Pat Munts: Software tool helps plan garden
I have received several of my favorite garden catalogs in the mail already, and the pages are quickly becoming dog-eared as I find things I want to try. There are always more plants and tools than there is space or budget, but I can dream can’t I?
One problem with trying lots of stuff, particularly in the vegetable garden, is keeping track of the plants and the notes about how they did. I am horrible at it. I’ve tried a notebook where I put plant tags and notes about when and where I planted them. I’ve tried to keep any number of notebooks; even a waterproof one I could write in in the rain. I’d keep up with it for a few months and then garden chores would interfere with the effort.
While I have been fussing over paper and pen, new technology has developed that just might make it easier to keep up my vegetable garden records. Oh sure, garden planning software has been around for a while, but I always found it clunky and not very flexible if you did a lot of out-of-the-box garden designs. In many of the early software packages you were quite limited in what you could list for plants.
Not anymore. I think I’ve found a versatile garden planning software package that just might make the grade. It is offered by Territorial Seed Co. out of Cottage Grove, Oregon. The program is based on modern geographic information systems technology that allows a user to create plans with different layers of information. It is a very powerful tool, but one the program designers made very user friendly.
At the beginning of the process, the program asks for the exact location of your garden using a Google map and then asks for your last and first frost dates. This sets the plant database and growing season charts to your specific location. Easy-to-use line drawing and text tools then allow you to draw in beds, paths and other structures. You can then create a layer showing your irrigation system.
The heart of the program is a library of more than 130 different vegetable and fruit plants each identified by an icon you can drag and drop onto your plan. Each icon is coded with the space needed for the plant to grow properly so you will know exactly how many plants will fit in a space. When an icon is added to the plan, the program creates a plant list and a planting chart that tell you when to seed, transplant and harvest the crop. The program can also help you develop succession plantings so you rotate crops properly. It will even send you an email reminder when it’s time to plant or harvest.
There is a 30-day free trial, and after that it costs $40 for two years access to your plan. Want to check out what I did in a few short hours? Go to http://gardenplanner. territorialseed.com/ garden-plan. aspx?p=587165 and enjoy.