Questions, answered
Folia, frequently asked.
What it is, the data behind it, and how to read what it tells you. Or start with your address to see what fits a specific property.
- What is Folia?
- Folia is a site suitability and planning tool that gives an honest read of your land: it analyzes your property's actual terrain, climate, and soil to show what it can realistically grow, with local precedent and the tradeoffs spelled out. The tool live today is Folia Site, a free web app that works from any US address.
- Is Folia free? Do I need an account?
- It's free, and there's no account to create. You can run a complete analysis on any property and even map out your future fields and farm layout, all without signing up. Accounts are coming soon, for when you want to save your analyses and maps and return to them later.
- What can Folia assess?
- Folia assesses your land first, then what it can grow. It reads a property's terrain, climate, and soil and turns that into planting considerations. The crops it covers are perennials, the high-stakes plantings where establishment is expensive and you live with the choice for years: wine grapes, apples and pears, stone fruit, citrus, perennial flowers, and berries. Each has its own Crop Intelligence Library covering what the variety is, what it makes, and how it grows.
- What data does Folia use?
- Public, authoritative datasets, read at the specific spot you search: USGS 3DEP elevation and LiDAR-derived canopy height for terrain, USDA SSURGO for soils, 30-year climate normals and USDA hardiness for the growing environment, USDA and state bearing-acreage surveys for local precedent, plus federal and state wetland and wildfire-hazard layers.
- How does Folia decide what my land can grow?
- It measures what your site offers (slope and aspect, frost and heat patterns, growing-season length, cold-hardiness, soil drainage and chemistry) and scores how well each variety's known requirements line up with it, surfacing the limiting factors rather than a single pass-or-fail grade.
- How current is the data?
- Each layer carries the cadence of its public source: soils and terrain change slowly and are effectively static, climate normals update on the standard multi-year cycle, and acreage surveys refresh as new state and USDA reports are published. Folia reads the latest available release for your location.
- How accurate is Folia? Should I trust it?
- It's a rigorous starting point for due diligence, not a guarantee. The read is only as precise as the public data under your property, so treat it as the first filter before a site visit, a soil test, and local trials, not a substitute for them.
- What's the difference between a "modeled" and a "measured" read?
- Where Folia has direct data for your exact location, the read is measured. Where a layer can't be resolved that finely, Folia shows a clearly labeled estimate instead of hiding the gap, so you always know how firm each part of the analysis is.
- Will Folia tell me if a site is a bad fit?
- Yes. Folia is built to be honest about challenged sites, not just encouraging ones: it names frost pockets, drainage problems, disease pressure, and varieties that simply won't suit the location, so a no is as clear as a yes.
- Does Folia tell me exactly what to plant?
- No. Folia surfaces considerations, not prescriptions: which varieties fit the site, where the risks are, and what tradeoffs come with each. The planting decision stays yours.
- Does Folia replace a soil test or an agronomist?
- No, it sharpens the conversation with one. Folia tells you which questions are worth a lab test and a consultant's eye for your specific site, so you spend that money on the things that actually matter for what you want to grow.
- What does "local precedent" mean?
- For each variety, Folia checks whether it's actually grown at meaningful scale in your region, drawn from state and USDA bearing-acreage surveys. A strong match is backed by what growers near you really plant, not climate theory alone.
- Can I use any US address? Will it find my exact property?
- Folia works for any address in the continental US. Where boundary data is available it reads the land within your actual property lines; elsewhere it reads the area around the point you searched. Coverage of the finest-grained layers varies by location, and the read tells you which is which.
- Does Folia work for a small backyard plot, or only large properties?
- Both. The same engine reads a quarter-acre homestead and a hundred-acre block. Smaller sites simply have less internal variation, so the read is more uniform across them.
- Is my search private?
- Yes. Your work lives in your own browser, not in an account on our side: there are no logins, no profiles, and no database recording what you searched. The address you enter is used only to pull that property's public data for the analysis, and it isn't saved or tied to you. The only information Folia ever holds is what you deliberately send, like an email if you ask for product updates or submit feedback.
- What else is Folia building?
- Two products extend the same honest read beyond site selection. Folia Row brings it to home gardens, food plots, and backyard homesteads, the things you grow for yourself rather than for market. Folia Ops is farm management anchored to the plan you build in Folia Site, built around one question: is your farm becoming what you planned? Both are coming soon.