"It's All in the Scheduling." 



Dr. Peter Konjoian 



Make no mistake about it, crop scheduling is one 

 of the most important tasks you and I have to 

 perform in our greenhouses. One can not play 

 this game without properly scheduling and timing our 

 crops. Learning how to schedule successive plantings to 

 provide uninterrupted, uniform material from the first 

 day of the selling season to the last is a challenge every 

 one of us must face. 



In my family's 55,000-square foot greenhouse range 

 in Andover, IVlassachusetts, one of my responsibilities is 

 crop scheduling. All of our production is marketed at the 

 retail level right out of our greenhouses. During the 

 spring season, we need to have fresh, perfect plant ma- 

 terial available from the last week of April to the last 

 week of July. Because this season of the year brings in 

 over eighty percent of our annual revenue, careful atten- 

 tion to detail is an absolute must, not only for me in the 

 scheduling department, but also for every other family 

 member who is involved with production in any way. 



During my brief stay in academia as an assistant 

 professor of horticulture at the University of Maryland, I 

 assigned a special project to my greenhouse-manage- 

 ment-and-crop-production students. I required them to 

 simulate a year's operation of a greenhouse business 

 They chose whether to market at the wholesale or retail 

 level or operate seasonally or year round. They made 

 crop selection decisions, cultivars decisions, culture and 

 management decisions, and many others. 



1 still remember the comments of one student after 

 having gone through this rigorous exercise. His words 

 were, "it's all in the scheduling." It has been thirteen 

 years since I graded those projects and thirteen years 

 since I left academia for commercial production. After 

 going through the procedure this many times, I find my 

 former student's words still ring loud and clear. 



There's a list of important pieces of information 

 that should be kept in a crop schedule. And keeping 

 schedules from year to year is also important. I often re- 

 fer back to previous years' schedules to adjust and fine- 

 tune my current or upcoming cycle. Let me use a page 

 in my scheduling notebook for annuals as an example. 



The table has several rows and many columns. 

 There is one row for each cultivar in production. At the 



bottom are a few extra rows for last-minute additions or 

 trials that my seed salesmen drop off. These rows come 

 in handy also in late luly when notes and cultivar 

 changes are recorded for next year's production. The 

 next two columns are used for seed-ordering informa- 

 tion. First, I code the seed company's name, using "B" 

 for Ball, "V" for Vaughn, "M " for IVIichelle, "I" for IVK, etc. 

 I use this information for cataloging the source of each 

 seed packet. And, if 1 have any germination problems, it 

 is easy for me to look up the seed source and contact 

 the right company. 



Next to this column is one for seed amount. It is 

 very important to me to order seed wisely and not let 

 the bill get out of hand This can happen easily with all 

 the exciting new cultivars available. I hate having a lot 

 of seed left over after my last sowing. Wasted seed just 

 cuts into the profit as far as I'm concerned. Be careful 

 though, because cheating on seed can cut into profits 

 even more. Running out of seed for a July sowing of pe- 

 tunia or snapdragon costs me plenty in terms of lost 

 revenue. Each 1020 tray of annuals I am short at trans- 

 plant costs me $14.99 in revenue that would have been 

 generated by growing and selling that tray. 



1 have a ritual of getting down on my hands and 

 knees whenever my seed salesmen drop by and beg- 

 ging them to convince the home office to accelerate 

 their shift from selling seed by weight to selling by 

 count. My life is so much easier when ordering and han- 

 dling seed count instead of weight My rule is to order 

 1000 seeds for every three 288 plug trays that need to 

 be sown. This gives me a little cushion, yet trims the fat 

 in terms of wasted seed 



The next series of columns is used for sowing infor- 

 mation. One column is used for each sow-date and con- 

 tains the number of 288 plug trays for each cultivar. Of- 

 ten I sow less than a full plug tray and am able to keep 

 track of partial trays here as well. Totalling each column 

 lets me know how much propagation space I will need 

 from sow-date to sow-date. 



Another series of columns follows and is used for 

 transplanting- and finishing-container numbers. Most of 

 my bedding plants are produced in 606 packs and are 

 accounted for in terms of 1020 flats There is one column 



THE PLANTSMAN 



