We’ve updated pages 1 and 2 of the instructions. We’ve updated the introductory section to include reference to the Template Use file, and also added information about why Corn is in the cold weather crop section and why cauliflower is in both hot and cold weather sections of the calculator.

Colorado Local Sustainability and HeartEye Village CSA in Lafayette, CO will be offering a workshop on using the Fantastic Farm & Garden Calculator to plan your CSA or garden.

This workshop will teach you how to use the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator to plan your garden or farm plot in order to produce the highest quantity and variety of crops possible given available space and skill level, for a specific number of people consistently throughout the growing season!

Tracy Sweely, creator of the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator, will present easy to follow instructions on utilizing the Calculator as a planning tool so that you can navigate the complexity of keeping as much of your land under cultivation as possible during the growing season. Whether you have 10 sq ft or several thousand, this planning tool will assist you in achieving the greatest level of production possible from your land.

Bonus: Fee includes a 1-month subscription to the Farm or Garden version of the Calculator!

Date: March 6, 2010

Time: 1:00-4:00 PM

Cost: $35

To sign up, or to find more information, visit the HeartEye Village CSA website: www.hearteyevillagecsa.com.

Garden season (as well as farming season) is upon us and if you haven’t already started planning you garden or farm… it is time to get planning! (And why not use the Fantastic Farm & Garden Calculator to help you get the most out of your farm or garden?) As part of your planning and getting ready to start growing, some of you may want to start your own seedlings.

One easy way to germinate seeds is in a paper towel. For move visual folks like myself, the video I have featured on our Local Sustainability site this week gives a good visual overview of starting seeds in paper towels. One thing I’d suggest is to not use a sealable ziplock bag as she does, but if you do, don’t zip it shut.

To start, moisten a paper towel and wring it out so it is damp, not wet. Then spread the seeds out evenly, then sandwich with another moist towel. As the video mentions, a four inch square piece is a nice size and will easily slip into a plastic sandwich bag. Fold the towel and put it in a plastic bag.

Next you’ll want to keep the seeds in a slightly warm (generally 65-75 degrees is good for most plants) area until they germinate. I’ve heard some who set them on top of their refrigerator, some even mention setting them on top of their hot water heater. if you’re starting a lot of seeds, you could set them in a cooler (ice chest type) and rig a low wattage light bulb inside to give off the heat. With this method I’d usually partly cover the top of the cooler to keep some of the heat in, but not cover it all the way.

Depending on the variety of seed, germination should start within a week or even days. As soon as the seed breaks and new growth begins, place in moist soil. For very small seeds, you can just lay the sprouts on the surface (or refer to seed packet instructions), for larger seeds bury according to the packages instructions.

With the seed weights, weight conversions are based on an average across varieties so when it comes to ordering specific varieties there could be significant divergence in seed weight from what is listed here.  When you have doubts, go with the seed counts! Also, we’ve misplaced the Leek seed counts!  Sorry!  For the amount of Leek seed use the “Total # of plants sown” in the Cold Weather Crop Row Planting Info section.

[Original posted on our other site, Local Sustainability.] As we get ready for our second season with our micro-farm and CSA, we are looking into why a couple crops were less successful than they should have been. One crop in particular are the potatoes. While we bought excellent seed potatoes from a Colorado grower, I think our planting method may not be all that it is cracked up to be.

The Potato Tower! Yes, it sounds like some “Ronco” product (or a Saturday Night Live skit), but the concept sounded appealing. More appealing was the supposed fact that you could get up to 100 lbs of potatoes from one 3′ x 3′ tower. Great, we had two towers, so we should get 200 lbs of potatoes! In theory. The theory being that you plant you seed potatoes in about 18″ of soil, then when the stalks grow 6″, you layer on more soil, and the plant will produce tubers where the stalk is in contact with soil. On top of such a harvest potential, they take up little space which is great for home gardeners, or micro-farmers. Perhaps the best part is you don’t have to dig the potatoes up, just pull down the tower! Great theory, but it didn’t prove successful for us.

Throughout the season we kept piling on the soil as the stalks grew. They were growing like crazy, and looked very healthy and vigorous. Everyone was curious about these towers, and couldn’t wait to see the “huge” harvest. As the season neared an end, and the CSA’s final harvest was coming up, it was time to harvest the potatoes. I eagerly started pulling apart the towers, and some of the first potatoes I found were of a nice size. Beautiful red potatoes! Pulling down more soil, I quickly saw that their wasn’t going to be 100 lbs. of potatoes in the tower. Maybe if all the Robin’s egg sized potatoes were a full size, maybe then the yield would have been larger.

