Growing plants on a commercial scale requires careful planning months before a finished crop is ready for customers. Crop scheduling is the process greenhouse growers use to work backward from a desired finish or sale date and determine when each step of production needs to happen. Depending on the crop, that can include planting, transplanting, pinching, spacing, changing temperatures, adjusting light, and other growing practices.

Rather than scheduling crops by individual calendar dates, greenhouse growers commonly use a week-number system, with the year divided into Weeks 1–52 . This creates a simple, consistent language for planning production. For example, instead of saying a crop needs to be planted on August 17th and ready on November 30th, a grower might schedule it to be planted in Week 34 (WK34) and finished in Week 49.

Organizing production by week makes it easier to coordinate plant material, labor, greenhouse space, and shipping while keeping crops on schedule.