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Harvest Mate

Create a culture

A field with no culture is an empty field. The culture tells Harvest Mate what grows there this season, and it unlocks jobs, costs and the field's analytics. This guide shows two ways to add one.

Before you begin

You need at least one field. If you don't have one yet, draw it by hand or import it from APIA.

Step 1 — Find your field on the dashboard

Go to the dashboard. If the field was created correctly and sits close to the default location you chose when you created the farm, you will see it on the map. You can change that default location any time in the farm settings. Search for your field and click it, and its information sheet opens.

As you can see, the field is empty: it has no culture, and its status reads Uncultivated. This is the default state, and you should keep it that way if you are not going to sow anything this year. A placeholder culture imported from APIA, such as "Parlag" (fallow), is fine too, and you can delete it if you like.

Step 2 — Add a culture from the sheet

To assign a culture, click Add culture. The Crop Management window opens with these fields:

  • Seed Variety — The variety sown on this field. How the selector works is explained below.
  • Start Date — The date field work for this crop begins. Usually the sowing date, or the date of the first job that matters for this crop, such as soil preparation.
  • End Date — The date field work for this crop ends. Usually the harvest date, or the date of the last job that matters for this crop.
  • Subsidy — The subsidy received for this crop, usually the APIA subsidy.

Click Create when you are done.

How the variety selector works

This kind of selector appears in many places in the app, so it is worth learning once:

  1. Click the field and start typing the name of what you are looking for. The list narrows as you type. In the example, typing "Spring" shows "Spring oats".
  2. If you found the right item, click it.
  3. If it is not in the list, the last option, in green italics (Create "Spring"), creates it on the spot with the name you typed. You do not have to leave the form to add something that is missing. The new variety is added to your Varieties catalog.

Step 3 — Or add it from the field page

The sheet is only a quick view of a field. Every field also has its own page, which you open with the View button at the top left of the sheet. The page has three tabs: Overview, Analytics and Crop Health. Analytics and Crop Health stay locked until the field has a culture.

On the Overview tab, click Create New. The same form opens, and you fill it in exactly as above to create the culture of this field.

Once the culture is created, you can add jobs to the field and start recording costs, and the Analytics and Crop Health tabs unlock.