Table 1: Converting Growing Area into Square Feet for Each Crop
If you are planning a small mixed vegetable garden and plan to follow fertilizer recommendations for a mixed vegetable garden, you will just need the total area of your garden. See step B for recommendations on how to calculate this area.
If your farm or garden uses intensive growing practices and not row agriculture, you can measure the size of the beds or planned growing area for each crop and calculate the area with the following equation:
Width of bed x length of bed = growing area
If your beds are evenly rectangular, you may want to take several length and width measurements and take an average. If you bed is another shape, do the same but use the area equation for that shape. Be sure to keep track of your units. If you have multiple beds in the same crop, add the growing areas together. You can use the first and last columns of Table 1 to keep track of the growing areas for each of your crops. This information will be needed in Table 4.
If your farm or garden uses row agriculture, you can calculate area one of two ways. If you already have the space planned out that you will plant in a given crop, you can measure the length and width of that area. This may be easier if you plan to plant multiple rows of a crop or a whole field of that crop. If you plan to plant smaller areas, single rows, or partial rows of a crop, you can use Table 1 to convert feet of row into square feet using the following instructions:
Enter all the crops you will be growing in the first column.
Enter the total number of row feet that will be planted for each crop in column 2. Consult your planting plan or map to get the number of row feet that will be planted for each crop. If you have multiple plantings of a crop through the growing season, add up all the row feet that will be planted for each harvest.
Enter the recommended distance between rows for each crop in column 3. This can
be found in Table 5 of UK ID-128 Home Vegetable Gardening in Kentucky (available at http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcomm/pubs/ID/ID128/ID128.pdf; table 4 in versions from 2020 or earlier) or another source. This distance may be given in inches; for our calculation, convert it into feet by dividing by 12 before entering it into the table.
Multiply columns 2 and 3 and enter the growing area in square feet in column 4. This information will be needed in Table 4.
Table 2: Fertilizer Application Rate Recommendations
If you are growing larger areas of a specific crops or plan to fertilize for specific crops in smaller areas, follow these instructions:
Enter all the crops you plan to grow into the first column of Tables 2 and 3. Note that some crops may require additional applications of fertilizers throughout the growing season. These additional applications, or side dressings, should receive a separate line in the table.
Enter the nutrient recommendations in lb/acre into columns 2-4 in Table 2. These can be found in UK ID-36 Vegetable Production Guide for Commercial Growers (available at http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcomm/pubs/id/id36/id36.pdf), where each crop is listed separately. Add together all recommended applications of N and enter them in the table. For P and K, use the rate for the appropriate soil test value. If you have done a soil test and are still waiting on the results, use a low soil test rate as a conservative