Calculator
How many plants, and what they cost
Planting material is the largest single line in establishing a crop. Work it from your own bed layout and your own quotation, not from a published model.
Planting material
₹2,83,280
23,607 plants at ₹12 each, including a 5% replacement buffer.
- Plants needed
- 23,607
- Before buffer
- 22,483
- Density
- 22,483 / acre
- 5.56 / m²
What one rupee costs you
Every ₹1 on the plant price moves this budget by ₹23,607. It is the largest single line in establishing a crop, which is why it is worth a week of negotiating rather than an afternoon.
Against NHB’s model
The National Horticulture Board’s one-acre model assumes 22,000 plants at ₹8 each, or ₹2,00,000. Your layout gives 102% of their density, and you are paying 1.5× their plant price. Why that model reads optimistically today.
Why this is not area ÷ spacing
The obvious calculation is to divide the field by the spacing. At 30 × 30 cm that gives about 45,000 plants to the acre — and it is roughly double the truth.
The error is that plants do not cover a field. They sit on beds, and beds are separated by paths you have to walk and pick from. So the unit that repeats across the field is not one plant, it is one bed plus one path. That gives:
plants per m² = rows per bed ÷ (in-row spacing × (bed width + path width))
Run that at a 75 cm bed, a 45 cm path, two rows and 30 cm in-row spacing and it returns about 22,500 plants an acre — against the 22,000 in NHB’s published model. The two agree, which is the point: a calculator that quietly doubled every grower’s plant order would be worse than no calculator at all.
That is also why the inputs above ask for bed and path widths rather than a single spacing figure. Those are numbers you already know from your own field.
The buffer
The replacement buffer defaults to 5%. Some plants will not establish, and ordering exactly your calculated figure means buying a second, small, expensive consignment later or living with gaps. Raise it if your planting material is coming from a source you have not used before.
Next
This gives you one line of the budget. For the rest of it — and for why NHB’s ₹8 per plant is the assumption that has broken — read cost and profit per acre. For when to place the order, see the crop calendar — May or June, for a September transplant.
Buying runners this season?
We work across India’s growing regions and hear what planting material is actually going for. Tell us what you are planning and we’ll tell you what we know.