FarmOS and laying out Fruit Trees?

[mstenta]

Hi @jawathehutt - welcome to the farmOS forum!

Sounds like you’re on the right track! There are some other forum threads related to managing orchards with farmOS. Maybe you’ve already seen them, but I’ll drop a few links here for anyone else who finds this thread in the future.

• Hierarchical function - watering "fruit-trees" (group of trees) instead of each single tree
• How to easily map individual trees?
• Geotagging Trees
• Orchard in FarmOS
• Agroforestry Applications of farmOS

To answer your questions…

@jawathehutt

I’m hoping someone can expand a bit on Beds vs. Fields with regards to planting sometime like fruit trees.

It’s up to you how you use the “Land type” designation on Land assets, depending on how you think about your operation. If it helps for you to organize your assets into Fields (Land asset) > Beds (Land asset) > Trees (Plant asset), that’s a good option!

The way you model your assets in farmOS largely comes down to the question: how granular do you need your records to be? If you anticipate recording logs against individual trees, then perhaps you want 1 asset per tree. If you only plan to record logs against rows of trees, then perhaps you only need 1 asset per row. If that’s the case, I would probably suggest making a Plant asset for each row (rather than a Land asset), and think about them as “sets of trees”.

@jawathehutt

Additionally I’d love to hear how folks are using seasons with fruit trees. Since the trees last many years and have multiple harvests I wasn’t sure if this piece made sense to use.

The “Season” field on Plant assets is optional, and might not be useful for trees. You don’t need to use it. It is more relevant in annual plantings and is useful for sorting/filtering purposes.

@jawathehutt

I would love an easy way to track our planting dates which I didn’t see.

This should be recorded with a log (probably a Transplanting log - which you can add via the Transplanting module - it isn’t enabled by default).

This transplanting log can also be used to assign the location/geometry of the trees.

For example:

1. Create a new Plant asset: “Cherry tree 1”
2. Create a new Transplanting log: “Transplant Cherry tree 1”
   • Set the log’s date to the date that the tree was transplanted.
   • Reference the “Cherry tree 1” plant asset in the log’s “Assets” field
   • Reference the Land asset (field or bed) that the tree was transplanted in in the log’s “Location” field.
   • Optionally set a specific point geometry for the tree’s location within that bed/field in the log’s “Geometry” field.
   • Click the “Is movement” checkbox in the log.
   • Mark the log as “Done” (not “Pending”)

This will “move” the location of the tree asset to the field/bed, and give it the geometry you drew in the log’s map.

More information on how movements and location work in farmOS:

• Movements and Location in the User Guide: Movements and location | farmOS
• Location logic in the Data Model: Location | farmOS

Hope that helps!