looking for data on Plant harvest weights

[Brent Wheeler]

Hi,

I have entered in a Business plan contest and want data to help me win!!  One of my current issues is getting numbers to calculate the potential of a AP system.  While I ultimately want data for all possible plants,  I am focusing on these few just now.  Can anyone guide me to where I can get this?  

Bok Choy

Celery

Lettuce Mix

Basel

Leeks

Chard

[Brent Wheeler]

How can you use the pounds per acre for AP?  If you can grow 10X density and are not farming soil,, I guess we will have to make a new formula.. ,,,      thanks for your input and any numbers you can provide.. 

Carey Ma said:

Again, these numbers are not from an AP system, others would have to supply that information. Like I said, these are simply my personal results vs. commercial organic fields. The difference is that my water does not recirculate.

The difference of my two results is mainly in the availability of nutrients and water. In my hydro-organic raised beds, I am able to combine all my organic gardening experience like composting, brew/tea making, companion planting, square-foot and succession gardening with my hydroponics experience and bottom irrigating with enriched (processed fish waste) water and tenderly care for each plant. I have heating wires in the beds to give my plants an earlier start and later finish. So yes, I get some good results but at what cost? 

In the commercial field operation I currently consult, we simply top-dress with mature compost and irrigate with the deep water method as per tradition here to give us decent results. Nope sorry I don't have the average weight per plant but that can be calculated. Maybe I can do that this week if I remember. When I figure for production, esp. for sales, I usually figure for the 100 foot row or 100 foot beds as my base for smaller projects but pounds per acre or hectare is how true commercial operations calculate production.

[Carey Ma]

Plants take up space, no matter if they are grown in a single layer, in a horizontal situation or in a verticle application. Traditional farming and gardening calculates production of a flat surface in foot rows or foot beds. The same with most AP systems. The difference between hobby systems and commercial systems is scale. Commercial aquaculture operations may contain systems with hundreds of thousand of gallons of water in either pond or tank configurations. The same formula is used no matter the scale at 2:1 so can easily take up an acre for vegetable production. Verticle growing will lessen the footprint but it still requires the same calculations in running foot.

Factors for harvest include planting density, the spacing in rows and between rows and the size of your beds. Number of plantings and the number of harvest also contribute to production volume.