Crops

Managing Perennial Crops

Heirloom is primarily designed for planning and managing annual crops, but you can still effectively track and manage your perennials within the system. While a dedicated perennial management feature is under development, this guide provides a workaround for incorporating your perennial plants into your Heirloom workflow.

Understanding the Current Limitations

It’s important to acknowledge that Heirloom’s current functionality is optimized for annual crops with distinct planting and harvesting cycles within a single growing season. Perennials, with their multi-year lifespans, require a slightly different approach.

The Workaround: Creating and Re-Assigning Perennial Crops

The key to managing perennials in Heirloom is to create them as custom crops (if they don’t exist in the database) and then manually re-assign them in your Game Plan each year. Essentially, you’ll be creating a new planting for your perennial each season and assigning it to the same location on your Crop Map.

Here’s the general process:

• Create the Perennial Crop: If your perennial crop isn’t already in Heirloom’s database, you’ll need to create it as a custom crop. You’ll also want to add relevant information in the Charts section, such as spacing, yield estimates, and any recurring tasks like fertilization or pruning. You should use the “Transplant” chart for this, even if you initially planted from seed.
• Initial Planting: In the Game Plan, create a planting for your perennial during the initial year of planting, or whenever you want to start tracking it in Heirloom. Then assign it to its corresponding location on your Crop Map.
• Annual Re-assignment: At the start of each new growing season, simply duplicate the previous year’s season using the “Duplicate Season” feature. Then, delete all annual crops and assign your perennial plantings to their respective locations on the Crop Map. This process essentially “reminds” Heirloom that your perennial is still there and allows you to continue tracking it within your overall farm plan.

Example of a Perennial Crop

Imagine you have a row of established lavender plants. You would create a “Lavender” crop in Heirloom (or use the existing one). Each year, you would create a new planting for that “Lavender” in the Game Plan, assigning it to the same location on your Crop Map. You could add a note to the planting indicating the year of the initial planting or any other relevant details. You could also create a task in your Task List each year to remind you to re-assign your perennial crops.

Why This Workaround Works

Although it requires a few manual steps each year, this method allows you to:

• Maintain a visual representation of your perennials on your Crop Map.
• Incorporate perennials into your overall farm planning in the Game Plan.
• Track yields and other relevant data for your perennials over time.
• Set up recurring tasks for perennial maintenance in the Charts section.