MARKET GARDEN BED PLANNER · RUNS IN YOUR BROWSER · NOTHING UPLOADED
Which crops should fill your beds?
Enter one row per crop and your total bed-feet, season length and labor hours. The tool finds the crop mix that earns the most once beds, labor and the amount you can sell all run out, ranks crops by profit per bed-foot per day, and prices one more bed-foot, labor hour or buyer, so you know what to build, hire or sell next.
Your numbers never leave this browser tab. A planning estimate from figures you supply, not advice. Not legal, tax, or financial advice.
Your farm
Your crops
Yield is units per bed-foot per planting, summed over successions: a bed-foot planted twice counts as two bed-feet planted, each using its own days. Only the first four columns are required; blank cost, labor, cap and minimum mean none. "Days in bed" runs from transplant or seeding to the last harvest.
Paste your crops, then click Find the best plan.
Result
The plan
| Crop | Bed-feet | Units to sell | Profit | Per bed-foot-day | Labor hrs | Why |
|---|
Crops left out
| Crop | Per bed-foot-day | Price rise per unit that would bring it in |
|---|
Against sorting by profit per bed-foot
Range of outcomes
How it is calculated
The plan: a linear program. Choose bed-feet planted for each crop to maximise total profit (yield × price − cost, per bed-foot) subject to three kinds of limit: bed-foot-days (total bed-feet × season days, each crop using its own days in bed), labor hours (if you give a number), and a cap on what you can sell for each crop (units ÷ yield = most bed-feet worth planting). Committed minimums are planted first. It is solved exactly with a simplex method, so the answer is the true optimum for your inputs, and the dual prices come from the same solution: the value of one more bed-foot-day, labor hour or unit of demand. The plan is cross-checked in this tool's test suite against an independent enumeration of every corner of the feasible region.
Against sorting: the comparison plan fills crops in order of profit per bed-foot under the same limits, which is what a spreadsheet sorted on that column does. The range runs 400 seeded seasons in which each crop's yield and price shift by the swing you set (half of each shift shared across crops), with sales capped at your stated demand; it reports the middle 80% of profit for the plan and how often it beats the sorted plan.
Not modelled: planting windows and succession timing (it plans capacity, not a calendar), crop rotation, disease and weather, losses and culls, price changes through the season, labor skill, equipment, and what a buyer will pay for the last unit. Your yields, prices and costs are your estimates. Unverified: tested against hand-solved examples and exhaustive enumeration, not on a working farm. The plan helps you compare choices; it does not tell you what will sell, and you remain responsible for food-safety, licensing and tax rules that apply to you.
Common questions
How do I decide which crops to grow in a market garden?
Rank crops by profit per bed-foot per day, not per bed-foot. A crop that earns 8 dollars a bed-foot in 20 days beats one that earns 9 in 50, because the bed is free for another planting sooner. Then limit each crop to what you can actually sell, and watch labor, which often runs out before beds do. This tool does all of that at once and shows the plan.
What is profit per bed-foot-day?
It is a crop's profit per bed-foot (yield times price, minus seed, transplants, packaging and other costs) divided by the days it holds the bed. It puts a 30-day radish and a 120-day tomato on the same scale, so you can see which one pays more for the space and time it uses.
What do the shadow prices mean?
They are what one more unit of a limit is worth to your total profit: one more bed-foot over the season, one more labor hour, or 100 more units of a crop you can sell. They tell you whether to build beds, hire help or find buyers next. They hold for small changes; the tool also re-solves with 10 percent more land or labor to show a bigger step.
Why not just sort my crops by profit per bed-foot?
Because that ignores how long each crop occupies the bed, how many hours it takes and how much of it you can sell. The tool shows what a plan sorted that way would earn under the same limits and how often the optimized plan beats it across the simulated seasons. When the two agree it says so.
How is the range of outcomes worked out?
The tool runs 400 seeded seasons in your browser. In each, every crop's yield and price are shifted by a random amount whose size you set, with half of each shift shared across crops (a wet year hurts all of them). Sales stop at the amount you said you can sell. It then reports the middle 80 percent of profit for the plan. It is a spread from your own assumptions, not a forecast.
What does it not know?
Planting windows and succession timing (it plans capacity, not a calendar), crop rotation and disease, weather, crop failures, price swings within a season, labor skill, equipment and the minimum price a buyer will pay. Yields and prices are your own estimates, so the plan is only as good as they are.
Is my farm data uploaded anywhere?
No. Your crops, prices and costs are read and computed in this browser tab. Nothing is sent to a server, there are no accounts or cookies, and the tool does not store your numbers. It works offline once the page has loaded.