A look at the vegetable garden design software I use for my home garden
Designing your garden is more than buying whatever seeds you come across. Many people design a garden that way - without first thinking about their vegetable garden layout, size, of even the time of year.
Planting dates are critical for a well planned garden. You need to place your tall palnts where they won't shade the shorter ones, and you need to respect the needs of each kind of plant you decide to grow. Whether you grow in the ground or a raised bed vegetable garden, crop rotation must be taken into consideration when you do a long term vegetable garden design.
Growing in raised bed gardens has special considerations. Since you continually grow in the same soil, crop rotation is especially important. Constantly planting the same crops in the same soil allows diseases and pest to proliferate. To avoid this, we rotate our crops, or change the type of plants, from season to season and year to year.
In the past, planning all this - height, spacing, time of year to set out seeds or seedlings, number of plants you can use, crop rotation - has been hard to accomplish. Making various sketches, erasing and starting over used up a lot of time. A garden map or plan is very valuable in planning your vegetable garden, but hard to draw up.
That has changed with gardening software and the internet. Below is a video showing how to use GroVeg, an online vegetable garden design tool. I use to lay out my own home gardens, and I find it works perfectly for our new community garden plots as well. This online garden design tool is easier to use than a pen and paper, and it helps you design a garden that works, even if you have never drawn a vegetable garden layout before. (If the video is not visible below, click here to view a mirrored copy)
There are any number of computer design programs available if you want to design a room, a house, or layout your yard. The problem comes when you want to create detailed garden plans.
Most software for 'garden design' let's you drag-n-drop symbols and do simple layout, and print out the picture. Few give you any information about the plants themselves. They are often more upgraded versions of 'Paint' rather than a true design tool.
How many plants you need, when to start the plants, when to plant them in the garden, notes on the plants you choose - these questions have been left up to you - until now...
I recently discovered GrowVeg, "the smart way to plan your garden". It really is a cool program. It took using it a few times before I got the hang of it, but it was worth the effort. As I have used it to lay out suscessive gardens, it has proven invaluable.
I can quickly lay out three seasons of garden and know that it is all correctly rotated, planned for proper starting, planting and harvest periods to maximize my yeild. I print out the garden layouts and the planting lists & calendars, and I have my year all laid out. I keep this copy in the planting shed so I can start my next crops on time. This is very handy, and very ease to do...
Here's a closer look at the screens from the video...
GroVeg let's you lay out your garden area, place beds where ever you want, and drag-n-drop crops to the beds you just drew. There is a very large selection of vegetables you can select from, and you grab them and put them in place.
Where this program differs from the rest is in the plants themselves. The rows can be dragged to any size row you want, and the program uses the information stored in the database to determine the proper plant spacing. Other information in the plant database is used to calculate the dates you need to start seeds and the dates your plants need to go into the ground, and it even predicts the harvest dates for you.
Plan other garden crops based on a previous design
One of the real surprises comes after you have completed the design and move on to designing the next year's (or next season's) garden. You create you new plan based on a copy of a previous plan. This lets you start from the existing design and saves you redrawing everything.
As you put new crops into your plan, GroVeg will warn you if you ignore crop rotation and attempt to grow the same plant families in one spot. This helps you avaoid planting vegetables where there is the possibility of disease or pest build up from previous crops. This reinforces the concept of crop rotation, an earmark of sustainable agriculture.
GroVeg reminds you when you have tasks to do
We all get busy and it is easy to forget to get gardening tasks done on time. GroVeg understands, too, and e-mails you reminders of when it is time to start seeds indoors, set out seeds or trasnsplants, and harvest your garden.
A very nice touch is the 45-day trial period. You have complete access to the program with all its features intact so you can get a good evaluation of what the program can do for you. You can use it to plan several successive gardens, and print them out. They are yours to keep whether you continue to use the program or not.
If you decide to keep using the program after the free trial period expires, there is a small yearly cost. To try GrowVeg now for free, simply click the text or the banner below to Try GrowVeg Now!
To give you some garden plan ideas to start from, check out the 3-season garden plans for small home gardens, courtesy of Renne's Garden Seeds. Click here to download the plans, or click here to visit Renee's Garden on-line. The "Long summer, mild winter" garden is appropriate for much of the southern California coastal plain.
