Hi Mensplace,

I forwarded your post to a dear friend of mine who is not only a gardener but a retired engineer that has a lifetime of experience developing software.

Please contact me so I can put you two together. My email is lesgomojo@yahoo.com. He can either find what you're looking for or can write it.

I too am a software developer and gardener and am thrilled at the prospect! Hopefully, there's something off the shelf somewhere that can meet your needs.

Cheers,
Erin

As an ex IBM project manager turned author, I have for far too long seen the waste of space, resources, seed, and, ultimately, the grown vegetables..largely due to poor planning or lack of planning tools at the outset, even as we buy far more seed than we really need. Mea Culpa! Unforutnately, I was on the hardware side, so code development was not in my skill set, but I surely know the value of GOOD project planning up front and the benefits of good project planning software! Given a limited amount of square footage in a garden, imagine how much less waste there would be if we could think up fron in terms of how much of what vegetables we could actually consume each week and then plan accordingly. This would then mean fresh vegetable in the quantity need when need, but more, the ability to reuse the space as harvested. This planning up front could prove a major help to fully utilize the time, space, and seeds while printing out to-do lists and daily/monthly planning. Later, it could even have soil amendment schedules, etc.. Thanks for the interest! I do hope others wil contribute their thoughts and wish list for other ways to make it even more powerful.

Already been done

Here is a link that might be useful: GrowVeg.com

mensplace and erin_nc I heard of project like one you describe but the amount data and requirements are serious draw back. most of veg programs that have existed since 1983 are not an improvement over first one introduce in 1983. As for website link don't bother it is not even close to what you want.

Nothing beats a good set of Excel spreadsheets, a taple measure, and internet research.

This is a screenshot of part of my 2010 plan. Kind of hard to see the specific text, but it is an accurate representation of my garden layout.

{{gwi:118348}}

I have explored the software options and found most of them seriously deficient in one way or another.

A beautiful garden layout, but what I was seeking was far simpler; not a garden layout tool or anything to comput garden space. Please refer back to the first post in this thread. Functionally, I was referencing soemthing along the lines of a vegetable scheduler wherein you could input the seed varietiesby family and variety, how long it takes to produce the transplants from time of germination, how long it takes to produce fruit after the transplant, how many you want of each plant per week, a safe statistical first and last frost, when to plant after the last frost, an alert if cold sensitive varieties come after the first frost, expected harvest date based upon. the number of days stated to ripen. I can do my own layout and arrangement planning. With this weekly "to do" schedule being automatically computed, it would be far easier to plan your work for the week. Later versions could even have when you need to fertilize and with what blend, as well as other requirements (such as tying cauliflower leaves, spraying, etc. per variety). Imagine a daily/weekly/monthly schedule.

You don't need new fangled software, just go to the square foot gardening forum. You would be amazed at all the things you can grow in a minimum of space. Check it out you won't be disappointed! I have the Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew and it's my bible. Your local library will probably have it, I checked it out there before I bought it.

You may notice along the bottom of the screen there is a tab labeled "Succession Planting". This is a quick view:

{{gwi:118349}}

You can see each of the crop to the left, and to the right is a bar representing the growing life of that variety. Labels such as DS for "Direct Seed", T for "Transplant", F for "Foliar Feeding", SD for "Side Dress" etc., make it easy to keep track of the schedule for each variety. Further, all of these labels are hyperlinked to my Microsoft OneNote notebook, where each crop has a separate page to track observations, notations, harvesting statistics, information gleened from the web, pages scanned from my favourite gardening books and magazines, etc. For instance, if you click on the "SD" for my Kestrel Beets, it will take you directly to the OneNote page like this:

{{gwi:118350}}

You will notice at the right hand side are tabs for all of the varieties that I grow so that I can enter information about specific crops such as planting date, germination rates, harvest dates and quantities, etc. I can also attach photos, link to my blog posts, etc. Further, each tab has links to favourite recipes (captured from online sources mostly) and notations about taste, quality, etc.

Then, to tie it all together, I enter all of that information into a Microsoft Project project, and assign myself as a resource. Each of these items is given a task with a date assigned according to the chart above. Then, I will receive via email a weekly "to-do" list.

What I am trying to show is that the information is out there and it can be organized. My setup has been the result of hundreds of hours of research, organizing and cross referencing. This is necessary for me because I have a young family, a very large garden, and I run a family-friends CSA. I need to know when to plant something so that it arrives at a specific time, and I need something to tell me when to do it because when the season arrives, I don't have time to figure it out.

Even if I could find software to do this for me, I don't know if I would want it. The research and compilation of this system has allowed me to learn more than I ever could by just punching in some numbers and letting the computer do the work. If they say the best way to garden is to get your hands dirty, the best way to plan your garden is to get your virtual hands dirty.

Reading the heading, I was prepared to come down on the negative side and agree with 'ten' on keeping knowledge in the brain rather than the computer. But I did find the 'Beets' sheet informative.

I find beginer tomato growers always make the same mistakes -- planting too many, too close together, planting only one or two types. By the time new growers find sites like GW and software to educate them; they will have made many mistakes and learned quite a bit.

One neighbor insists each year on planting twelve tomatoes in a small shaded area. For three years I have suggested that perhaps four plants in the plot might produced more fruit, but no luck yet.

Wow, m lorne. Can you send me that file? Impressive!

m_lorne- you're my hero. Eye candy for the Excel enthusiast!

While I certainly would not want to 'steal' your spreadsheet, I, too, would be interested in taking a peek at it in its entirety.

Beautiful work!

This is an interesting thread. M_lorne, your grasp of Excel makes me bow in awe. Microsoft Project or OmniGraph could also serve as planning software. I'm organizing a community garden these days and, as a gardening programmer (or programming gardener), I'm working on informatics support for the project. I'm developing a database that will handle volunteer schedules, yield records, and so on, but y'all are giving me ideas for more detailed planting records and incorporation of recommended planting schedules for my ares.

Thanks for an inspiration!

K.