One of our other pre-season tasks we need to get dialed in is our garden plan. The most important thing we need to derive is how much of each thing we need to grow. We also want to have an idea of what we’ll plant and where we’ll grow it.
Now, what the garden plan looks like will be different for each garden. We grow at a scale where using (and paying for) software is valuable to us. We use a company called GrowVeg and they are the OG garden planning software out there. You’ll see the same exact software rebranded elsewhere (e.g. Farmers Almanac), but GrowVeg is the source and author of that software.
The reason we like using software is that it makes things like follow-on planning super easy. We can just copy our gardens from the previous season, perform a crop rotation, change anything we’re planning for that year and bam, our plan is complete. There’s a ton of other features, too, like spitting out an entire plant list so we know exactly what we need to grow.
This software works with both traditional row gardening and intensive growing techniques like Square Foot and French Intensive gardening. We use it to plan everything, even our container gardens!
If you’re breaking ground on a new garden this year, this tool is also helpful for producing “what if” scenarios. When we built our raised beds, we used this software to simulate many different layouts. This not only helped us visualize that project, but we could also estimate what we could produce from it.
But, not every garden is going to support a software subscription. This plan can just as well be on graph paper or scribbled out on a piece of paper or notebook.
The observant among you may note that some of our plans have open spaces. That doesn’t mean that space will go unused! We are virtually certain that something will catch our eye that we absolutely have to try. It happens every year! So, planning a bit of extra space ensures we can accommodate those last minute changes.
Lastly, garden planning is most intimidating for beginner growers. It’s hard to get around all the ideas and concepts that get thrown at you. But, you’ll find that the more you plan things out, the more you’ll be able to internalize what you’re going to do and how you’ll do it.
You’ll find a link down below that describes our garden planning efforts in much more detail, in case you want to know more. In that post, we include links to printable graph paper and a 25% discount code for GrowVeg!
