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Plots~

A plot is the unit of a growing plan — what is being grown, where, since when, and toward what. A zone says "this area is block 3-1"; a plot says "in this part of block 3-1, lettuce has been there since March 20, following that programme."

A plot is not the shape you drew

The rectangle, circle or polygon drawn in the design tool is the plot's location. The plot itself is the record attached to it — crop, variety, dates, stage schedule and targets. That is why a plot survives after its season ends: the shape can be redrawn or reused, but the record of what grew there stays.

Not vegetation-only~

A plot has a kind — Vegetation, Livestock, Facility, Other — the same vocabulary Management Programs uses. Only a programme of the same kind can attach to it, and a plot's kind cannot be changed out from under a programme that is already attached; a livestock programme on a vegetation plot would put a plausible-looking stage and target on screen while the interpretation is wrong, with nothing to flag it. The kind also decides what the item and variety fields are labelled — "Item / Variety" for vegetation and livestock, "Structure item / Spec" for facility, "What is here / Subtype" for other — and the default name filled in when a place is left to rest ("Fallow", "Empty period", "Vacant" and "Resting" respectively).

Where a plot lives~

A plot's location comes from where it sits, not from a field you fill in:

  • Ground plots — drawn on a map, inside a zone. Their area comes from the drawn shape.
  • Facility plots — assigned to a bay of a facility, with no shape to draw. A single-span house has one bay by default; a multi-span house has one per span, and leaving the bay as Whole facility means the whole house is this one plot.

You never pick the enclosing zone or facility yourself — like equipment and devices, it is derived from the plot's position (ground) or its bay assignment (facility).

Overlapping is allowed. Intercropping and mixed cropping are normal, so nothing stops two plots from covering the same ground, and the area percentages are not required to sum to 100%.

An ended plot stays where it was. Once an end date is recorded, neither the shape nor the facility and bay can be changed — dates, names and the rest can still be corrected, but a different place means a new plot. That is what keeps "what was here last season" from being rewritten afterwards.

Creating a plot~

Plots are not created from the page described below — that page manages plots that already exist. A plot comes into existence by:

The /plots page~

/plots lists every plot on the farm — active, planned and ended, all at once.

Viewing is open to everyone; only editing needs permission (see Permissions). Nothing is scoped away by group, because "what is planted right now" is information that is fine for anyone to see.

Search is the only filter

Earlier versions narrowed the list with dropdowns for map, site, zone and kind. Choosing between five dropdowns to find one plot means learning what to pick before you can search — while the person looking almost always already knows the name of what they're after. The single search box matches crop, variety, plot name, facility, bay, map, site, zone and programme name at once, so everything the dropdowns did is now typed instead of selected.

Because search is the only way to narrow the list, the list itself holds everything, ended and planned included — a filter that isn't there can't be used to bring back a plot that was excluded before the fetch. Row badges tell past from future apart instead:

  • Ended — the season is over; the record stays as history.
  • In N days / Planned — the start date hasn't arrived yet.

Each row shows the crop and variety, where it is (facility and bay, or map/site/zone), and — depending on what applies — a day count (Day 12), the name of the stage while one is running, its share of the bay, or its area in m². Typing in the search box filters the list you already have, without a round trip, and the number of matching rows sits next to the box. The row itself is not clickable: an Edit button appears on rows you have permission to change, and that button is what opens the drawer.

Editing a plot~

Pressing Edit on a row (or opening a plot from the Plot widget or the map widget) opens the same kind of drawer Management Programs uses — same shell, same stage track — because the two screens do the same kind of work (fixing a growing schedule in place) and should not require learning twice.

Nothing leaves the drawer until you press Save. Closing it without saving discards every change, including any stage-schedule edits made in the same session.

The basics block holds:

Field Notes
Bay (facility plots only) Which bay this plot sits in — the field is labelled Zone, and Whole facility means the whole house
Kind Vegetation / Livestock / Facility / Other (above)
Item / Variety Labels follow the kind. The item is required — saving with it blank is refused; variety left blank means "the default for this crop"
Plot name Optional — shown in lists when set
Program Narrowed to programs of the plot's own kind. Attaching one brings in its stage schedule and targets
Start date / Expected end Left blank, the expected end is derived from the stage schedule, so postponing a stage moves it; a date typed here wins and stays where you put it
Share (facility plots only) Below
Colour Optional, for map display

If you can also edit farm settings, the drawer adds shortcuts next to the bay and programme fields — "Facility settings" and "Create a new program" — so a missing bay or programme can be fixed without losing the plot you're editing. Those shortcuts are hidden otherwise, since a link to a screen you can't use is not useful.

Crop, variety and share of the bay~

For a ground plot, area is not entered here — it comes from the shape drawn in the design tool, and is shown read-only in the plot's row and popups.

For a facility plot, there is no shape, so the drawer instead asks for its share of the bay: a single number, interpreted as a count or a percentage depending on whether that bay has a total capacity set (beds, rows, trays, m² or houses) in facility settings. Until a capacity is set, the drawer says so and treats the number as a percentage rather than a count against a total.

