So I’ve spent literally dozens of hours researching plant start dates, transplant dates, soil conditions, light requirements, sustainable gardening techniques, how to build garden structures, when to plant, what to plant, how to plant… the list goes on.
After all my research I was finally ready to draw out a garden plan. I had individual construction paper cutouts of each plant ready to arrange and reaarange them on some homemade graph paper (I couldn’t find any of the real stuff), when I discovered a much easier, simpler way to get the job done.
Growveg.com garden planner! Ugh, such a lifesaver at this point. This program is amazing. You can draw the outlines for your garden beds, add paths, compost bins, arches, raised beds, wigwams and all sorts of other helpful things. There’s also a large selection of plants, each containing soil, light and other growing information, including companion plants and common pests. Select a plant icon to place in your garden and the program will automatically block out as much growing space as that plant needs. Even better, it’s completely customizable for different plant varieties. It’s like Autocad for your garden!
A yearly subscription is $29, but… here’s the best part, there’s a FREE 7 day trial! Plenty of time to plan your garden, publish to the web and print it out. You can create up to 5 plans with this. So plan the front flower bed, the kitchen garden, the backyard garden and whatever else you’ve been wanting to. (update: this was several years ago so the exact details might have changed slightly)
Below is the plan I came up with for our backyard. I use raised beds since we have trouble with flooding in that area.
This program allows you to use every inch of available space and even has a square foot gardening mode. The different background colors on the plants represent the different plant families to help with crop rotation. There is so much to this program I can’t tell you everything on here, but go check it out for yourself. It’s been a few years since I made this plan and they’ve updated the graphics and layout since then.
Happy gardening!