Elements
Elements are the things you track in Libre Grow — the beds you grow in, the plants you tend, the seed lots you store, and the compost piles you build. Every Element has a type, a status, and a history of Activities that created, used, or changed it.
Element types
| Type | What it represents | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Bed | A growing area | Raised Bed A, Polytunnel Row 3, Forest Garden Zone |
| Plant | An individual plant or planting | San Marzano tomatoes (bed A), Butternut squash hill 1 |
| Seed Lot | A batch of saved or purchased seed | Lettuce 'Cos' — saved 2025, Tomato 'Brandywine' — purchased |
| Compost | A compost batch or pile | Bay 2 hot compost — started March, Worm bin A |
| Structure | Infrastructure or site features | Greenhouse, Tool shed, Plot 14 |
| Animal | Livestock or beneficial animals | Chicken flock, Bee hive 1 |
Creating Elements
There are two ways to create an Element:
- Directly — go to the Elements tab, click New Element, choose a type, give it a name, and save. This is useful for mapping your site at the start of a season.
- As an output of an Activity — when you record an Activity like No-Dig Garden Bed Setup, the new bed is created as an output Element. This links it to the Activity that brought it into existence.
Element status
Every Element has a status that reflects where it is in its lifecycle:
- Planned — not yet started (e.g. a bed you intend to build next month).
- Active — currently in use (a bed with crops growing, a compost pile being turned).
- Retired — no longer active (a spent compost batch, a crop that has been cleared).
Activity timeline and lineage
Open any Element to see its activity timeline — a chronological list of every Activity that involved it. A tomato plant's timeline might show: sowing, potting on, planting out, staking, harvesting, and finally seed saving. Click any Activity to see full details.
The lineage view traces provenance across Elements. Starting from a Seed Lot, you can follow the chain forward to every plant grown from it and every harvest it produced — or trace a plant backwards to the seed lot and the bed it grew in.
Associations
Elements can be associated with each other to represent containment and relationship. A Structure contains Beds. Beds contain Plants. These associations let you navigate your garden spatially — click a structure to see its beds, click a bed to see what is growing.
Placing Elements on the Map
Elements can be placed on the interactive Site Map to record their physical location. Open the Site Map, switch to Place Element mode, select the element from the sidebar, and click on the map. Once placed, the element's detail page shows its coordinates and a View on Map link that takes you straight to its position on the map.
Activities that involve placed Elements also show a location card with links to each element's map position, giving you spatial context alongside your garden records.