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Read a crop’s DTM curve

Open Charts
2 minutes

See, week by week, how long a crop takes to mature on your farm depending on when you plant it. Use it to pick the fastest weeks and to know until when a sowing is worth it.

Open the curve

In the sidebar, click Charts, then Direct seeding or Transplantation. On the crop’s row, click the curve icon in the Climate-adjusted DTM column. A cultivar row opens its own curve when it has its own values.

Direct seeding chart with the Climate-adjusted DTM column and its curve icon on each crop row
One click on the icon opens the crop’s curve

Read the axes

Across the bottom, the weeks and months of your season: the day you plant. Up the side, the days to maturity. The window names the crop and, at the top right, the Location the weather comes from.

Carrot days to maturity curve for the farm’s location, with the dotted average line, the climate-adjusted curve and frost and growing period bands
The same carrot takes weeks longer sown in April than in June

Compare the two lines

The dotted line is the Average DTM, the number you start from, by default the seed company’s. The solid line is the Climate-adjusted DTM: what that crop takes on your farm for each planting week. Where the solid line dips, the crop grows fastest: that is when your weather gives it the most heat. Where it climbs, each extra week of waiting in spring, or each week later in the fall, adds days before harvest.

Read the coloured bands

Hard Frost and Light Frost shade the weeks of your frost dates. Optimal Growing Period shows the weeks when a planting can reach maturity without too much cold, heat or frost on the way. Suboptimal Growing Period is the rest: planting there is possible, but riskier and slower than the curve can promise.

Change the average, the curve follows

If a cultivar matures faster or slower than the seed company says on your farm, change its Average DTM in the chart. Heirloom redraws the curve from your number. See Change your crop and cultivar values.

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