The VGA Online Help - Crop Planning

The Crop Planner screen

The coloured tiles indicate when crops can be sown and harvested.

H Prev Yr - Harvest from previous year sowing
SH Prev Yr - Harvest from previous year sowing and sow this month

Crop Planning

Enabling you to plan and record all the activities involved in growing your crops. Using the comprehensive list of vegetable, each with detailed cultivation instructions you can keep track of each seasons plantings and record the following:

Type and variety of crop
Where planted/transplanted
Harvesting - with cumulative totals
Feeding
Pest treatments
All dates, etc, etc

Pressing the mouse left button when the cursor is over the crop list reveals the scrolling tool. Hold the button down and move the mouse up or down to see the full list of vegetable.

Pressing the mouse right button when the cursor is over the crop list enables a popup menu for the chosen crop. Make a selection from the list to see more details.

Version 1.4 now features printouts of all the herb and vegetable data. Make use of the print preview facility to view the printout on screen.

The Crop Tool Bar

The tool bar offers several useful functions:

Sow This button reveals a list of vegetables that can be sown at the current time. Adjusting the calendar allows you to look through other months of the year. Select a vegetable from the list and press the View Details button to see more.
Ready Click here to see a list of vegetables that can be harvested in a given month.
List Click here to generate lists of vegetables suitable for different locations. You can select vegetables that are shade tolerant, acid/alkali tolerant, mositure tolerant, etc.
Change year The Crop Planner show the current year. Pressing the change year button allows you to look forward or back to view future and past crops.
Change month Step forward or backwards a month at a time.

The Crop Planner shows crops growing in ALL plots, but each sowing/planting of a vegetable in a bed is treated as a individual crop. This means that successional sowings can be individually tracked for performance. Even crops sharing a bed are recorded and tracked sepearately.

As each season's data is recorded a comprehensive record is maintained to enable you to select vegetable varieties that give you the best performance in your plots.

The Crop Database

The VGA contains a large list of crops including their detailed cultivation instructions. Take time to browse through the Crop Planning system to discover all the useful features.

First off select a vegetable and right-click the mouse over it. A popup menu appears with a number of available operations. Select Show Veg Details

The window now displays details of the selected vegetable:

Click on the Planting button to view the sowing/planting/harvest information:

Please note that the information is general in nature as obviously your local climate can have a considerably affect on growing conditions. It is possible to change the basic data to more accurately reflect growing conditions where you live (see Advanced features).

Version 1.4 now includes a print function to produce hard copies of all the cultivation data. SImply click on the print button. If your printer driver has a print preview function you can check the printout on screen:

Sowing & Planting Crops

Next step is to close the viewer and select Sow or Plant from the popup menu:

Make all the selections from the lists (make sure they are highlighted in blue) then enter the vegetable variety and number of seeds,pots, etc. used. The bed numbers are exactly those set up in the Plot Manager screen.

Rotation check If you are sowing/planting directly into a bed (i.e. not in pots or seedtrays) and a crop of the same family or crop type (i.e. root) has been grown in the bed within the last 3 years then a warning message will appear. It is up to you to continue or select another bed. As pests and diseases tend to be family specific it is worth avoiding growing crops from the same family within 3 years. Growing crops of the same type (i.e roots) year after year can also selectively exhaust plant nutrients.

When a crop is sown/planted it will appear in the active crop list that splits the screen. The code for the plot and bed number sown/planted show before the crop name. In the month sown the letter S (for Sown) appears.

All further operations on this crop (in this bed) will be indicated in the active area under the appropriate months.

If we transplant the seedlings from the seed tray to pots we can record this too. This time we right-click the mouse over the crop name in the active veg list. The popup menu has a number of options we can carry out - note it is more extensive than the popup from the lower veg list.

Some of the options will also be recorded against the bed - for example when viewing Bed History we can see the crop we have just sown/planted.

Transplant, Thin, Treat and Harvest all show dialogue boxes to record the operation (Clear Crop is a simple confirmation).