Why scheduling is critical to the successful operation of a business.

A shining example of why a person needs to take care in scheduling. I didn’t manage my time as I should have over the past 2 days. I should have done part of the harvest for today’s delivery yesterday, so I wouldn’t have so much to do before heading to town for today’s CSA delivery.

But I didn’t manage my time properly and so I was late getting to the delivery point. Missed 2 CSA members and the shares were short.
This was completely my responsibility and it’s my fault alone. The shares delivered today will NOT count toward everyone’s share term.
I will do better next week. And, the tunnel that next week’s salad greens will come out of will be in fine shape too. It was almost big enough to harvest today, but I decided to let it wait until next week. As much as this week’s shares were puny, next week’s shares should make up for that and then some.

And here’s another example of why scheduling is so important.

I just did the seeding schedule for the shares each week. During the next couple of months this is what I will be seeding for as far as weekly contents – Red Giant mustard, Southern Giant Curled mustard, Mizuna, leaf and head lettuce, endive, radish for cooking greens and later, after those cooking greens have been harvested the plugs will be planted to grow out for mature braising greens as well as green pod production, Pak/Bok Choi, Tatsoi, beet greens, pea threads and those plants will be set out after the thread harvest to grow out for pod production, Curled and Upland cress, Arugula, Fenugreek.

In order to supply the current members, I need to seed/germinate/set out 199 trays (total), each week. It takes 2-3 weeks for each tray to grow out to harvest size.

It takes 1 day to clear and prep 199 trays, and another day to seed those trays. It takes about 2 hours to place the trays once they’ve germinated and the seedlings begin to emerge.

If I miss the schedule on this work, and/or miss the schedule for harvest, then things like today happen.

The Great Allium Experiments

I also have 2 allium experiments I’m doing at the farm this year. One is for garlic, the other for Calçots. Both are very popular with the patrons. These experiments will be for growing the crops out of season. Ordinarily garlic and onion bulbs (for the Calçots) are planted in the fall/winter and harvested in the spring (green garlic and Calçots) and summer/fall (head garlic). I don’t grow garlic for the head, only for the green garlic. In the past, the only way you could have green garlic in the off season was to freeze it, can it, dry it, pickle it, etc. All of which, while wonderful, do change the character of the fresh green garlic. Now, the whole reason, as I understand garlic growing, that we plant our garlic in the fall/winter is that the garlic needs cold weather for a period of time, and it needs quite a while to grow and form heads. If you plant in October/November, you will harvest heads in July/August, so you’re looking at a crop that takes 8-9 months. Green garlic, on the other hand, takes 3-4 months depending on when you plant it. I harvested some last week that I had planted in January. It had stalks that were big enough I was able to make the bundles out of 10-15 stalks. Now, this garlic didn’t really go through a cold period as it was planted in a tunnel and the soil never actually got cold enough to even have a frost. So I’m thinking that the cold snap, at least for green garlic, may not be necessary. To be safe, especially this time of year, I’ll be storing the garlic in the refrigerator for a couple weeks prior to planting. But I think that I’ll be able to have green garlic available year round. I think I’ll be able to do the same thing with the Calçots. I probably won’t be able to have them year round as they’re more dependent on day length, but I think I’ll be able to have them available off and on for maybe 6-8 months of the year. We’ll see.