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.

Why Grow to Order?

Growing to order shifts the focus from speculation to precision. Instead of sowing crops based on guesses, you use known data (projected sales) to:

• Reduce crop waste
• Improve cash flow by growing only what’s sold
• Align production with customer preferences
• Simplify harvest, packaging, and delivery workflows

This method not only increases profitability but also builds better relationships with your buyers. When you consistently deliver the crops they asked for—fresh, on time, and to spec—you become a grower they can rely on.

Turning Orders into a Planting Schedule

At the heart of growing to order is backward planning. You begin with the quantity and date your customer wants a product and calculate the sowing date based on the crop’s DTM (Days to Maturity).

For example, if a restaurant needs 10 trays of radish microgreens every Friday, and the crop takes 7 days from sowing to harvest, you simply sow those trays every Friday the week before.

Now, scale that to 5 customers ordering different crops on different days. When done right, this approach:

• Tells you what to sow and when
• Provides a roadmap for weekly workflow
• Prevents overproduction or gaps in availability

Using a crop planner like SeedLeaf allows you to enter orders and automatically generate sowing tasks that match real demand.

Case Study: Speckled Pea Planning Example

Let’s say you have the following orders for speckled pea:

• Café A: 6 clamshells (100g each) every Thursday
• Restaurant B: 3 live trays every Tuesday
• Farmers Market: 12 clamshells for Saturday

You know that:

• 1 tray of speckled pea yields about 400 to 600 g of crop
• The DTM is 9 days

From this, you calculate:

• For Café A: 6 x 100g = 600g → 1 tray → Sow on the previous Tuesday
• For Restaurant B: 3 trays → Sow on Sunday prior
• For Market: 12 x 100g = 1,200g → 2 trays → Sow on the previous Thursday

This turns what looks like a complex set of demands into a predictable, organized sowing schedule. This also gives you clear targets for seed quantities, space needs, and packaging preparation each week.

To take this idea to the next level, you can separate your harvest and delivery days and have a set harvest day, to ensure you have total control over your crop production and deliveries.

Separating Harvest and Delivery Days

As a general principle, you should be the one determining your harvest and delivery days – not your customers. This ensures you can maintain a reliable schedule for everyone – you, your customers, and your staff.

In the example above, we have customers wanting deliveries on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday each week. If you allow this, it means you need to schedule staff or your self to do those sowing, harvest, and deliveries on multiple days each week – which is not ideal.

And what happens when you get new customers wanting deliveries on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday? Well, it means you are doing sowing, harvests, and deliveries every day – which may not be ideal, especially for smaller operations.

It is important have set harvest and delivery days each week and fit your customer orders into those days. Does this mean you could lose some customers? Possibly, but most businesses are adaptable and used to set delivery days from suppliers.

Here are some harvest and delivery scenarios to draw from:

Harvest and Delivery on Same Day

• Harvest Days: Tuesdays and Fridays
• Delivery Days: Tuesdays and Fridays

This scenario ensures your customers get the freshest product possible and means you do not need to store product for long after harvest.

Harvest and Delivery on Different Days

• Harvest Days: Mondays and Thursdays
• Delivery Days: Tuesdays and Fridays

This scenario helps you manage larger volumes of orders if it is difficult to do both harvest and delivereis in the same day

Hybrid Model

• Harvest Days: Tuesdays and Fridays
• Delivery Days: Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays

This scenario offer some delivery flexibility to your customers.

So you can see there are many different was to keep your schedule consistent and provide great service and fresh product to your customers.

In Part 4, we’ll explore how to build a crop calendar that reflects all your sowing, germination, blackout, and harvest tasks in one place—making weekly production smoother and easier to manage.