Learn
Digitizing a tropical orchard
Practical, field-tested methods — the same ones behind CanopyTwin. No fluff: how to tag trees, run a phone survey, count fruit from photos, and decide whether you need a drone.
Case study
Digitizing a Durian Orchard: 243 Photos into a Living Map
How a working tropical durian orchard went from a folder of phone photos to 72 individually tracked trees with AI fruit counts.
6 min read →
Field guide
How to Number and QR-Tag Fruit Trees
A field-tested scheme for giving every tree a permanent identity you can scan with any phone.
5 min read →
Method
Survey an Orchard With Just a Phone
A repeatable GPS photo method that turns a walk through the rows into structured, per-tree data.
5 min read →
Method
Counting Fruit and Flowers From Photos
What actually works when you want a defensible count from survey photos — and where the pitfalls are.
5 min read →
Decision guide
Drone or Phone? When Aerial Photography Pays Off
Both map an orchard. They see different things — and the cheaper one is right more often than you'd think.
4 min read →
Engineering
Counting Fruit in Orchard Photos with Open-Vocabulary Detection
The engineering behind CanopyTwin's fruit counts: Grounding DINO boxes, a VLM cross-check, SAM 2 segments, and serverless GPUs that cost nothing while idle.
7 min read →
Records
Fruit Tree Inventory: Spreadsheet or App?
The columns a tree register actually needs, the exact point a spreadsheet breaks, and an honest checklist for deciding whether an app earns its keep.
6 min read →
Mapping
How to Map an Orchard With Just a Phone
Four ways to put every tree on a map, from a paper sketch to a GPS photo survey, with the tradeoffs and a worked walkthrough for a mixed tropical block.
6 min read →
GPS
How Accurate Is Phone GPS Under Tree Canopy?
What the research says about smartphone location error under trees, and what it means at orchard spacing, with field habits that keep your tree fixes honest.
6 min read →
Planning
Tree Spacing and Density: How Many Trees Fit Your Block?
The arithmetic behind trees per hectare, why headlands and margins take a real share of the naive number (15 percent in the example), and a worked layout for a two-hectare tropical block.
6 min read →
Renewal
Replanting an Orchard: Gap Filling Without the Guesswork
Why new trees fail where old ones died, when to gap-fill versus wait versus replant a whole block, and a staged plan with a per-tree decision log.
6 min read →
Comparison
Orchard Management Software Compared: Six Tools for Fruit Growers (October 2026)
What Hectre, Farmable, Croptracker, Tend, ArboFlow and CanopyTwin actually do, with prices where vendors publish them, and how to pick the right one.
8 min read →
Identification
How to Identify a Fruit Tree When It Has No Fruit
Most of the year a fruit tree is just leaves, bark and buds. Here is the order of clues that narrows an unlabeled tree to a short list, and what a photo can and cannot settle.
8 min read →
Identification
Identify a Plant From a Photo on iPhone or Android Without Installing an App
You do not need an app to name a plant from a picture. A browser tool, your phone's built-in photo features and a few photography habits cover most cases, and a bad photo costs you more than a missing app.
7 min read →
Identification
Identify Citrus Trees by Leaf: Lemon, Lime, Orange, Grapefruit, Mandarin
Citrus leaves look alike until you know where to look. The petiole wing, leaf size, margin and thorns separate the main groups, and hybrids explain why some trees refuse to fit.
8 min read →
Identification
Mango vs Avocado vs Lychee Leaves: Telling Young Tropical Fruit Trees Apart
Three evergreen tropical fruit trees, all with glossy leaves and bronze new growth, get confused in nurseries and young plantings. One question sorts lychee from the other two, and a crushed leaf and a snapped stalk do the rest.
8 min read →
Certification
GlobalG.A.P. and Organic Records for Orchards: What Tree-Level Records Actually Help
What the GlobalG.A.P. v6 and USDA organic standards actually ask you to keep, how auditors use records, and which tree-level records earn their keep.
9 min read →
Mapping
How to Map a Food Forest You Already Have (Tree by Tree, With a Phone)
Design software helps you plan a food forest. Documenting the one you already planted is a different job: here is a phone-only method that turns a messy mixed planting into a tracked inventory.
8 min read →
Records
How to Keep Per-Tree Harvest Records: A Copyable Sheet for Pawpaw, Persimmon, Nut and Backyard Orchards
Which fields to log for every tree at every pick, why each one earns its place, a worked example with invented numbers, and how to tie the sheet to a real tree so the record survives the years.
8 min read →
Records
Scion Provenance Records: What to Write Down When a Cultivar's Identity Is Uncertain
Supplier, date, graft location, rootstock, label photos and chain of custody: a provenance log for grafted trees, and an honest account of what a log can and cannot prove.
8 min read →
Field ops
How Extension Agents Survey Many Farms Without Losing the Data
A field method for visiting dozens of small farms in a season, learned from the tools extension organizations actually deploy: standardized forms, routes, GPS photos, and offline capture.
8 min read →
Records
Pruning Records for Fruit Trees: What to Log, and Why the Photos Matter More Than the Prose
A per-tree pruning log that actually gets kept: what to record after every cut session, a three-season worked example, and how to make it survive contact with a busy orchard.
7 min read →
Yield
How to Estimate Mango Yield Per Tree Before Harvest
A per-tree photo method that replaces the walk-and-guess sample count: what to photograph, when, and how to turn counts into kilograms you can plan a harvest around.
7 min read →
Yield
Estimating Avocado Yield Per Tree Before Harvest
Avocados hide their crop inside a dense canopy, so the usual sample count is worst exactly where you need it most. A per-tree photo method, sized by fruit count, that survives the dark leaves.
7 min read →
Want the whole thing in one PDF?
The full Tropical Orchard Digitization Guide — numbering, tagging, surveying, sensors, and building a harvest baseline — drawn from a real durian orchard survey.
Read the free guide