Progress!

The last few weeks have seen a lot of progress on the software. I have been working hard on finishing up some stale changes and updates from years ago, which won't bring a lot of showy new features with them, but will make the software: faster, more stable and much easier to add new stuff to in the future.

But of course there are a few new features creeping in:

• instead of just filtering the list on what you want to see, you will also be able to filter on what you do not want to see
  
• generate a list of all plantings -- grouped by variety -- that will help serve as a reference as we all put together our seed orders (sadly, for next year at this point)

Anyway, we're alive and kicking and lovin' it. Stay tuned for more...

Back in Action

As of October '09, we're back at it. I'm plugging away at some new stuff for the software and hope to have a new version out early this winter. Few new features for users (ie, you) are planned for this next release, but it will make it easier for me to maintain the software and add new stuff in the future. If you have any questions or would like to help out in any way, please get in touch.

Also, please consider donating. This is an all volunteer effort and any donations will result in more time developing the software. (Literally; we have no overhead costs.)

New Version: Beta1

Finally, a new version. This release is the result of my personal use, testing and tweaking during the last growing season. It's still only a Beta release, but it's in pretty good shape, at least to my eyes.

Downloads for Mac, Windows and all of the Java-supported platforms are available from the website: http://cropplanning.googlecode.com/

You can read the release announcement and notes here:
http://groups.google.com/group/cropplanning-announce/t/c53f9959fabd4025

Project Status

Surely you've noticed that the project seems not to have changed since February. Well, I can assure that it's changed plenty, but just not publicly. The way this all works is that I (and a handful of great volunteers) work on the project's "source code" in our efforts to improve to the program for the next release. (This source code stuff is the logical "brain" of the software -- it's where we write down what the program is supposed to do when you click a button or change some data -- but it's quite ungainly and not something that most folks want to mess with.)

Some of our changes are minor (fixing the apostrophe and double quote bug) and some of them are sort of major (changing the structure of the database). Some of the changes beget other changes which beget other changes which ... you get the idea. Given that we're working on all of this on top of running our own farm, we hope you understand that we might not be devoting our entire attention to the software at this time. Rest assured that this project is still alive and well.

To tide you over, here's a few things that will make the next version better than the last:

1. The stupid apostrophe and double quote problem has been fixed. (Welcome back "Joe's Long Cayenne"!)
2. Plantings can finally be explicitly tagged as direct seeded or transplanted. This should only matter for those few crops than can go either way (spinach, kale, sweet corn, etc.)
3. You will be able to keep track of when you planned to plant something as well as when you actually did plant it. (And transplant it, harvest it, etc.)
4. Improved formatting of the weekly planting lists so they include more pertinent information and should be easier to work with while you're out in the field. (And you can finally set your own farm name.)
5. Rigorous "field testing" is ferreting out bugs and leading to new ideas about how to make the program more useful.
   

Plus many, many other tweaks that should make the program much easier to use.

Bed Length and GH Flat Capacity

It's mentioned elsewhere and never explained, but the software does support configurable bed lengths and greenhouse (GH) flat capacities.

Bed Lengths
The program's default bed length is 100 feet. That's what I use and it seems reasonable. There is a global setting to change this (File > Settings > Bed Length) for all plantings. But, you might ask, what if you have funny shaped fields (or some other reason) where the beds aren't all the same length. Or what if different fields have different row or bed lengths?

Simple: the program is able to interpret the name of the field that you enter for every planting (as the "location" property). If it finds a number in parenthesis, this number is used as the bed length for that particular planting.

Example (field names entered as the "location" property):
* "field 4" - default bed length (See "File > Settings")
* "oaky field" - default bed length
* "oaky field (200)" - 200' bed length
* "oaky field (225)" - 225' bed length
* "(175)" - 175' bed length, no field name

In fact, every planting can have a different bed length.

Flat Capacity
Following the same general format as the bed length, you can also give names to common GH flats and specify their capacity. By default, the program seeks to convert "name" of the flat to the capacity. (This capacity is used to calculate the number of flats you need to sow in the GH.) This would be the case if you sow seeds in 128 cell flats: you might just enter "128" as the flat size. But say you have a system where they're not refered to by their numeric name; say they're called "G"s. Well, you could enter the flat size as "G (128)" and the program would be able to interpret that the "G" flats can hold 128 plants. We use some soil blocks, and I know that I can fit (at least) 340 of those 3/4" microblocks into a 1020 tray, so -- for all of the crops that seed in microblocks -- I enter the flat size as "microblocks (340)". Same for the bigger blocks: "2 in blocks (50)". For all of the plastic flats, I just enter the numeric size, eg "128" or "72".

Bugs in Version PreAlpha2

Anyone using the "latest" version of the software will already have figured this out, but new users will appreciate the warning: there are a few particularly annoying bugs in the software relating to apostrophe's and other punctuation. None of them seem to cause major damage or ruin anything (well, except for #1).

1. Really annoying: entering any text value with an apostrophe will alter ALL OF THE ENTRIES, setting the property in question to the text which appears before the apostrophe. For example, if you tried to create a pepper with the variety name "Joe's Long Cayenne" will set the variety for ALL ENTRIES to "Joe". Like I said, really annoying.
2. Still annoying, but less so: Spaces and other punctuation are not allowed in crop plan names.
3. The farm name on the printed planting lists is always set to "Fail Better Farm". I know. Sorry.

All of these have been fixed in my internal development version, but there are some other changes in progress that are preventing from making an updated release.