The Crop Planning Course!

A course for gardeners who want to maximize their yield. Including Done-For-You templates and instructional videos to simply customize your crop plan for more harvest, year after year.

🥦 Timing your plants so that every single square inch of your garden produces fresh, healthy food for you.
🥦 Knowing what you will plant and when … so you don’t have to think about it again.
🥦 Relaxing and enjoying your garden more because you are ready for the changing temperatures throughout the season.
🥦 Never planning again, because you have the tools and templates you need to create a successful, stress-free growing season year after year.
🥦 Feeling confident making small adaptations to tried and true plans that expert gardeners use all around the world.

Preserve & Store the Harvest Course!

Featuring the 7-Step Harvest-Into-Meals System that takes advantage of every last fresh morsel that comes out of your garden (or farmers market or even the grocery store!) … stocking your kitchen with staples that have absolutely NO strange ingredients! Students using the system save 10-40% on their grocery bills.

The course includes expansive lessons on these popular topics:

🥕 Freezing
🥕 Dehydrating
🥕 Canning
🥕 Curing
🥕 Fermenting & Quick Pickling
🥕 Meal Planning & Recipes

Week 1: Place

Start off on the right foot by identifying what makes your site unique so you can work WITH nature. Understanding your local resources makes growing vegetables much simpler and you can save precious time and money. Get to know your climate and discover how to create microclimates to extend your growing season. If you need to borrow land, you can follow my steps for finding the right landowners, setting expectations and negotiating contracts.

Week 2: Soil

Skip the wheelbarrow of books on soil theory, I’ll give you the essentials to ensure your “dirt” becomes nutrient-rich SOIL. Demystify what makes soil healthy, and practice the three basic things you can do to ensure long term fertility. Compare the pros and cons of various planting bed styles and choose the one that’s right for you. As a bonus, there’s a case study of how to remediate soil with high levels of lead.

Week 3: Compost

Composting happens! There’s nothing to fear. It’s extremely easy once you understand what’s happening below the surface. Discover how to fix wet, dry and smelly compost piles as well as speed up the composting process. Brewing compost teas and applying biochar can be a great addition to the garden as well as your first line of defense against pests and diseases. Once you’ve mastered compost, you might proudly watch your food scraps recycle back into your garden.

Week 4: Plants

Easily plan your entire growing season with my helpful templates: know when and how much to plant for a never-ending harvest. You will be shocked at the potential a small space holds! Discover how to seed and transplant densely to ensure you use every last inch of your growing space efficiently. After watching my videos, you’ll plant like a pro! And because every climate is a little different, you will learn how to customize my templates and focus on crops that grow best in your zone.

Week 5: Time

Add even more tools to your belt as I share simple ways to master garden efficiency and eliminate unnecessary work. Discover how to move your body safely for rapid vegetable cultivation and harvest, so you can practice on your own. Know exactly what to do each week and how long it will take. Your time is valuable: do the things that matter! But don’t say I didn’t warn you, time flies in the garden and soon you might want to spend every day outside enjoying what you’ve grown.

Week 6: Water

Soil too wet? Too dry? Never doubt yourself again as you show you a quick trick for deciding whether it’s time to water. Water is essential for vegetable plants. Analyze how much water your garden naturally receives and compare this to your vegetables’ needs. Is this the year you complete your first basic plumbing project with a rainwater harvest or drip irrigation system? You won’t believe how much work this will save you in the long run!

Week 7: Harvest

Lucky for us, plants want to grow and reproduce: discover simple tips to promote plant growth and increase your harvest. When you have a successful garden, and you will when you follow my program, you will spend at least half of your time harvesting. When it comes to harvesting, there are right and wrong ways of doing it. I’ll show you exactly hot to get the freshest, most flavorful vegetables on your table safely and efficiently.

Bonus! Special Topics

Take growing to a whole new level. You will understand how to significantly increase your yield growing successions of greens in containers, trays and sprouts and learning about greenhouses. Get ready for some serious harvests! Plus, you’ll have a chance to suggest special topics that will help make your garden even more successful.

