Crop Planning for Microgreens

Microgreens may be small, but growing them efficiently requires some planning. If you’ve ever struggled to align your planting with your harvest needs—or found yourself tossing unused trays—you’re not alone. That’s where crop planning comes in

This page contains all our articles related to crop planning. Crop planning is an often overlooked topic and is crucial for microgreens business success.

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  1. Microgreens Crop Planning Principles

  Introduction Microgreens may be small, but growing them efficiently requires some planning. If you’ve ever struggled to align your planting with your harvest needs—or found yourself tossing unused trays—you’re not alone. That’s where crop planning comes in. In this article, we’ll break down what microgreens crop planning is, why it matters, and how it can…

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  2. Building Blocks of Your Microgreens Crop Plan

  Understanding and mastering the foundational elements of a microgreens crop plan is essential for consistent, high-quality harvests that meet customer demand. Whether you’re running a commercial grow or refining a home-based setup, clearly mapping out the stages, tasks, and timing will allow you to scale and succeed with less stress and more predictability. This section…

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  3. Growing to Order – The Smarter Way to Plan

  Introduction Most new microgreens growers start by guessing how much of each crop to grow. But experienced growers know that success comes from working in reverse—starting with your customers and growing exactly what they’ve ordered. This is the foundation of growing to order, and it’s the smartest, most efficient way to plan your crop schedule.…

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  4. Building Your Crop Plan – Bringing It All Together

  Introduction Once you’ve established your crop elements, growth stages, and are growing to order, the next step in microgreens crop planning is creating a “crop calendar” or crop plan that reflects your entire production schedule. This crop plan is essentially your operational hub. It brings together all your sowing, germination, blackout, light, and harvest tasks—and…

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  5. Shifting Products to Fine Tuning Your Crop Plan

  Even the best microgreens crop plans will run into challenges. Trays don’t germinate evenly. Deliveries shift. New orders get added. Trays get overwatered or understaffed. The true strength of your crop plan lies not in perfection, but in how adaptable it is when things go off-track. This article focuses on “shifting products” as a strategy…

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  6. Just in Case – Crop Buffers

  Build Crop Buffers Into Your System Resilient crop plans include room to adapt. One of the main ways we do this is through crop buffers. Buffers refer to excess crop sowed above and beyond your order needs. Here we will take look at some methods of using buffers. Buffer Trays The simplest buffer option is…

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  7. Microgreens Crop Planning for Farmers Markets

  Balancing Flexibility with Strategy Selling microgreens at a farmers market offers a powerful mix of opportunity and unpredictability. Unlike restaurant or subscription orders, markets are spontaneous—customers vary week to week, weather impacts turnout, and seasonal rhythms shape consumer preferences. This variability makes crop planning for markets both more challenging and more rewarding. A well-structured crop…

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  8. Common Crop Planning Problems and How to Solve Them

  Early days of crop planning can be difficult. Here are some tips and tricks to get you off to a good start when dealing with crop production and crop planning challenges. 1. Late Germination or Poor Germination 2. Overburdened Harvests 3. Missed Sowing Tasks 💡 Pro Tip: SeedLeaf, designed specifically for microgreens growers, allows you…