When a farmer, or gardener, plants vegetables, when will they be ready? Timing of the seasons shows that specific vegetables are ready at certain times, or crop windows, but for a farmer who wants to profit from those vegetables, precision in harvest date timing could be valuable.

At Oregon State University the Extension agents who work with small farms are at work adapting a degree-day modeling system built for pest management to make a tool for vegetable growers to plan their planting and harvest dates.

CROP TIMING: Vegetable producers may have a new tool to help them better predict the best time to plant, and when harvest time will arrive. (Photo: SuzanaMarinkovic/Thinkstock

Explains Nick Andrews, extension agent, OSU: "The problem is when you’re trying to schedule a harvest, seed catalogs all give an expected maturity date in calendar days. Calendar days are pretty inaccurate, and growers recognize that.”

Seed catalog entries can vary. In one, it might list 65 days to maturity for a broccoli variety, while another may say the same variety is ready in 90 days. Those calendar day models ignore local temperature, which is a key factor in how fast plants mature.

Andrews notes that degree-day models aren't perfect, but "seem to be more accurate than calendar days, and degree-day models are especially useful when crops are planted early or late, or when the weather is unusual."

Working with a grant from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, the Oregon team created a website called Croptime to predict time to maturity for a number of vegetable varieties important to Willamette Valley growers. Croptime is built on the backbone of the USPest.org pest-management degree-day modeling site, supported by USDA and the Western Integrated Pest Management Center.

For growers that serve community-support agriculture, this model can help them better plan harvest times for improved product mix, and better customer service. It's just one example of how this model can make a difference for growers. The system also includes models for specific weed types so growers - especially organic producers - can time plantings and varieties to minimize weed issues.

See the original release about this new service.

Source: Western SARE