Counting
Counting your nursery without losing a week
The reason most availability lists carry "please call to confirm" is simple: counting the yard by hand takes days, so the numbers are stale before they are published. The fix is not counting harder; it is counting as you walk, and never re-typing a number twice.
Here is how small growers keep lots current without giving up a week to it.
Count where the plants are
The count has to happen on the walk — in the house, in the field, on the bench — not back at a desk from memory. That means capture has to work with no signal, because hoop houses and back fields have dead WiFi. Point at a block, record the count, move to the next; everything else waits.
A photograph of the block does double duty: it is a record of what you counted, and it is the crop shot your availability list will carry. Capture once, use it twice.
Let the number carry its history
A bare count with no date is a guess. Every lot count should show when it was taken and get an honest staleness flag as it ages — fresh, aging, stale. When a list is a few weeks old and lots have changed, you want a warning at publish time, not a surprised buyer.
Keep counts append-only: never overwrite last month’s number, add this month’s. Drift becomes visible instead of hidden, and two people counting the same block surfaces as something to reconcile, not a silent overwrite.
Available is on-hand minus committed
The number a buyer needs is not what is on the bench; it is what is on the bench minus what is already spoken for. Track commitments against lots so availability is derived, never typed. A "spoken for" number a grower edits by hand is exactly the drift that puts "please call" on every list.
Run the whole loop with GrowSheet
Walk the crop, publish the list, take login-free orders, and invoice on net-30 — free to start. The founding cohort opens pre-spring.