The Importance Of Having a Cropping Calender

When it comes to growing crops, its wise that you use a cropping calendar to tell you which crops to grow and during which season and the period it will take for each crop to reach maturity before you start preparing the land for the next crop. You might know the crops to grow by head, when to plant or harvest but having something written down to follow might actually help you to effectively implement all your projects.

Unless you own a small piece of land and grows only one variety all the time, I recommend you draft a cropping calendar. How to start? You can always refer to previous years on what you used to grow and stating down the crops you want to continue growing. Allocate each crop a time period for its production. In summary you need to (1) determine the best date to plant (2) Determine the time the variety takes from planting to harvest.

Beside actual time of sowing and harvesting of different crops, a cropping calendar also helps you to properly distribute labour on your farm. They are some crops that are labour intensive than others. Taking for example corn and tomatoes. Its obvious that the latter needs more labour than the former but if you do not have a cropping calendar, you might find yourself allocating the same labour to both crops thus neglecting the other’s needs.

Cropping calendar also helps you manage your finances. If you are a real farmer, you would know money is never in excess and there is always a dilemma on whether to buy AN for corn or Imidachloprid for absoluta tuta but with a cropping calendar you can always predict these future needs and would have been a step ahead, fully prepared. In other words, the calendar would help know the actual time for applying fertilizer and pesticides and you will always have money set aside for that! 

By Lynette Simango

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