A large part of harvesting is knowing what to expect and preparing for it! You might need workers to harvest your crops, bins to store it, orders lined up to sell it, or funds set aside to support marketing it. Knowing how much you expect, and when you expect it to be ready is crucial to all of those needs, and Farmbrite can help you out by calculating and displaying an expected harvest amount for each planting and crop type, from each grow location too. You'll see progress bars towards the expected amount in various places, and this is also reflected on your Crop Plan too.
Calculating Expected Harvests
There are two aspects for harvest expectations that can be automatically calculated - the amount to be harvested, and the date it may be ready. Both of these are derived from data in your crop type, as of course they will be different based on what type of plant you are growing! To set this, just search or navigate to the crop type, and edit it's details.
Note: If you used a common crop type from Farmbrite's preloaded examples, these may be set for you already. However, you may want to adjust them for your grow methods, climate, etc, or even update after a season to better predict next year's harvest based on the previous.
- When creating a planting, the Days to Maturity will be used to determine what day to expect the harvest to be ready. This is calculated by adding that number to days to the planting date.
- Additionally, the Harvest Window will extend the expected harvest time on your crop plan; some crops might have an extended period where they can be continuously harvested. Maybe your tomato plants should have the first ripe ones ready in early August, but you'll continue harvesting throughout the month and into September.
- Additionally, the Harvest Window will extend the expected harvest time on your crop plan; some crops might have an extended period where they can be continuously harvested. Maybe your tomato plants should have the first ripe ones ready in early August, but you'll continue harvesting throughout the month and into September.
- The value you add to the Expected Yield Per 100ft/Acre (30m/Hectare) is used to determine how much you might yield from this crop harvest. Note that the Per 100 Ft/30meters field is used for plantings in beds based on row feet, while the Per Acre/Hectare is used when planting row crops by area.
These will be used to automatically calculate the expected dates and amounts when creating the planting, but be aware that you can always update it on an individual planting. Perhaps the field you are going the crop in is particularly fertile, or in a sunny area that might speed up production. You can always edit these details and update them to what you expect for this planting, in that field, in your climate, using your growing processes! Just change the preloaded data when you create the planting, or update it mid season based on weather, nutrient applications, and other factors.
Where is this used?
The expected harvest amounts are presented in many places around Farmbrite.
- When viewing the main My Crops page, you'll see the expected harvest amount and first expected date across all plantings for the current season shown as a progress bar on the crop type. The date is shown in red if it is in the past, letting you know this one is later than expected. This is of course updated as you create harvest records, filling in the bar until you get to your expected amount - or surpass it, hopefully!
- When viewing individual plantings from the crop type or grow location, a progress bar will show the expected date and amount for just that one planting of the crop. This is generally the same as above, except for the single planting, not all combined for the crop tyoe.
- On your Crop Plan, you'll see the expected harvest date color coded, with that color extending throughout the harvest window to help you prepare and complete the harvest.
- The Expected Harvest report also shows the dates and amounts as well!