first time with spreadsheets!

7 years ago

Hello,

This year I'm trying to get more organized to hopefully be able to harvest more and preserve more food for my family. I decided to make a spread sheet with sowing/seed starting dates, days to maturity, and expected harvest dates. I'm also going to try to plan how many plants to plant per person, and then maybe use this list to make goals for myself on specific days.

A little about me... I have a community garden that is about 20 minutes away. I have the summer off because I'm a teacher, but when school starts again I get very busy and don't have as much time to get to the garden. My hope is that I can plan better when things will be ready to pick, and then make it over to the garden to pick/preserve them. Every year I end up loosing a lot of veggies that rot on the plants because I miss the harvest window (especially with tomatoes). Not having the garden in my backyard makes it a lot harder to keep an eye on things.

Usually I can green beans and strawberry jam every year. I'm hoping to preserve the following this year in addition to beans and berries: Potatoes, tomatoes, summer squash, kale, winter squash. I also want to make some baby food because we are expecting a baby in August. :)

I've included a link to my plating schedule spreadsheet - I would love to hear how others have used spreadsheets, pitfalls, suggestions to make mine better, as well as just any advice you would have to help preserve more food (it takes a lot of time!!)

Thanks so much,

Planting Schedule (still have some empty spaces to fill in)

Also, here is the calculator that I used that might be helpful when calculating harvest dates https://www.vitegreenhouses.com/HarvestDateCalculator.asp

Scott

zone 6

Wegerzyn Community Garden Member Dayton, Ohio

Featured Answer

naturegirl_2007 5B SW Michigan

7 years ago

If you are not able to visit the garden often, pick any tomatoes that are just starting to color and bring them home. They will ripen up at your home nicely. I pick aggressively before going on vacation and enjoy the fruits as they ripen for a week or more. You can freeze whole ripe tomatoes and deal with them when you have enough to cook up a large batch. If you run them under warm water, the skins will slide right off the still frozen tomatoes. If you have a little more time initially, core the tomatoes before freezing. Then skinning and cutting them up goes even faster.

As Lone Jack said, some foods are not safe to can, not even with pressure canning. Purees are one red flag item so baby food may need to be frozen. Folks at the harvest forum can answer questions and keep you safe.

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Comments (7)

Scott
Original Author
7 years ago

Here is a bunny that tripped my dear camera in my garden. Likes the strawberries!
LoneJack Zn 6a, KC
7 years ago
Scott - welcome to garden web! It looks like you've been doing your homework. Some things I include on my spreadsheet are planting bed location, seed source and year of purchase. harden off date. You might also make a diagram of your planned plot layout so you can reference prior year's and keep notes of what did well and what didn't and why.

As far as preserving, the Harvest forum here on Garden Web has a lot of information of best practices and there are several very knowledgeable posters that can answer any questions you might have.

Some things like squash aren't recommended for canning especially for baby food but shredding and freezing is OK. Zucchini chips made in the dehydrator are fantastic so I'd try those when you are overrun with them at the peak of harvest. You don't say how you plan to preserve your tomatoes but I would strongly recommend that you try the famous Annie's salsa recipe (Annie posts often over on the GW harvest forum).

Green beans are great pickled as well. I usually just blanch and freeze mine.

If you don't already do so I'd suggest harvesting tomatoes when they first start to blush and then letting them finish ripening on the counter.

Good luck with the garden and new baby! Stick around and join in over on the Veggie Tales thread. There are lot's of great people over there.
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Scott
Original Author
7 years ago
Good ideas about diagram and garden off date. I always forget to draw a map of my garden.
Scott
Original Author
7 years ago
Lots of great advice there, thank you
war garden
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
the spreadsheets and plan design is rather crude. there several examples that have been post by others that have a better design you should use forum search to find them.
nancyjane_gardener
7 years ago
I highly recommend a foodsaver. I make tomato sauce, soups, freeze already cooked meals (very convenient with a baby coming!), buy in bulk and freeze. And much more!