Welcome to the CropManage irrigation and nutrient management decision support tool. This online software was developed by University of California, Cooperative Extension Advisors and Specialists to assist growers to better manage irrigation water and nitrogen fertilizer. There are some simple steps to getting CropManage up and running for your farm:
- Create a ranch (farm). You may call them farms, but out west, we call them ranches. In this first step, you will indicate the location of the ranch and add members who can access your ranch information. Also, you will add fields (planting areas), confirm the soil types, create a custom list of fertilizer, associate weather stations and water sources with your ranch, and customize the list of commodities that you grow. Learn more about ranches in our tutorial
2. Add a planting (crop) to a field on your ranch. In this step, you will name the planting, and choose the commodity and crop type, as well as the start and end dates of the crop (in the case of annual crops). You will also enter information about the irrigation system and information about the way you grow the crop (recently added crop residues, expected yield, etc). Learn more about creating plantings in our tutorials
3. Add an event to your planting. Now you are ready to use CropManage for decision support and record keeping. You can add a soil or tissue sample within a planting for either record keeping or for decision support on nitrogen management. You can create a new fertilizer event and get a recommendation on how much nitrogen fertilizer to apply. You can also add irrigation events and receive a recommendation on how long to irrigate. Get more details on adding events here
That’s it. You just completed the first steps to using CropManage. Please visit our other tutorials to learn more about using this tool, or send us a question from the “send us feedback” link in the CropManage menu.