For this month, you'll see two large updates to the crop section. They include the ability to set a start date to better define your growing season, and a new way to record a loss in the unfortunate event that one of your plantings does not reach maturity. Beyond that, you'll also see a new way to interact with your Farm Map, where you can now take notes and add tasks directly from the map itself. There are also various other improvements to inventory recipes, the calendar sync, and a new notes report for your crops.
Crop Updates
First, you can now set a Season Start Date within your Account Settings to help better define your growing season. Previous to this feature, the growing season for all farms was defined as a standard calendar year. We wanted to improve this for farmers in the southern hemisphere, and give every user the flexibility to start their growing season at the most opportune time. This simple setting updates your Crop Plan to reflect your preferred start date, and determines what crops are currently planted based on it as well. This is also used to reset your perennial harvest progress gauges, helping you see the seasonal yields from your perennials at a quick glance. Note: This dates defaults to January 1st, so no updates are necessary if you want to retain the calendar year as your season.
You can also now record a loss on a planting if the plant does not reach maturity. This might be due to many different issues, like pests, weather, nutrient deficiency, or even improper care or harvesting. A loss can now be recorded to account for this, whether it be just a few of the plants in a single bed lost due to bugs, an entire field lost from a flood, or anything in between. The Loss will be reflected in the planting timeline, and you'll also see a new Crop Losses report to reflect it.
Map Updates
We have also made a few updates to your farm map this month.
- You can now record tasks and notes for your Grow Locations directly from the Farm Map. You can do this for any mapped area that is connected to a grow location like your fields, beds, and growing enclosures. Just pick the mapped area and you'll see new options to Add Note and Add Tasks. These notes and tasks are then immediately associated with your Grow Location.
- Field names and labels can now be set to read vertically. If you have fields that are oriented North>South, you can now check a box to rotate the label vertically, thus making it easier to read and print.
- A new area type to show Hazards has been added. You can now map hazards on your map to help you avoid them in the future. Perhaps you need to look out for that large rock when mowing, or for a ditch when running your harvesting equipment.
Other Updates
We've also made improvements across many other areas of the software as well.
- You can now include up to 20 inventory items when creating a recipe. This can help with making complicated fertilizer mixes and feeds; the previous limit was 10.
- The automated calendar sync with Google, Apple, and Microsoft now includes events and tasks up to a year in the future. If you are examining your past season and making adjustments for next year already, you'll now see those new events and tasks on your synced calendar right now. This previously showed events and tasks up to 90 days in the future.
- When you create a castration treatment record for an animal, the animal will now be marked as neutered automatically. This keeps your animal records updated so you don't have to remember to add the treatment and update the record.
- The Crop Notes report has been expanded to include notes from plantings and grow locations. This report now combines any notes you write on plantings or grow locations; previously it showed those associated with plantings only. Now you can run a single report to see your notes, whether they were written on the grow location record, or the planting itself!
That wraps it up for this month! Let us know if you have any questions about these new features, or if you have suggestions and ideas for features and improvements you'd like to see!