely incredible post. I am trying to figure out Airtable now asap!
Thanks so much. Love from France