What software do you use for garden planning/record keeping?

bummer you guys -

i was really hoping someone had a good freeware or even shareware program to keep track of buying, planting, results... let alone garden planning in the visual sense

guess that means i'm stuck with excel... ugh, it's bad enough i have to use the thing all day at work now i have to use it for fun too?

Sorry! I wish there were such a thing too! Using Photoshop isn't especially easy!

Did you just want a different spreadsheet prog, or maybe a database? Or something more like a diary or journal type thing? There's probably an open source program for whichever you want, let me know and I can look for one. As far as spreadsheet, I use Gnumeric.

This one seems kind of cool. www.gardencomposer.com

I can't remember why I originally ruled it out. Maybe I'll take a second look at it.

That looks good but I'll bet it's not available for Macs.

no not a different spreadsheet - they're all pretty much the same imho the way i use them... i use excel at work and openoffice at home, i don't really want to get into another prog.

i guess i was kind of hoping for a something that was partially premade but that you could add/remove as was applicable in the sense that i have made ss and db lists but i always leave out important details that i needed to know but never occurred to me at the time. or to the other extreme - i put in everything i can think of and it ends up so full that it's not really sortable or useable anymore. that's just to keep track of what works and doesn't work once it actually gets planted - hardly anything grows here so i want to not order something the next year that didn't work, you know?

the other thing would be just a fun landscaper kind of thing to play with - i have used a couple from a net search that were trial offers etc. but almost all of the ones i have seen had all kind of extra junk, but not nearly enough plants or if they had plants no veg that kind of thing. or they were too complicated to use and it stopped being fun. i did buy one from walmart (hate to admit it but there it is) for like $10 so at least it was cheap, but it turned out frustrating because there weren't enough different kinds of plants. it probably would have been fine for someone outside of the desert, lol... but barely anything that would grow here was part of it and you couldn't add plants it was just whatever was in their list.

looked at garden composer just now - i'd try it if they had a demo, but i wouldn't pay $40 to find out it had the same limitations as the others i've played with.

and no, i'm not usually this much of a whiner... today is just a special occasion...

agreed. it needs a real demo.

no problem with the whining. it's frustrating when you know what you want but can't find it. and i don't know what the weather's like in your part of the country today, but it's gloomy and cold here and everyone's restless and grumpy. it's worth it to have seasons, but those last few months just draaaaag.

You know, the last little bit of discussion sounds like something that could be done on a DB -I think I've done similar things on AppleWorks. I think the trick would be to have a basic input page which has everything in it, well organized. Say each record being a "plant file". Then create a variety of layouts to sort by to configure different ones. It would probably have to be linked to a separate garden layout to import occasionally for new garden plans but...seems like you could just about accomplish everything. Even to getting more info when you click on a certain field -by making the displayed field smaller on the page than the amount of data contained.


Feels like a brainstorm, but maybe I've missed something vital from earlier posts....;-)

Grownut, sounds like an interesting idea but I can't quite picture it. Are you going to try it?

I may at some point. I'm not such a gardener that I would use it yet, but you've got me thinking...


If you were to create a DB (File A). Create a field for each kind of info you wanted to access. Make a plant file layout. Make sorting fields (for instance a field where you could designate spring, summer, fall, winter of 09 -P09,S09,F09, W09) This would allow you to designate which info you wanted to go into a particular season's garden map. Then there would need to be a separate file which has your garden arrangement (File B). Even two or three options. After designating which plants you want for a specific season in File A you would go to File B and import to whichever page you were using that season (say one season you planted rows in the upper left corner, the next mounds for cucurbits etc.)

The main problem I see is that the # of plants shown in any one layout (B) is static. If you created a field in (A) somewhere to designate though, I guess you could import...

I'm not hugely experienced with DBs, but I think the main thing is to make sure you have a master page (like your plant file page) that will hold ANY info you want. And create control or sorting fields which allow you to sort by and view only the records you want for a given season.

Hoping I've made some sense and not just a huge mess...

I am sorta following you but have never spent much time playing with databases. I don't think my brain is wired for them!

Make a list of all the types of info you want. These would be fields.

Plant name
Planting time
Experience with
Harvest time
Incompatible with
Compatible with
Season planted
Location in garden

If you're interested I can keep going or you are welcome to D-mail me. If I'm off track, no prob either...;-)

Grownut, I just want a way to plan my vegetable garden rotation and know where to put everything each year. I've been working on that this afternoon, using my Photoshop Elements diagram. I have a couple of sheets that talk about incompatibilities and I use those as a guide. My garden sections are such odd sizes that I can't just go from one section to another for crops in succeeding years. That would be the easy way!