After our two towers were down, and I had sifted through all the soil, we had 25 lbs. of potatoes. Two 3′ x 3′ towers with 5 lbs of seed potato in each… 25 lbs. Well, it was enough to give each CSA member 1 lb each. And I have to say they were the best red potatoes I’ve ever had!

So what went wrong? Not enough water? No, while there were times the towers got neglected with watering, the plants were very happy, and the soil seemed damp enough when I took the towers down. Planted too late in the season? This is a possibility, but I don’t think we were too far off from the optimal planting date. Not enough nutrients? The soil in our towers was a mix of suitable dirt, llama manure, and some straw mixed in. I don’t think the soil quality was the issue. Harvested too soon? Yes, in fact we did harvest before the foliage died back since we wanted our CSA members to get potatoes in their final box. My guess is we may have had 2-3 more weeks before the foliage died back. I can’t imagine that amount of time would have made much difference on the very small potatoes. Potato towers – fiction? Maybe! As I was researching potato towers this morning, an article (and ensuing comments) on One Straw made me think that potato towers might not be the way to go. Rob (at One Straw) had a very similar experience with his potato towers. As did many of his readers who commented on his article.

This year I guess we’ll either try a sheet mulch mound, or 5 gallon buckets, both sound like they are more successful methods. You can read a little about them in this article on One Straw.

We are currently reassessing the seed weights for several of the crops listed in the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator. In the meantime, it is best to order based on seed count.

We’ve added a quick intro video to the Fantastic Farm & Garden Calculator to help you see how easy it is to start planning your farm or garden using the Fantastic Farm & Garden Calculator.

The instructions have been modified regarding Cold Weather Crop Inputs. Under the number of weeks of harvest in the early part of the season, you cannot input 0. Unfortunately, due to a constraint of the software we are using you also cannot input “10”. You can have 9 weeks of harvest or 11 weeks of harvest but not 10 in the early part of the season. We do apologize for this “bug” but at this point we cannot correct it, though we continue to try. This should only effect those users who live in regions with very long growing seasons.

The template use instructions for the Fantastic Farm & Garden Calculator have been update. Here are the details:

Changes occur on page 10 of the PDF, and include:

“Use the filled in Planting Overview, and the filled in Crop Rotation template to fill in the Planting and Harvest Guides.”

Has been changed to:

“Use the filled in Planting Overview and the calculator to fill in the Planting and Harvest Guides.”

also,

“Use Crop Rotation template to determine in the amount of row feet planted, and
the Planting and Harvest Dates info section of Calc to shade in maturation time and harvest length. The following demonstrates an early season succession and a late season succession of beets.”

has been changed to:

“Use the Cold Weather Crop Planting Info section of the calculator, the column headed “Row Feet /week” to determine the amount of row feet planted for each succession. And use the Planting and Harvest Dates info section of Calc to determine the amount of row feet planted,to shade in maturation time and harvest length. The following demonstrates an early season succession and a late season succession of beets.”

For 2010 we will be adding upgrades to the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator which will greatly improve the management and documentation of your garden, farm or CSA.

Harvest Totals

During the 2009 growing season at our test farm we thoroughly documented all of our harvest weights as well as the amounts we gave to our CSA members.  This is extremely useful and important information to document so you can track production yields from season to season, and year to year.  To help make the FFGC even more valuable for our users, we will be adding a section where users can enter their harvest totals, and amounts given to CSA members in the farm version.

Retail Harvest  & Sales Totals

The farm version of the FFGC offers the retail sales calculator to help you determine how much produce you may sell, and the estimated sales totals.  We will be adding a section where users of the farm version of the FFGC will be able to enter their sales info, such as: weight or # of units sold of each item, price per, and where it was sold (farmstand, farmers market, restaurant, grocery store).

Growing Journal

While each version of the FFGC comes with a notes field where you can make notes while planning, we realize that many gardeners and farmers might want to take more notes than they can enter in the FFGC notes field.  By adding a personal and private journal option, users will be able to enter all the detail they want, such as germination issues, pest issues, rainfall patterns or droughts, hail issues, and much more.

These new features will make the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator even more… Fantastic!

We hope to begin development on the Harvest Totals upgrade soon, and will try to get it online this spring.