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How do you determine how much to plant ?

Posted by jdsims Nortern California (My Page) on
Wed, Feb 4, 09 at 1:22

So this is my first market garden. we usually just cut hay of the fields but we want to experment. We are going to take one field about 600ft by 300ft and put in a market garden. If it does well we then put it into a winter garden. and maybe expand to some of our other fields. also we have a total of about 40 acres.

Id say about 30 farmable. my dad house and shop and my house and barn sit on the place plus one hill side(which is a good place for goats or maybe even trees in the future.)

The field we are going to be using has a very high water table dig about 4 feet and your into water. There is also a water close by (the county says it should be dry by now but it has water all year round. We also flood irragate every 14 days and we can control where the water goes to keep it off certain plants.

We are going to have about 88 rows 600 foot long 3 foot apart and about 36 rows 6 ft apart ( squash and melons) also we have anthor area we are planting melons.

I figured in the area I have to work with I can plant alot of stuff. So this is were I'm running into my problem. I think we are in zone 9 are last frost is usually in may that when we plant.

Trying to figure out what to plant and how much is causing me to loose sleep. so any ideas could help here is somethings I have been tossing around so far.

Tomatos one row of beefsticks one row of a nice salad tomato and a half row of red cherry and the other half is yellow. Im not for sure if that is going to be to many tomatos or not enough.should I add more varity also ?

I guess im kind of worried that by the end of the market ill be out of produce and not able to attened and the customer base Im trying to develop will go else with me unable to supply enough product.


Follow-Up Postings:

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RE: How do you determine how much to plant ?

At our markets early in the year, folks are screaming for carrots, lettuce, spinach and anything that goes in a salad.
Steven


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RE: How do you determine how much to plant ?

There isn't going to be a real good guess coming from any of us because there's too many variables. If you plant too much and can't sell it all, then there's always food pantries, churches, canning/freezing, friends and giving it away.
If you don't plant enough, there's always the chance of running out/bugs destroying plants/ not turning out the way you wanted. It's always a crap shoot at first.


 
 

 

 


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