If your project will be planting seeds and/or seedlings in the field, to keep track of your progress, your organization will need a planting site. Users with the Admin role are able to create planting sites.
To create your planting site, start by navigating to the Planting Site menu item in the left hand navigation menu. From there you can click the button to create a planting site.
Terraware will then guide you through the rest of the process of drafting your planting site. For additional information about any steps in particular see the corresponding section below.
While you are creating a planting site, you will be able to save your progress using the Save and Close button in each step. This saves a draft of your planting site and allows you to resume setting it up. Only the creator of a planting site draft can edit it. Once a planting site is created, any user with the Admin role can edit it.
Simple or Detailed Site?
The first step of the planting site creation flow will ask if you want to create a simple or detailed site. Ultimately this comes down to whether your site is large and diverse enough to require stratification. A detailed site will be stratified and a simple site will be homogeneous.
For more information about how this works in Terraware, please read about stratification here: Strata vs Zones & Subzones.
Planting Site Details
Next you will be asked to fill in the details of your planting site, including giving it a name and description. You can optionally add planting seasons and assign a project to the site at this time as well. These fields can be edited after the site is created as well.
Planting Seasons are used to determine when the planting site is ready for Observations. For more information about Observations, visit Plant Monitoring through Observations.
Site Boundary
Now that your site has a name you can create the map, starting with the site boundary. Using the polygon drawing tool you will need to draw the boundary of your planting site. If you make a mistake you can use the undo and redo buttons to correct your work. And if you'd like to start over you can use the delete button to remove all previous work.
A site boundary needs to be comprised of one or more completed polygons. Don't worry about stratification yet, we will get to that in the next steps.
Exclusion Zones
Once you have a site boundary you will have the option of adding exclusion zones. Exclusion zones are areas within the site boundary that are not plantable. They will be excluded from our calculations of overall site area, plant density, and we will avoid those areas during site observations.
Typical reasons why you might have exclusion zones include:
- Buildings included within your site
- An access road running through your site
- Geographical reasons why planting an area is not feasible such as seasonal ponding or a large rock formation
Adding exclusion zones to your site is not required. Perhaps you were able to account for unplantable areas using your site boundary drawing. If so you can simply click the "Save and Next" button to continue onwards.
Drawing exclusion zones works the same as drawing your site boundary. Any area included in an exclusion zone polygon will be excluded from the rest of your site calculations.
Zone Boundaries
Now it's time to stratify your site. Using the slicing tool you can divide your existing site into zones. The slicing tool will allow you to carve out the part of your site that you want to be contained in a single zone. For additional zones, just follow the same steps you used the first time.
Each zone that you create will automatically be named and given a default target planting density. You can edit both the name and the target planting density of every zone by clicking on it after you've created it. Simply edit the fields you want in the pop-up and save.
Reminder -- zones are optional and should be created only if your site needs to be stratified. If you opt not to create any subzones, Terraware will create one zone that comprises your entire site.
Subzone Boundaries
Finally it is time for optionally dividing your zones into subzones. This is done on a zone by zone basis. First, select the zone you want to divide into multiple subzones. Then, use the slicing tool as you did previously when creating zones. Once you are satisfied with the subzones of that zone you can select another zone and repeat the process.
As with zones, each subzone will be automatically given a name that is editable by clicking on the zone after it is created.
Reminder -- subzones are optional and should be used to help you divide the site into manageable planting areas. If you opt not to create any subzones for a zone, Terraware will create one subzone that comprises that entire zone.