Piddling around here...what does this lack precisely? ( Other than a lot, lol!) been going back thru trying to figure...

That looks gorgeous, Grownut, but if it were mine, I'd want to know the size of the rows I was using so I could calculate what I could fit where. Here's mine again with rulers - but I don't have lovely pictures of veggies to paste in. I'm more interested in the names of the varieties, though:

The veggie pics were available in clippings, AW. Wonder if you managed to do a scale drawing on a separate page which would give you veggies to then copy. IOW each new layout you'd just copy from an old file a scale drawing. --Get the feeling I'm missing some key element you're talking about and it's just over my head....puzzlepuzzlepuzzle...

Uh, yeah, I guess I could do that, especially if there were a template that had no veggies but just the scale drawing. That's what I created initially in AW. What's IOW, btw????

Maybe I'm making this way too hard, but I wanted to be able to write "Tomatoes," rotate it, and then be able to move it around so that next year I could show that the tomatoes were elsewhere. I'm finding all the labelling to be very finicky!

Leslie

In other words....probably shouldn't have been caps though...too loud!!


That's partly why I did that. I used the pointer and dragged to compass everything I wanted to move or rotate. Then went up to tools and chose free rotate...lemme see if I can do what I think you want...


This may not be the best thing for you, but I think a lot of what you want can be done on AW, just approaching it differently. I DID get upside down and backwards text, though it shouldn't be on this page...

What kind of document are you using - draw or paint? Here's what I've been using for the last few years but I never tried adding color; it's a Draw document anyway and I don't think I could. I can see that you'd be able to drag those tags around wherever you'd like, but what about setting up a garden plan as I have where you can get a sense of size and proportion?

I used a drawing for all of that. I went under file for clippings, chose fill color and texture of my boxes. Apple shift held down as I used the rotate tool under arrange. The ruler showed on my original, and I made my rows 1/4'' by ??. The one thing I was unable to do is to rotate a row full of clip art. Each individual piece rotated. But it seems like doing notations instead would work (20 onions set 5" on center) as a text block. And I can get sideways text...

I'll have to play with that. I didn't like the fact that the AW plan was kind of klunky; the Photoshop version looks more elegant. What can I say - I'm an artist. But maybe if I played with the AW version I could get something that I could move around; I can't with PSE, for sure! Yours looks nicer than mine, but then you weren't trying to show rows the way I am.

Leslie

Honestly, I didn't know what your rows were and was too lazy to duplicate the plan...:-) I think you could achieve something much more to your liking with a little bit of tweaking. Just depends what's the best and easiest thing for you. May not be AW.

Kelly

Kelly, I think I'll stick to my PSE plan. I have my garden almost all worked out by now using that. Maybe one day "they" will come up with a decent software application that will do the trick, but at least I have all my dimensions and proportions down so I can print the template out and play with it using old-fashioned pencil and eraser! Thanks for all your suggestions!

Leslie

Any time! Hope it wasn't too much when I got going there, lol! I love playing with it when there's NO pressure...

Hey, if you want to play some more, give me your email address in a Dmail and I'll email you my AW file. Problem is there's not enough room on my page to store extra tags until I need them, if you see what I mean....I'm using up almost the whole printable area.

I like playing with that stuff too, up to a point. I used to do Mac troubleshooting for friends and colleagues, but then the computer got a lot more complex and I got a lot less patient, so now I have someone come in to clean up my computer every few years, and to make the switch when I get a new one. I can write it off to my business, so that works.

Leslie

Personally I use Kitchen Garden Aid (https://sourceforge.net/projects/kitchengarden2/). It's free & open source, runs locally on your computer so you don't have to worry about a web site vanishing, and has useful features like providing companion planting tips when you are laying out your garden.

I made all my garden records and plans on Excel & power point. I have around 15 different things, such as seed inventory. Where I keep track of seeds from year to year. I have my own catalog I made on PP. Pictures & descriptions of every vegetable. We start lots of seeds in the greenhouse so I have Excel sheets to track all of that. I have 3 acres of garden & 4 hoophouses, plus the greenhouse. A big PP file for that. Map of my whole farm & a page for each plot in the garden. It is all planned for this coming season, so now I know where & how much to plant.
There is unlimited things you can do when you do your own thing, instead of using somebody elses plan.