What is wrong with my math??

macmanmatty · January 21, 2009

I have small farm to plant this year with tomato plants the area is about 200*75 (which according to my math 1/3 of acre or 15000 sq ft) I will be planting with all large tomatoes non cherry types 2 oz+. According to my math with a 3 x 3 spacing I can fit about 1600 tomato plants on this farm. Next according to what I read, what I see, and what I have seen for myself I can expect 10 lbs of good tomatoes per plant. This would give me 16000 lbs of tomatoes. Take this times my selling price of 2 dollars a pound for my heirlooms and I should be able make 32000 dollars. If I triple that to get the price for a whole acre and use 4800 tomato plants get 48000 pounds of tomatoes and make 96000 dollars. So according to my math when can I quit the day job?
But seriously, there must be something wrong with my math or numbers; or there would be a whole more people doing this? I don't get it? Is the problem finding a market? Or am I not really going to get 10 lbs of tomatoes per plant with a large scale operation? Am I trying to space plants to close to each other?

January 21, 2009	#1
macmanmatty Tomatovillian™ Join Date: May 2007 Location: Florida Posts: 55	What is wrong with my math?? I have small farm to plant this year with tomato plants the area is about 200*75 (which according to my math 1/3 of acre or 15000 sq ft) I will be planting with all large tomatoes non cherry types 2 oz+. According to my math with a 3 x 3 spacing I can fit about 1600 tomato plants on this farm. Next according to what I read, what I see, and what I have seen for myself I can expect 10 lbs of good tomatoes per plant. This would give me 16000 lbs of tomatoes. Take this times my selling price of 2 dollars a pound for my heirlooms and I should be able make 32000 dollars. If I triple that to get the price for a whole acre and use 4800 tomato plants get 48000 pounds of tomatoes and make 96000 dollars. So according to my math when can I quit the day job? But seriously, there must be something wrong with my math or numbers; or there would be a whole more people doing this? I don't get it? Is the problem finding a market? Or am I not really going to get 10 lbs of tomatoes per plant with a large scale operation? Am I trying to space plants to close to each other?