I came across this programme last year and decided against spending £15 (Sterling) on it at the time as the allotment costs were already pretty high for the year.
This year though we are much more budget friendly so I splashed out. The software itself is a garden planner where you recreate a 2D map of your garden, allotment etc. and then set about planting the fruit and vegetables in your 2D garden.
There are pre saved fruit and vegetable plants on the software meaning all you need to do is drag and drop your chosen vegetable (say potatoes as an example) to your preferred patch of ground. Depending on the number of potato tubers you are sowing you can grab the corner of the image and expend it accordingly. Where the software is clever is that it automatically fills the space with the relevant plant spacings so you know for instance in a row 2 metres long you can plant 5 potato tubers but no more.
It allows you to draw shapes of various types, circular, rectangular, square etc. so, if like me you have raised beds you can first draw these in and then plant your vegetables within the beds.
There are several clever things that can be done using this software. Firstly you can plant all your vegetables in the garden but who is to say that a certain vegetable will stay in that patch of soil all year round? Winter sown onions or garlic for instance will be harvested by Early / Mid Summer (June) and there are still 6 months of the year left to go, plenty of time to sow, grow and harvest another crop.
There is an option to select a month by month view on the software where you can see each month what will be in the ground (this requires editing each vegetable individually by double clicking on it and editing the 'Only in the ground' option) Example: Onion's sown the previous winter will only be in the ground until maybe July. So you can edit your months from Nov to July (default setting is Jan to Dec). Therefore if you select August as the month you wish to view the Onions will have been harvested and that piece of ground can now be used to sow something else, spring cabbage, spring broccoli etc.
Another handy feature is that once you plant a vegetable or fruit plant in your 2D garden, the software automatically creates a plant list or sowing list. So once you have finished planting your garden for the season you print off your plant list and that can be your sowing guide for the shed.
One negative aspect with using this software is say you make more than one sowing of the same vegetable during the season to stagger harvest dates. The plant list will not differentiate between sowing's so you will have to make a note yourself of how many to sow and when exactly to sow them. While this is not the end of the world it's just a shame as it would have been the perfect addition to an already impressive piece of kit. Visually I renamed some of my crops, eg Radish 1, Radish 2 etc. so I will know which ones were sown first on the print out of the plan.
The cost is pretty minimal for such handy software, to be honest it is time consuming initially but once finished you will seldom have to edit it, unless you change your mind about something that is. The charge is an annual fee so if you want to create a crop rotation plan it will cost you another £15 next year to continue using it.
A cool feature with the crop rotation plan (if selected in the settings) is that the software will warn you about sowing a vegetable from the same family on the same patch of ground 2 years in a row. A red flashing will come up on screen to prevent this which is quite useful for planning next years crops. Makes crop rotation easy if you have never applied it before.
There is a 30 day free trial of the software which I would encourage you to at least try and see if it's for you. I would also recommend reading through the user guide as there are far more features to this software than I have highlighted here. Above are just some of the more useful ones that I have used. Overall very impressed with the software.
See link below to online layout / plant list view of the allotment site using the software. If some veggies look a little crowded it is because the image is the 12 month plan where more than one crop will be grown in the same piece of ground.
http://www.growveg.com/garden-plan.aspx?p=254087
This year though we are much more budget friendly so I splashed out. The software itself is a garden planner where you recreate a 2D map of your garden, allotment etc. and then set about planting the fruit and vegetables in your 2D garden.
There are pre saved fruit and vegetable plants on the software meaning all you need to do is drag and drop your chosen vegetable (say potatoes as an example) to your preferred patch of ground. Depending on the number of potato tubers you are sowing you can grab the corner of the image and expend it accordingly. Where the software is clever is that it automatically fills the space with the relevant plant spacings so you know for instance in a row 2 metres long you can plant 5 potato tubers but no more.
It allows you to draw shapes of various types, circular, rectangular, square etc. so, if like me you have raised beds you can first draw these in and then plant your vegetables within the beds.
There are several clever things that can be done using this software. Firstly you can plant all your vegetables in the garden but who is to say that a certain vegetable will stay in that patch of soil all year round? Winter sown onions or garlic for instance will be harvested by Early / Mid Summer (June) and there are still 6 months of the year left to go, plenty of time to sow, grow and harvest another crop.
There is an option to select a month by month view on the software where you can see each month what will be in the ground (this requires editing each vegetable individually by double clicking on it and editing the 'Only in the ground' option) Example: Onion's sown the previous winter will only be in the ground until maybe July. So you can edit your months from Nov to July (default setting is Jan to Dec). Therefore if you select August as the month you wish to view the Onions will have been harvested and that piece of ground can now be used to sow something else, spring cabbage, spring broccoli etc.
Another handy feature is that once you plant a vegetable or fruit plant in your 2D garden, the software automatically creates a plant list or sowing list. So once you have finished planting your garden for the season you print off your plant list and that can be your sowing guide for the shed.
One negative aspect with using this software is say you make more than one sowing of the same vegetable during the season to stagger harvest dates. The plant list will not differentiate between sowing's so you will have to make a note yourself of how many to sow and when exactly to sow them. While this is not the end of the world it's just a shame as it would have been the perfect addition to an already impressive piece of kit. Visually I renamed some of my crops, eg Radish 1, Radish 2 etc. so I will know which ones were sown first on the print out of the plan.
The cost is pretty minimal for such handy software, to be honest it is time consuming initially but once finished you will seldom have to edit it, unless you change your mind about something that is. The charge is an annual fee so if you want to create a crop rotation plan it will cost you another £15 next year to continue using it.
A cool feature with the crop rotation plan (if selected in the settings) is that the software will warn you about sowing a vegetable from the same family on the same patch of ground 2 years in a row. A red flashing will come up on screen to prevent this which is quite useful for planning next years crops. Makes crop rotation easy if you have never applied it before.
There is a 30 day free trial of the software which I would encourage you to at least try and see if it's for you. I would also recommend reading through the user guide as there are far more features to this software than I have highlighted here. Above are just some of the more useful ones that I have used. Overall very impressed with the software.
See link below to online layout / plant list view of the allotment site using the software. If some veggies look a little crowded it is because the image is the 12 month plan where more than one crop will be grown in the same piece of ground.
http://www.growveg.com/garden-plan.aspx?p=254087
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