Set up your farm
Answer a few questions so Heirloom knows your farm: its address, your season, your units, your beds and your frost dates. You can change every answer later in Farm settings.
Start the questions
Once your account is created, Heirloom welcomes you. Click Answer a few questions.
Say whether you farm today
Choose I currently own or work at a farm (or at home). if you grow, or I don’t farm yet, I just want to try Heirloom. if you are exploring. Click Next after each answer.
Name your farm
Type your farm’s name. It shows at the top of the menu, where you switch between farms.
Enter your address
Start typing your address and pick it in the list. Heirloom uses it to estimate your frost dates a few questions later.
Enter the year your farm started
Type the year or pick it in the list.
Set your season
Pick the month you start planning and the month your season ends. A farm that grows all year under cover picks January to December.
Choose your units
Pick Metric or Imperial. Bed lengths, spacings and harvest weights all follow this choice.
Decide whether you work with a standard bed
Most market gardens use one bed size across the farm. Answer Yes and the bed becomes a unit of length: you plan 11 beds of beets instead of 330 bed metres, as the two drawings show. Answer No if your beds vary in size.
The bed unit takes decimals, so half a bed is 0.5.
Enter your bed size
If you answered yes, give the Bed Width, the Path Width between two beds and the Bed Length. The classic setup from the book The Market Gardener is 75 cm beds with 45 cm paths, 30 m long (30 in, 18 in, 100 ft).
Add your spring frost dates
Click Auto-Fill: Heirloom estimates your last hard frost and your last light frost from ten years of weather data at your address. Check them against what you know of your land, and correct them if needed. The button then becomes Revert to suggested dates, to bring back the estimate.
A light frost is around 0 °C (32 °F) and kills tender plants. A hard frost is around -2 °C (28 °F) and damages most crops. If your farm never freezes, check There is no frost in my area.
Add your fall frost dates
Do the same for fall: your first light frost and your first hard frost. Heirloom shades the frost weeks in blue in your Game Plan, so you see when a planting risks the cold.
Finish
Click Done. Heirloom prepares your farm and opens it. Next, Your first steps in Heirloom shows where to start.
Every answer can be changed later in Farm settings.
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