I used to speak about cross tables rather dismissively whenever I praised the filters in grove. But sometimes they are simply really handy for getting an overview.
What always bothered me about these tables is how hard they are to read. That is probably why, along with the lack of space, such a table often only holds 20 to 30 plants. On screen, though, we have extra options.
The cross tables in grove contain every plant you maintain, which makes them enormous at first. But each column can be narrowed down with the familiar filters. That lets you visualise questions such as “Which companion crops go with main crops?” or “Which root vegetables and fruiting vegetables go together?”.
Opening and using cross tables
Go to the plant list via the “Plants” menu item in the navigation. The “Cross tables” button sits in the top right. The dialog that opens is split into “Neighbors” and “Crop rotation”.
You can set a filter for each of the axes. Type the name of a plant into the text field. The filter icons let you filter the respective axis, exactly as you would the plant list itself.
The relationship between the plants is shown with smileys. The legend at the top tells you what each symbol means. When you hover over a smiley with the mouse or tap it on a touchscreen, the details appear, sometimes with a short explanation of why the relationship is good or bad.
Neighbors
Cross tables for neighbours are probably the best known. It barely matters what you filter on the X axis and what on the Y axis: the result is always how the two plants get along as neighbours.
Crop rotation
With crop rotation it does matter what sits on the X axis and what on the Y axis. The X axis shows the predecessors and the Y axis the successors. So the match between cauliflower and batavia lettuce may well give a different result than batavia lettuce to cauliflower.
The icon with the arrows lets you quickly swap the filters between the two axes.