Garden Harvest Value Tracker
Log each harvest with its weight and shop price, and watch the season’s total value grow.
This tracker is a harvest logbook that prices as it goes. Every time you pick, add the crop, the weight and the shop price per pound; it keeps the season’s entries in your browser (nothing leaves your device), totals the weight and the grocery value, and shows which crops are carrying the garden. At season’s end it is the evidence base for next year’s planning, and for settling the does-gardening-pay argument with data.
Enter a harvest and press Calculate to log it. Identical consecutive entries are merged rather than doubled, so refreshing the page never inflates your totals. Use the clear button below the log when a new season starts.
How the tracker works
Entries live in your browser’s local storage on this device: no account, no upload, and no way for anyone else to see your harvest. Each entry stores date, crop, pounds and the shop price you entered, and the value is pounds x price. The totals card and the most valuable crop update with every entry. Identical consecutive entries merge, which protects the totals when the page reloads or the button gets a double press; to log two genuinely identical pickings in a row, nudge the weight or date.
Assumptions and limits:
- The log is per browser and per device. Log on the phone you carry to the garden, or the totals split across two devices.
- Clearing browser data clears the log. At season’s end, use Copy result to keep the headline numbers somewhere permanent.
- Prices are yours at logging time, so the total reflects the season’s real shop prices, not a single day’s.
What to log, honestly
Log what you actually pick and use, at the weight it comes in at, the day you pick it. The tracker quietly teaches three things no estimate can: which crops your household really eats (the glut crops expose themselves by their absence), when each crop’s season truly runs in your garden, and what a bed of each crop is worth in money. Weigh with a kitchen or luggage scale for a week and you will calibrate your eye for the rest of the season; after that, honest estimates per basket are fine.
Waste counts too, in its way: if a third of the beans go to the compost unlogged, the planning lesson is to plant a third fewer beans, which no calculator can tell you until the log shows the pattern.
Worked example: reading a season
| Pattern in the log | What it means | Next year |
|---|---|---|
| Tomatoes: 22 entries, $140 | The garden’s earner | Same or one more plant |
| Zucchini: 4 entries then silence in August | Glut, then surrender | One plant, picked smaller |
| Herbs: 30 small entries, $85 | Steady high value per foot | More herbs near the door |
| Potatoes: 2 entries, $18 | Space-heavy, value-light | Grow for flavour or not at all |
Four lines of log teach more than a season of impressions. The garden that gets measured gets replanted rationally.
Common mistakes
- Logging intentions instead of pickings. The bowl still on the counter at week’s end is compost, not harvest. Log at the scale, not at the bed.
- Shop prices from memory. Prices drift through the season; check the real price when you shop and log with that week’s figure.
- One device at home, one at the plot. The log lives in one browser. Pick the device that goes to the garden and stay with it.
- Never clearing or copying. Copy the season totals somewhere permanent in fall, then clear for the new year. A log that mixes two seasons answers nothing.
Putting the result to work
At season’s end, take the per-crop totals into the Vegetable ROI Calculator in place of its planning yields: the same maths with your real harvests is the truest account of what your garden earns. The totals also settle spacing arguments, because the Crop Yield Calculator ranges can be checked against your own pounds per plant.
How do I track my harvest’s value?
- Weigh the picking and note the current shop price per pound.
- Enter crop, date, weight and price, then press Calculate to log it.
- Watch totals: pounds picked, grocery value, and your most valuable crop.
- Copy the summary somewhere permanent at season’s end.
- Clear the log when the new season starts.
Where is my harvest log stored?
In your own browser’s local storage, on this device only. Nothing is uploaded or shared, and there is no account. The trade-off is that clearing browser data, or switching devices, leaves the log behind, so copy the season totals somewhere permanent each fall.
Why did my entry not double when I pressed Calculate twice?
By design: an entry identical to the one immediately before it (same date, crop, weight and price) is treated as the same logging event, which protects your totals from page reloads and double presses. To record two genuinely identical pickings back to back, change any detail slightly, such as the weight by a fraction.
What price should I use for each crop?
The price at the shop where you would actually buy that crop, in the week you pick it. Using your real shop keeps the running total honest as prices move through the season. If you would not have bought it (the fifteenth zucchini), logging it at a token price or not at all is the honest treatment.
Can I track in kilograms?
The tracker works in pounds and dollars, matching the rest of the Growit tools. If you weigh in kilograms, multiply by 2.2 to get pounds before entering. Your shop price per kilogram divided by 2.2 gives the per pound price.
How is this different from the ROI calculator?
The ROI calculator plans: it estimates a crop’s value before you grow it. The tracker records: real weights and real prices as you pick. Used together across a season, the tracker replaces the calculator’s estimates with your garden’s actuals, which is when next year’s plan gets good.
Storage is browser localStorage only, per the Growit tools privacy pattern: no accounts, no uploads. Value = logged weight x the shop price entered at logging time.
