Programs · critical stages of influence

Plan the season around its critical stages.

Every stage of a crop's life shapes the crop it's going to be, and each one needs something different. Steve calls them critical stages of influence. A CSI program gets the right nutrition to each one, on time.

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Critical stages of influence

Every stage is a critical stage.

A crop doesn't need the same thing all season. Each stage settles something: how the roots set up, how many flowers hold, how many pods set, how many cells the harvest is built from. Miss what one needs and most of it can't be won back. Be ready before each one, and the season follows.

One bean, sown to picked in about ten weeks. Each stage asks for something different: at flowering, the flowers hold or drop in about ten days; at pod set, the young pods divide their cells in days, not weeks. Every crop has its own.

Three ways

Three ways to get yours.

However you get there, it's the same thinking: what the crop needs at each stage first, then everything else in its place.

What's in a program

One season on a page.

What goes on, how, when and why, on one page. Everyone from the farm manager to whoever's on the spray rig can see why each pass is there.

The stages, on your dates
Your crop's season, laid out stage by stage from the day you sow or plant.
Every stage, numbered
Each one is a critical stage, so each pass goes on before its window, not after it.
Every pass, and why it's there
What goes on and how, at planting, in the soil, through the drippers or on the leaf. Use the products you already have in the shed.
Sap tests before the windows
Timed so there's still time to adjust before the next stage.
The why, right beside it
The wiki sits next to the builder, for the reason behind a stage. Members get QuorumAI beside it too.

Beans, by the day

Example · not advice for your crop

0
At sowing. Phosphorus and zinc, for the roots and the nodules.
12
On the leaf. Calcium and boron, for a dense, upright frame.
17
Sap test. A look inside the plant before the buds form.
18
On the leaf. Manganese for the engine, molybdenum for the nodules.
26
On the leaf. Calcium and boron: the foundation goes in before flowering.
31
Sap test. Another look, as it flowers.
34
On the leaf. Manganese and molybdenum through flowering, zinc and copper as the cells divide.
37
On the leaf. Silicon, in a tank of its own.
41
Sap test. As the cells divide: is the calcium keeping up?
44
On the leaf. Calcium into the young pods.
51
On the leaf. The pods are set: now potassium and magnesium, with the foundation in, and copper for firm skins.
57
Sap test. As the pods fill.

The builder adds the products, the rates and the season's totals, and prints it for the shed wall.

Crops

Nine crops to start, families for the rest.

Each crop has its own stages, and the builder starts from them. The potatoes, onions, apples and beans are Steve’s own programs, and the rest are drafts. Growing something else? Start from its family, from leafy greens and summer grains to sugarcane and tree nuts, or from stages that fit any crop. Then move and rename the stages to suit your variety and district.