Garden planning

[bobleponge]

I remember whilst trawling through all the threads before signing up reading a question about software for planning a garden.
Sadly I dont remember the answer or even if such a FREE thing exists.
If anyone knows of free software for garden planning, something that I can download, I would be grateful.
Many thanks

[scared55]

Not free, but the Vegetable Grdener's Almanac (Vegetable Gardeners Almanac, Software for Vegetable Growers) is very inexpensive and does me.

[moggssue]

Scared55 - does that software have a section where you can 'draw' out your plot and move things around, to plan where to put what? And can you save the plan to refer back to in future years?

I have a great spreadsheet for plotting dates and so on (thanks to the ever wonderful Hazel ) but nothing to draw my plan on, for year on year.

[bobleponge]

That is exactly the thing I am looking for Moggssue. I have too much time on my hands in work and I want to be planning my garden, pushing stuff about, electronically of course, and looking how things will go in certain areas.
Thanks for the link Scared55 but I couldnt actually see how to look at the product before I bought it. Any clues?

[moggssue]

Boblepong - there is an application at growveg.com which allows you to draw plans. It's on a yearly subscription but you do get a free trial first - I havent tried it myself so have no idea whether it's any good.

I haven't gone for it (yet) because I'm not sure I want to fork out every year for the same thing if I can buy something outright (I know, tight b****r!) .

[SunnyD]

This one is free

BBC - Gardening - Design - Virtual Garden

[moggssue]

Ohhh, thanks for that SunnyD! I'll have a play with it at the weekend.

[bobleponge]

Many thanks Sunny D. I shall download and play with it straight away

[SunnyD]

Ohhh, thanks for that SunnyD! I'll have a play with it at the weekend.

Many thanks Sunny D. I shall download and play with it straight away

No worries - nice to be able to help out instead of just absorb info for a change

[gardenplot]

I have made a plan for growing veggies using Excel

[jeremydore]

GrowVeg.com

Hi,
I'm one of the people who did a lot of development for GrowVeg.com (and have also been a subscriber to Grow Your Own for a while too) - so I suppose my view won't be unbiased... ;-)
The big difference between the free planner at the BBC and GrowVeg.com is that the BBC is largely about lanscape layout of your garden. GrowVeg.com is all about vegetables and fruit. As such, it knows about which crop familiy each plant is in, what spacing they require and how to rotate crops. It helps you to do all this planning visually which hopefully will save the gardener money in wasted seed/plants in the long term.
It would be nice to be able to offer this service for free but there are substantial costs in running a site like this and there's no reason why you shouldn't use it for 30 days to plan your garden and not subscribe if you don't want to.
I've been using GrowVeg.com to plan my own vegetable patch for the last two years and find it invaluable. Hope this is of some use to those of you who are wondering about planning on line... always feel sorry for those people who resort to using Excel to do their plans!

[Vegmonkey]

Grow veg looks good as a starter, but for sowing on a rotation, moving things around and sowing/harvesting at different times of year i think it has its limitations. I found just mapping the garden, working out what i wanted to go and then looking at how much space i had and needed sufficed. This was then tailored this year to exactly what i needed, and will probably be adapted next year too!

gOOD LUCK

[scared55]

Scared55 - does that software have a section where you can 'draw' out your plot and move things around, to plan where to put what? And can you save the plan to refer back to in future years?

I have a great spreadsheet for plotting dates and so on (thanks to the ever wonderful Hazel ) but nothing to draw my plan on, for year on year.

If you take a look at the VGA help section here you will have as much info as I do (it's the same as the help with the product)

It is a database based application and is what is described in the software business as 'time aware', which makes it far more suitable for this kind of thing than a spreadsheet.

What I did was to define two plots, define beds within the plots 'very simple app. - have to be rectangular), then plan out what to put in each bed. You record the bed preparation, treatment, sowing and all events including harvest, yield and clearance. It actively supports crop rotation. There is a plant encyclopedia and recipe section. The plant encyclopedia is well featured, although it sems to be missing cucumber for some reason.

In terms of modern Windoze software it is possibly a bit unsophisticated and clunky but hey, if you want pretty software with more features than you will ever need, Micro$oft will be happy to sell you something, I'm sure.

There are a couple of minor things I would change about it. For instance, it is very useful to have an instant view of what can be sowed this month, and it is very useful to be able to set up a planning list. It's a pity the planning list can't be viewed sequenced on sewing dates or harvesting dates.

Overall though, it does the job for me, and at a price I was happy to pay.

KK

[jeremydore]

Grow veg looks good as a starter, but for sowing on a rotation, moving things around and sowing/harvesting at different times of year i think it has its limitations. I found just mapping the garden, working out what i wanted to go and then looking at how much space i had and needed sufficed. This was then tailored this year to exactly what i needed, and will probably be adapted next year too!

gOOD LUCK

You may be interested to know that the ability to plan successional crops which occupy the same space at different times of the year is something that will probably be added to GrowVeg.com in the not too distant future - there have been quite a few requests for this and a number of other features that will make it quite sophisticated. There are also plans to allow for individual adaptations of when each crop is sown/planted/harvested. However, sowing on a rotation is something that is already built into the software and is (in my biased opinion!) one of its strengths.

[Snadger]

I have made a plan for growing veggies using Excel

Is that some new kind of fertiliser then gardenplot?