Directions For The Spreadsheet

For BackyardMultiCropProjectionToolV1.0.xlsx

This is a simple spreadsheet that will give you good numbers for your backyard aquaponics project if you follow directions. Even if you’re a spreadsheet genius (or have one helping you), you must use accurate input numbers based on real aquaponic experience, plus actual vegetable prices in your location, or else the output will be fantasy. We’d rather watch the Lego Movie again with the kids to fulfill our fantasy needs! (It was a lot of fun, even the third time!)

The numbers in the spreadsheet are average numbers that we experience in our location: how long it takes plants to mature, how much they weigh at harvest, etc. They have nothing to do with what happens in your location! So, you must provide these numbers from your actual system if you want accurate projections from this spreadsheet; from local prices; and from test grows in your area.

What’s a “test grow”? It’s when you run three or four crop cycles (preferably six to eight months worth) through your mature Micro System 64 or 128, weighing each crop with a scale that’s very accurate, then averaging out the weight of the individual species of plants (plant weight); also recording how long they needed to spend in the rafts until harvested (cycle time).

If you don’t do a test grow, but still want to use this spreadsheet to get an approximate idea of what your aquaponics system will grow, the only numbers you should probably change are the square footage of your system, and what you get locally per pound for your produce. It should be reasonably accurate.

Your spreadsheet has different colors of boxes (or cells): Green boxes are the formulas of the spreadsheet; you can mess with them if you know both spreadsheets and aquaponics better than we do. Blue boxes are places you have to input numbers you get from local, real-world sources. And the White boxes are your results: don’t mess with them at all!

Numbers to fill in on your spreadsheet in the Blue Boxes:

“Weeks” is how many weeks long your growing season is; if you’re growing year-round, or inside a greenhouse, put 52.

“SF of raft area used” is the amount of your system’s area you devote to growing each particular plant. Get this number for each kind of plant, by measuring the square footage that kind of plant in your system occupies.

“Plants per square foot” is the average number of plants per square foot on your rafts. Get this number by counting the total of that kind of plants in your system, then dividing by the square footage it occupies.

“Plant Weight” is the average weight per plant of your target species; take twenty average plants you grew in a Test Grow, weigh them, then divide this weight by twenty, and this is your plant weight. Do not use the weight of the biggest plant you grew; this will give you inaccurate results!

“Cycle Time” is how long in weeks the plants spend in your grow beds after they leave your germination and sprouting area.

“Good %” is a number that adjusts for wastage at harvest time. If you harvest X weight of plants, but have to throw away 5% of that weight because they are low-quality, have torn leaves, etc, your “Good %” is only 95%. This amount of wastage is low; you will often have a much higher wastage and a lower Good %. Don’t just weigh everything you produce, just weigh the good stuff that you can actually eat or use, then put the correct figure in!

“Price Per Pound” is what these things sell for in your area in retail stores. This is how much growing them is worth to you, because you don’t have to pay this much to buy them from local stores.

Numbers your spreadsheet calculates for you in the Green Boxes:

“% of raft area” is a formula calculated by your spreadsheet that tells you how much “SF of raft area used” is as a percentage of your system’s total area of 100%.

“Heads/Pieces” and “Pounds” are how many heads of that plant you grew, and how many pounds that adds up to, calculated by the spreadsheet from the information you put in from your Test Grow.

“Total” is the total dollar value of that produce item.

Oh, yes, there’s a Pink Box too:

The pink box should be zero (0) or a negative number (represented by ExCel as (5), which means negative 5). If the pink box has a positive number in it, you’ve assigned more square feet of raft area to your crops than you actually have!

Good luck and have fun growing and eating! Aloha, Tim and Susanne.....