Next: Introduction to Crops
SeedLeaf is an online order management and crop planning tool for microgreens growers, but you probably know that already.
How it works is really quite simple. Read on below or skip to the video version at the end.
Or, heck, why not do both?
Ok, this is how SeedLeaf works:
Microgreens production starts with seed, SeedLeaf comes preloaded with over 40 seed types to get you started. You can have seed lots for each seed.
SeedLeaf comes preloaded with a list of customizable crops, each of which is linked to a type of seed. Each crop has unique characteristics such as seed soak time, days to maturity, days to germinate, sowing rate, and expected yield.
You create products, made up of one or more crops, which will have a set size, price, and description. (Note: You grow a crop and you sell a product).
You create a list of customers and store your customers' order, delivery, and contact information on SeedLeaf.
You place orders for your customers based on the products you have created for specific harvest dates.
Based on your orders, SeedLeaf generates daily soaking, sowing, uncovering, and harvesting tasks drawing from all the above information to ensure you have the crops you need, when you need them. Tasks are basically the activites between crop growth and packaging stages.
When your harvest is done, it is time to do deliveries. SeedLeaf breaks down your orders by customer and product to make delivery preparation easy and organized.
SeedLeaf generates customer packing and sales reports on a product-by-product and customer-by-customer basis.
Thus, 8 components make up the foundation of SeedLeaf:
Seeds
Crops
Products
Customers
Orders
Tasks
Deliveries
Reports
There are four important aspects of SeedLeaf (in its current iteration) that you should know about:
You (should) have a set harvest day or harvest days each week - such as Tuesdays and Fridays. Set harvest days are not technically required, but you do need to allocate all your orders to a specific harvest day in order to generate your crop production tasks. Having set harvest days makes this (and many other things) much easier.
You have a five- or six-step crop production process:
Soaking (optional for some crops)
Sowing and then "covering" the crop to start a set germination period
Blackout (optional for most crops) follows the germination period
Uncovering the crop to start a set growing period in the light
Harvesting the crop on a set or predetermined harvest day
Packaging the crop (this includes preparing live products for delivery)
You work on a sow-to-order system, which means you are sowing crops because you have standing orders or expected orders for them. You can sow additional crops using virtual customers or crop buffers (more on that later) - so don't worry too much about the sow-to-order thing if you don't think it works for you (but we highly recommend it!)
Your Harvest Day and Delivery Day can be different (set on an Order by Order basis), so make sure you adjust your delivery day when needed.
These aspects of SeedLeaf apply to most microgreens growing systems and are actually customizable in SeedLeaf as well - but please keep them in mind at all times!
In short: SeedLeaf works backwards from a set harvest date, using individual crop production data, to set soaking, sowing, blackout, uncovering, and harvest dates for your crops based on customers' orders of your products. How much you sow is based on your actual and virtual customer orders (curious about those virtual customers, aren't you?!).
Check out our intro to SeedLeaf video below.