The Planting Almanac is a table that lists all the crops you can grow in an urban farm in Chennai (or a city with similar climate conditions) and when to plant/sow the crop as well as when to harvest it.

You can filter the table to show you crops suitable for level of expertise required (Beginner, Intermediate, Expert), the space you plan to use (B – balcony, G – ground, I – indoors, T – terrace, V – vertical, W – window), phase (planting/sowing season or harvesting), and days till first harvest (this is useful if you want to shortlist quick growing crops that yield harvests within a period of time, like 100 days).

Planting/Sowing seasons are marked as green coloured ‘P’ blocks in the month columns. P1, P2 are used when a crop has more than one planting season in a year. Orange coloured ‘H‘ blocks mark the harvesting seasons. H1, H2 are used to identify the harvesting season that corresponds to each planting season. So if a crop has two planting seasons, it will have two corresponding harvesting seasons.

Sometimes, if a planting season is at the end of a year, like Sep – Oct, the harvesting of that crop will take place the following year. Or, some slower growing crops will take longer to yield their first harvest, like bananas, which need ~15 months before they bear fruit. In these cases, a harvest season will have a +1 or +2, which means that the crop needs to be harvested in that month, the following year (+1), or two years after it was planted (+2).

NOTE: These are just simplified guidelines for ideal seasons. Look up the Crop Encyclopedia for more details and remember that harvesting time will vary depending on climate and environment.