Plantings¶
farmOS can be used for very fine-grained crop planning and record keeping. It can be used by large or small operations, nurseries, seed producers, breeders, and home gardeners.
The asset type used to manage crops is called a Planting.
Plantings can be used to represent groups of plants (eg: a field of corn, or a group of seedlings), or it can be used to represent individual plants (eg: in the case of nurseries).
Crops/varieties¶
When you create a planting asset, you will need to define what crop/variety it is. Crops/varieties represent the various types of plantings you grow. These can be very general crop names (eg: "Broccoli") or very specific breeds or varieties (eg: "Belstar F1 Organic Broccoli").
Plantings are the specific asset you are growing, whereas crops/varieties are used to categorize and define planting types. You may have multiple plantings of the same crop/variety. Consider the following example:
1 pound of red lettuce seed was purchased and seeded 4 times over the course of 8 weeks (every two weeks).
In this example, there would be 4 planting assets with a crop/variety of "Red lettuce":
- 2017 Red lettuce planting 1
- 2017 Red lettuce planting 2
- 2017 Red lettuce planting 3
- 2017 Red lettuce planting 4
The way you name your plantings is up to you - this is just an example. Including the year at the beginning and the planting number at the end is helpful when you are looking at long lists of plantings.
Planting logs¶
In addition to the standard log types that all farmOS assets share (activities, observations, inputs, and harvests), there are two log types that are specific to plantings: seedings and transplantings.
Seeding logs represent when seeds were planted in the ground or in containers. With a seeding log, you can specify the seeding quantity (eg: 100 lbs, 20 72-plug trays, etc), and you can specify where the seeding occurred (using the movement fields) so that farmOS knows where the planting asset is located.
Transplanting logs represent when a planting was transplanted from one place to another. Similar to seeding logs, transplantings can have a quantity and a location.
If you are direct seeding into the field, you may only use the seeding log. If you are purchasing starts from another grower, you may only use the transplanting log. If you are starting your plantings in a greenhouse and then planting them out in the field, you may use both a seeding and transplanting log.
Planting quick form¶
A quick form is provided for quickly creating a planting along with associated seeding and/or transplanting logs. This is the fastest way to create all of those records in a single step. You simply enter the season, crop/variety, and seeding/transplanting date+location, and all the records are created and linked together for you behind the scenes. This is helpful for adding your planned plantings at the beginning of the season, or for entering information about your past plantings at the end of the season.