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Information about the Kentucky State University Cooperative Extension Program
2021
# Determining Your Seed and Transplant Needs for the Growing Season
Dr. Leigh Whittinghill, Assistant Professor of Organic Agriculture
This worksheet is designed to help you determine how much seed and how many transplants you will need for your farm or garden. The following instructions and table will help you gather the information you need to calculate how much seed to purchase and how many transplants to purchase or grow.
1. Enter each crop you plan to grow in the following table. These crops should match the crops you have outlined in your planting calendar and/or farm or garden map.
2. Enter the area you expect to grow each crop in the following table.
a. This should be the total area
throughout the growing season. If you plan to stagger harvests, or have more than one crop of something, add together the growing areas for each time you plant a crop.
b. Depending on how you plan to grow, your growing area will be calculated differently.
i. If you are growing in rows, this should be calculated in row feet
ii. If you are using intensive gardening practices that do not include traditional rows, such as biointensive, square foot gardening, or SPIN farming, it will be calculated in square feet.
3. Find and record the plant spacing in the following table
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a. If you are planting in rows, record this information in inches. You may be able to find this information from many sources, but it can also be found in Table 4 in UK ID-128 Home Vegetable Gardening in Kentucky (Available at https://grayson.ca.uky.edu/files/id-128_home_vegetable_gardening_in_ky.pdf)
b. If you are using an intensive gardening practice, this can be recorded in plants per square foot.
4. Calculate the yield per plant for each crop using the following formula:
feet of row x 12
distance between plants OR (square feet)/((distance between plants) 2)
OR multiply the plants per square foot by the growing area in square feet
5. Multiply the number of plants needed by 1.2 to get the number of seeds needed. This will provide enough extra seed to account for some lack of germination and some seedling mortality. For plants grown from transplants that will be purchased, this last column can be left blank.
## References:
Home Vegetable Gardening in Kentucky. ID-128.
University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service
Markham, B.L. 2014. The MiniFarmingTM Bible: The Complete Guide to Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre. SkyHorse Publishing. New York, New York. Partnership for Sustainable Communities. 2011. Urban Farm Business Plan Handbook. Available at https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/1.urban_farm_business_plan_handbook_091511_508.pdf Stone, C. (2016). The urban farmer: Growing food for profit on leased and borrowed land. New Society Publishers. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada.
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Crop
Growing area (feet of row OR square feet)
Distance between plants (in) or Plants per square foot