Where a capacity is set, the number is a count and the percentage is worked out from it — a row reads 4/12 beds · 33% — so correcting the bay's total moves every share with it. A share written as a percentage cannot go over 100% for a single plot; a count has no upper limit, and the shares in one bay may add up to past its total (above).

Stages and schedule~

A plot attached to a programme gets that programme's stage track: names, lengths, and (if the programme defines them) growing-degree-day targets. From there, everything specific to this plot's season — stretching or shortening a stage in days, which shifts the ones after it, adding or removing a stage, writing per-stage guidance, adjusting that stage's targets, and turning on automatic advance — is edited in the same drawer and works exactly as described in Management Programs. Confirming a stage change, undoing one, and reading how far the accumulated heat has got are not in this drawer; they are in the plot's popup on the map widget. This page does not repeat that mechanics; see:

Targets: the plot is the plan, the programme is the reference~

A programme's stage targets are only what a plot starts with. Once attached, each plot can hold its own value for any target that isn't following a curve — independently of the programme and of every other plot that shares it.

This matters because a coordinator function reads a plot's current target, not the programme's. If plots could not carry their own values, the only way to adjust one plot's target would be to edit the programme — which would silently change every other plot on it too. Overriding on the plot instead keeps that adjustment where it belongs.

  • Edit it on the plot — in this drawer's stage track, or the Plot widget's edit drawer (the same component). It cannot be set from the programme screen.
  • Leaving the field blank is how you undo an override — the plot falls back to the programme's own value. There is no separate revert control.
  • Curve-driven targets are never editable per plot, for the same reason they show no number on the programme screen either.
  • Which targets exist, and the range each accepts, stay the programme's to decide. A plot's value goes through the same range check as the programme's, so a mistyped figure is refused here rather than flowing into control, and a plot cannot invent a target item the programme does not define.

Full mechanics — which items can be overridden, how blank values behave, how curves interact — are in Overriding targets per plot.

Registering the plot's schedule as a programme~

Once a plot's schedule has drifted from its programme — stages postponed, added or removed, guidance written — that knowledge lives only in the plot. Register as programme, in the edit drawer's footer, copies what the plot actually follows into a reusable programme, the way Clone does on the programmes screen.

The button only appears once the plot has a stage schedule to register. Registering is a copy: the plot keeps referencing its current programme, and the new one is available to attach to other plots afterward. See Registering the schedule as a programme for what is copied, how measured targets are compared against the source, and how naming conflicts are handled.

Two things happen around the press itself. Unsaved stage edits are saved first, because the copy is made from what is stored — otherwise you would register something other than what is on screen. And the name is made for you (with a number appended if it is taken), so rename it on the programmes screen if you want another; the comparison between the copied targets and what this plot actually measured stays in the drawer afterwards, where the toast cannot take the numbers away with it.

Ending, succession and deletion~

This page does not end, succeed or delete a plot. Ending and succession are one dialog in the plot's popup on the map widget; the facility screen also ends a bay-based plot, and deletion is on that screen and in the design tool's Plot mode. What changes here is what those actions leave behind:

  • Ending a plot records an end date and a reason (Harvested, Lost, Replaced or Removed) without removing the row — it keeps appearing on this page, marked Ended. The dialog says so plainly, because the question people actually have there is whether the shape disappears; it does not.
  • Succeeding a plot ends it and starts a new one in the same spot in a single step. The same dialog asks what comes after the end date: leave the place empty, let it rest for a while (same place, no programme, with a resting name filled in for you to change), or start the next one (same place and share, programme and item carried forward). Unless you say otherwise, the new one starts the day after the end date.
  • Deleting a plot removes the row entirely, for miskeyed entries — a normal end of season uses ending instead, so the history stays. Schedules still aimed at that plot are filed away with it, so nothing is left pointing at a target that no longer exists.

A plot's ongoing record continues past this page:

  • Journals — the printable/exportable document for a plot's season: GDD, DLI, day length, irrigation volume, weather, and how closely readings tracked target.
  • AoT Plot Widget — keeps one plot's stage, targets and notes on the dashboard, with the same edit drawer as this page.
  • Map Widget — the general-purpose, click-to-open view of a plot's operational status; read-only for targets and schedule.

Permissions~

Viewing this page needs no permission — what is planted where is treated as information anyone on the farm may see. Editing needs edit_plots; the facility-settings and create-programme shortcuts in the drawer additionally need permission to edit farm settings, and are simply absent without it. Permission to edit farm settings already includes edit_plots, so a role that had it keeps working; the reverse does not hold — someone trusted with seasons alone does not get settings with them.

  • Management Programs — where a plot's stage track, targets and schedule mechanics are defined in full
  • Design Tool — where plots are drawn, and zones split into several at once
  • AoT Plot Widget — dashboard widget with the same editing drawer as this page
  • Map Widget — where plots are viewed and operated from the map
  • Journals — the recorded document a plot's season produces
  • Facility Management — bays, which facility plots attach to instead of a drawn shape