Planning Out Your Garden

YIPPEE!!!!!

They Came!

My seed order that is…now I am all set, I just need some warmer weather to arrive to be able to dive into the dirt, trowel in one hand and pea seeds in another….

Last year I came upon a great website (Mother Earth News) that features a fabulous program that allows you to draw your garden space out on a virtual grid, then plop fruit/veggies or herbs to fill in the space.  You not only get to drag and drop plants in place, but while doing so, it will  tell you what plants get along well with others as some plants are happy to just be in any ‘ol dirt patch…but others are dirt-snobs and will not be seen in the same dirt patch as other certain types.  Sounds like an episode of Jersey Wives…

It also lets you know when to sow your seeds (either indoors or outdoors after it warms up), and when to plant succession plantings, like lettuces, radishes and carrots so that you have a steady supply all summer. Once you specify what area of the country you live in, it then populates the database with only those plants that will grow in your region.  So forget trying to grow that blue agave plant if you live north of the 38th parallel.

The program allows you to make as many garden plans as you like too.  Like an Excel Spreadsheet, you can have different tabs for different plans for different locations.

Here is the one created for my home garden space

Home Garden 2013

and here is the one created for the cottage gardening spaces… 

2013 Cottage Garden Layout

The program allows for oodles of customization in your garden beds as well as it stores past years garden plantings and will warn you if you violate standard crop rotation rules.  Yes, aparently you are not to follow potatoes with tomatoes..or corn with squash…or something like that.

Anyway, you can use the program free for 30 days, after that, if you want to continue to use it, it is $25.00 for the year.  If you are really gung ho about gardening, but also a techie and prefer an electronic notebook to a paper one, then go for it as 25 bucks is not much to fork over for everything you get in this program.

From the looks of my planting schedule, I can start sowing some of my seeds indoors in about a months time….which can’t come soon enough for me! 🙂 

One thought on “Planning Out Your Garden

  1. Ha ha that gave me a chuckle. I made hubby buy dirt the other day, I have some geranium clippings trying to root and a few seeds are started. Flowers and celery for now. I need to start them early or I don’t have a long enough season. Happy Planting 😛

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