Sunday, January 13, 2013

Garden Planning


I decided to try a software program this year to plan the layout of our vegetable garden.  The software is called Vegetable Garden Planner and is produced by Mother Earth News.  The cost is $25 per year.  It’s fairly intuitive and easy to use, and undoubtedly has many more features than I’ve taken the time to discover. 

The best thing about it is it has an extensive list of plants, including vegetables, berries, fruit trees, herbs and flowers.  You can even select the specific type of vegetable, for instance Athena cantaloupe, Karikachi edamame, Gooligan White Baby pumpkins, etc.  The software pulls seed names from a wide list of popular seed producers.  The software then tells you the spacing needs of the plant, and when it should be sown, planted and harvested in your zone.  The software will send also email “to-do” reminders to you for each plant contained in your plan.  It’s not elaborate software, but I wasn’t expecting it to be for $25, and it suits my needs. 

Below is a high-level view of our 2013 vegetable garden plan (click on the image and it will enlarge enough to read the captions).  It only took me a couple of hours to put this together using the software. [Note: We actually have 11 fruit trees currently in a portion of the space earmarked for this garden.  Some trees will remain in this area, but the majority are being relocated elsewhere on the property.]


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