Planning Your Vegetable Garden Part 3b – Creating a Plan Online

Posted on 11. Feb, 2010 by Tracey in Veg Plan

There is a variety of online software and tools for budding vegetable growers to create their own plot plans on the internet. I have explored the free and paid options available to vegetable gardeners and in this Part of my Planning Your Vegetable Garden I am reviewing the best way (in my opinion) to plan, record and share your vegetable garden online.

PlanGarden.com

Highly Recommended by iGrowVeg

Description: A web application to design, plan, manage and share your vegetable garden.
Platform: Online or download available for Windows and Mac’s.
Price: Free Trial Account for 45 Days with access to all features. Then $20 (approx £12.50) for 1 year or $36 (approx £23) for 3 years.
No of Users: Approx 12,000 Worldwide.
Features: Easy to get started in mapping, planning and printing out your vegetable garden plan, good for square foot gardeners, odd shaped plots, raised beds and containers, allows you to label, add colour, shapes, titles, scales to any sized plan.

Other Excellent Features:

Patio Pots Plan

Journal Log – records your sowings, harvests, weather, soil additions, pest problems and other general notes.
Harvest Estimator – to help stagger crops for storage,
Know What To Plant – very quickly tells you what vegetable to sow or harvest based on your local weather station.
Vegetable Calculator – estimates your harvest weight on amount growing for different vegetables.
Share your Garden – make your garden available for others to see on the site and find other gardens near you or worldwide on maps.
Forum, Tutorials, Videos and Blog.

Signup Now for your Free 45 Day Trial to Start Planning Your Garden With PlanGarden

My Review:
I haven’t heard of Plan Garden before so I viewed their Quick 5 Minute Tour and it looked so easy to use. They offer a 45 day free trial (which I’ve still got 14 days to go, it lasts longer than you think) so there’s no reason not to sign up and give it a try.

I was very impressed by the My Stuff page which is the page you see when you login, it displays all the quick links you need to start planning and shows your account settings at first glance, which is very handy.

The best thing with this web software is everything is on the page where you can see it and not hidden away or in a help manual somewhere. It is very easy to use even if you are not technically minded.

I think PlanGarden goes that step further than other garden planning tools as it tracks your harvest, allows you to add notes about pests or the weather which you can refer to even up to a year later, share your plans with other users and find other garden plans in your local area to see what they are growing.

iGrowVeg PlanGarden Plan

There are options to save, print, email or take a snapshot of your vegetable plan. I really like the snapshot feature, which literally takes a photo of your vegetable plan on the screen.

PlanGarden has really wowed me with all its features, its colourful screens, ease of use and community spirit. I will definitely be using this fantastic tool to keep track of my harvests this year.

Please view my Plan above designed with PlanGarden (click to to enlarge).

iGrowVeg – Planning your Vegetable Garden Series