Step 0: Crop Plan Overview

– Set your goals for the course
– Overview of the course to get you started
– Crop Plan Templates (based off bio-intensive principles to increase efficiency in your growing space)

Step 1: Measure & Subdivide

– Find out how much actual growing space you have and how to subdivide it so you can rotate crops each year. This will help you to easily reuse your plan each year and make adjustments as needed!
– How to adjust crop rotations in odd-sized beds
– Guide: Find the Right Garden Space
– Worksheet: Quantify Your Growing Space

Step 2: Gather Dates & Key Temperatures

– This is an important step in adjusting the crop plan templates to your specific region
– Assessing when plantings can occur in your area
– Adding temperatures to your crop plan templates
– Worksheet: What are Your Local Conditions

Step 3: Choose & Prioritize Your Plant Varieties

– Narrow down which vegetables & herbs are important to you
– You may not have space for everything, so this lesson will help you prioritize what you really want to grow
– Choose your varieties!
– Worksheet: Choosing Your Crops
– Worksheet: What Crops are Important to You
– Resource: US Seed Sources Guide

Step 4: Calculate the Number of Plants for Your Beds

– Plan the spacing for you planting beds
– Calculate how many plants will fit in your beds
– Worksheet: Draw What You Will Plant
– Worksheet: Calculate the Number of Plants
– Resource: Companion Planting Guide

Step 5: Plan Your 1st Round of Plants for the Season

– Calculate your harvest period for the first round of plants
– Succession growing & continuous harvests of greens
– Worksheet: Plan Your First Round of Plants
– Resource: Seed Starting & Propagation Log

Step 6: Plan Your 2nd & 3rd Rounds of Crops

– Plan the timing and space for your 2nd and 3rd rounds of crops
– Assess the flexibility and timing for those next rounds
– Maximize the season in your area
– Learn how to plant with the Moon!
– Worksheet: Plan 2nd & 3rd Rounds of Plants
– Worksheet: Calculate your TOTAL Seeds for Purchase
– Resource: Seed Variety Log (to keep track of your varieties)

Step 7: Transfer Your Dates to a Google Calendar with Alerts

– Step by step instructions on adding your personal crop plan data to a calendar
– Stay on track year-round with your own crop planning calendar
– Pre-Made Google Calendar to use!
– How to create and share a google calendar with notifications and alerts
– Worksheet: Transfer Dates to Your Calendar

Lesson 1: Harvesting, Curing, Storing, & Preserving

• Discover how to harvest for peak ripeness and flavor for each vegetable
• Harvest & store your produce for maximum freshness (plus no waste!)
• Cure & store onions, garlic, squash, beets & carrots to save fridge space
• Practice efficient knife skills so you can batch multiple recipes in minutes
• Stock your pantry with the right basic ingredients so you can whip up a delicious meal at the drop of a hat

Lesson 2: Drying, Dehydrating, & Meal Plans

• Dry & dehydrate your vegetables & herbs to preserve ALL their nutrients
• Re-imagine snack foods: homemade gluten-free crackers, sugar-free fruit roll-ups & more!
• Freeze your herbs & vegetables for quick meals
• Create fun (and fast) meals from frozen and dehydrated foods

Lesson 3: Fermenting & Quick Pickling

• How to know for sure your lacto-fermented foods are SAFE!
• Lacto-ferment sauerkraut & Kim Chi for probiotics & maximum gut health
• Enjoy new twists on old favorites: fermented jams, fermented seed bread & fermented chutney
• Make vinegars out of your food scraps (nothing goes to waste!)
• Get the salt ratio right for delicous ferments for just the right sour flavor
• Quick pickle when you want to store lots of fresh harvest, fast

Lesson 4: Canning

Lesson 5: Preservation & Storage

• Simplify your life with our 7-Step Harvest-into-Meals System – takes just 2 hours each week to batch meals for the week and also store for the winter
• Make stored foods the star of your meals (every last morsel so no waste!)
• Enjoy a symphony of flavors on every plate
• Plan next year’s goals & match to your harvest schedule for a more sustainable life
• Follow step-by-step so that you maximize the fresh food on your plate each week