Hi folks. I have quite a bit on land with orchard of varies fruit aolive trees. I’m finding i would benefit from keeping a database of which tree gets what treatment, what fertilizer, how much produce i get, etc. Has anyone thought of such a tool? I use Joplin notes but its not as elegant, plus my sons are getting into it too now so multiuser woukd be cool.
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This sounds more like a job for QGIS considering you are working trees. Partnered with QField, the app, you can create any number of “surveys” that will capture what you do on each pass (depending on how and what you set up), which you can then poll that data with the myriad of tools that QGIS has available. QField can also poll that data and display it to you in a limited form (QField is a mobile QGIS).
If you are fully pumped on the selfhost part, QFieldCloud can be selfhosted which each QField device/QGIS Desktop can then sync to and from each project you set up on that “cloud”. A syncing desktop user can see realtime what a QField user is adding to the map if they have a data connection available.
You can also go full data offline (if infield has spotty connection) if you create maptiles and share a basemap to each device via cable/network, or if you are selfhosting (or paid hosting) can also share those basemaps with each user. Borrowing a drone and mapping your property will get you extremely high quality basemap so you can zoom into even juvenile trees with a basic GPS but there are a lot of free imagery services about. There may be contour maps available for your area (our local government has 0.25m contours available), which you can stamp onto your basemap so people can instantly tell the lay of the land with a visual cue.
QField ships with 2 sample projects so you can get an idea (https://docs.qfield.org/get-started/sample-projects/). You can even import Excel sheets into QGIS if that interests you. Spreadsheet is good, but GIS adds a visual aspect that reinforces the overall project and helps laypeople work out exactly what’s where. It basically is a spreadsheet/database under the hood with any number of visuals on top. However you write your survey/s will dictate what is captured in the database. And this can include timestamped photos over the years if visual tree assessments are included.
Edit: https://qfield.org/success-stories/ for some examples. It can be as complicated or as simple as you need.
Yes, indeed this does tick my boxes. Thanks.
I honestly believe a well made spreadsheet would be best.
- You can have it in “the cloud” for multiuser.
- You can put some automation around it through an API if you use google sheets or onlyoffice or one of the many other spreadsheet providers that have an API. (Like for example phone notification when you need to water or fertilize a plant)
- It’s easy to get started.
- And it’s infinitely flexible to suit your exact needs.
- You can probably even abuse a page and make a graphical layout map of your garden with clickable links to specific plant pages/sections.
“Use google sheets” is an interesting solution in the “selfhosted” community.
Fair point.
My thinking was: if OPs screw is best screwed in with a philips screwdriver, I won’t suggest a flathead one, just cause we’re in the flathead sublemmy. But thinking about it now, I got my priorities mixed up here, privacy goes over convenience for the audience here including myself.
Here are some selfhosted solutions that would function similarely:
with api:
without api:
- https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online
- https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer
- (probably eurooffice now as well right?)
Use libre office server
Have you looked on here https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
Maybe this?
Open Jardin: a software for managing garden crops
some more information here, OpenJardin.eu
This sounds like it wouldn’t be far away from just a basic spreadsheet. Dates, treatments, produce, etc., all easily added in there without much fuss.
You can share a single Joplin profile with shared data across multiple users, but a shared spreadsheet might make more sense.
a […] software
Nope. Software doesn’t get an ‘a’ in front of it; it’s like saying ‘a happy’.
I’m going to voice an incredibly contentious opinion here and suggest that this is a perfect situation for buying a month of Claude and vibe coding a piece of bespoke software for yourself with it.
And then make it availble to all, announce it here a get harassed for vide coding :-)
“You’re right to push back, when you create a new plant layout on Fridays, it does drop the entire database and
rm -rf /your system, would you like me to fix that for you?”Both not a likely problem with any recent model and absolutely mitigated by using it in a VM with snapshots, which, besides being good practice, is a technology that I expect selfhosters to be familiar with anyway.
If there are objections to major models, (economic, resource, moral, etc), this application is achievable with a self-hosted Qwen or similar, although it will take additional nudging. That’s harder to get started with, though, which is why I didn’t suggest it. Self-hosted Gemma 4 I would absolutely recommend using in a VM, it really likes to erase projects and start over, in my experience.
I hope that helps!
You will not do that with a self hosted qwen 4-7b. They are regarded. But yes.
This is exactly what I did earlier this week. There are some available garden management tools out there, but they are very limited, and mostly aimed at larger farm-like situations. I also have a small orchard and a vegetable garden, and a spreadsheet felt almost as much work and less flexible than letting Claude build something bespoke. (Also, I absolutely abhor spreadsheets) Since I didn’t plant everything myself, I even included a feature to make a photo, and ask Claude all the basic questions about it. It then stores all that information into the “knowledge base”. I can add to the same KB manually whenever I buy new seeds or get crops. I’m now letting it work on a visual representation of my yard, so it’s easy to work with. Took me a couple of evenings in total on the cheapest plan (I’m not in a hurry). It helps that I’m a software engineer by trade, which allowed me to make tons of decisions myself, guiding it more strictly. My recommendation to those that are not is to ask it to present you with decisions in a multiple-choice format, with good explanations of each answer. That makes it easier to get started even with little experience.
I agree. You can literally get bespoke software for your exact needs in a couple of afternoons now.
