This free continuous harvest planner helps you plan ahead instead of reacting when the harvest arrives all at once. Autumn and harvest work comes in a rush, and without a plan the best crops can spoil while you are still deciding what to do with them. Enter a few honest numbers, get a clear plan, and work through it step by step.
Enter your bed area in square metres, the length of your growing season in weeks, and the gap between sowings in weeks. Short gaps give steadier harvests but more work, while long gaps give bigger bursts with quiet weeks between them.
The first result is the number of sowings you need across the season. The second result is the kilograms you can expect each week, based on your bed area. The third result is the total harvest for the whole season, which helps you judge whether the plan feeds your household or leaves a surplus to preserve.
For example, a 10 square metre bed over a 20 week season with sowings every 4 weeks needs 5 sowings, gives about 4 kilograms per week, and about 80 kilograms in total. That is a steady basket of food every week instead of one huge glut in July.
Succession sowing works best with fast crops like lettuce, radish and beans, which are ready in weeks rather than months. Slow crops like parsnips and winter squash do not suit succession, because each sowing takes so long that the season ends before the later sowings mature.
A common mistake is entering a guessed number instead of a measured one. Guessed dates, weights and temperatures give a tidy-looking plan that does not match your garden, and the plan fails at the first real check. Measure what you can, use your best honest estimate for the rest, and adjust the plan after your first season of using it.
Sow a little less than you think you need at first. A small weekly harvest you actually eat beats a large one that wilts in the fridge, and you can always add another row once you know how much your household uses.
Before the season starts, walk your garden and list what you actually grew last year, what you ate, what you preserved, and what you threw away. That honest list is the best guide to this year’s plan, because it shows which crops earn their space and which ones only look good in a seed catalogue. Plan more of the first group and less of the second.
Keep a simple record as you work through the plan: the date you picked each crop, the weight, and how it stored. A few lines in a notebook turn a good guess into a reliable plan for next year, and they also show you which varieties store best in your conditions. Over two or three seasons, that record becomes the most valuable garden tool you own.
This plan works best as part of a wider garden routine. Pair it with a planting calendar, a watering routine and a simple notebook where you record what you actually harvested and stored. After one season, your own notes will be more accurate than any general planner, because they describe your soil, your weather and your habits.
Keep in mind that this planner gives general garden guidance based on typical values, not a guarantee for your exact variety or your exact conditions. Weather, soil, variety and storage conditions all shift real results, sometimes by weeks. Use the numbers as a solid starting point, check your crops regularly, and adjust as you learn what works in your garden.
Start with one crop and one plan, and get that plan right before you expand to the whole garden. A small plan you actually follow beats a large plan that stays on paper, and next season you can build on what worked.