farmOS to record fertilizer use?

Can farmOS be used for fertilizer usage history? Can I keep a fertilizer reference book? detailing each fertilizer. Can I record fertilizer contents? in addition to macronutrients, also micronutrients?

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You can use “Input” logs to record when fertilizer is applied to assets (plantings) and/or areas, along with quantity information. And you can maintain a taxonomy of “Materials” for each fertilizer type. The Materials taxonomy is only a first step right now: just a name and description, but we can add additional fields to it in the future. I am also giving thought to migrating that taxonomy to a new asset type, so that you can track inventory of materials over time as well.

Many thanks for quick and detailed response. Understood, I will use input log.

One more question. Please tell me how it differs Input Log for logging fertilizers from Quick form: Soil amendment ? amendment, is it like fertilizing?

Quick forms are just shortcuts for specific purposes, but when you use them it simply creates a log for you with all the fields filled in in a standardized way. So when you use the Soil Amendment quick form, it creates an Input log.

Question. Is it possible now in the program such a thing:

  1. The date when the fertilizer arrived at the warehouse.
  2. The distribution of a certain amount of fertilizer in the fields and calculation of the balance (how many fertilizers are left)?

Not yet but we are very close to this! This would fall under what I’m referring to as “Inventory Management” in farmOS. The basic idea is: you’ll be able to track inventory on individual assets. And we’ll add more asset types for things like fertilizers, seed, etc (or make a single general “Materials” asset type that covers all of them perhaps).

In fact, I already built the Inventory module, and it is available on Animal assets. This allows you to track a “head count” of animals with a single asset, and increment/decrement the head count / inventory level via logs.

The next step is to make this available for other asset types. However, animals are easy because the unit is always the same “1 animal”. With other assets, we need the ability to track different units. For example: weight vs volume for different fertilizers, seeds, etc.

Here is the feature request specifically for figuring out the units piece: https://www.drupal.org/project/farm/issues/2916551 - although it’s a bit old and might need to be updated.

There are various other feature requests already for adding new asset types. Unfortunately, there isn’t a timeline for when this will be completed, as no one has expressed enough interest in it to sponsor the development. But I’m excited to see it come together, whenever that may be. :slight_smile:

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Related feature requests on GitHub/Drupal.org (just a quick search, there may be others):

I was going to use the inventory section of a log entry to keep track of bushels from harvest in my different grain bins, but saw that only Animal assets were selectable. So with a little searching, ended up here. Just wanted to add my vote for more inventory management ability in farmOS.

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Another relevant issue: https://github.com/farmOS/farmOS/issues/357

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