There are a few steps that are different in setting up plantings for perennial crops such as trees and vineyards. First, the start and end dates of the crop are not very obvious for perennial crops. Intuitively, you may think that an orchard should span multiple years. However, CropManage treats each year of an orchard as a separate planting. This is because the canopy size and rooting depth of young plantings of trees or vines may be changing as they mature.
To allow users to make adjustments for changes in the crop each year, a new planting is set up each season. Most of the parameters remain the same, such as the planting name and planting area, but other parameters may need to be updated such as the age of the planting, maximum canopy size and rooting depth. Fortunately, you do not need to reenter all the information about the planting each year. CropManage allows you to duplicate an existing planting, so you only need to update the information that has changed for the current year.
The leaf-out date and end date of the season need to be updated each year of the planting. Additionally, changing the age of the crop for the current year will update some critical parameters, such as maximum canopy size and rooting depth. You can make further adjustments to the canopy development curve by visiting the canopy chart.
Original settings of the planting, such as irrigation system settings (application rate and uniformity) and expected yield will carry over each year as the planting is duplicated, so they do not need to be re-entered, but you may need to review them and decide if adjustments are needed for the current year.