Before you get outside and start planting your garden this spring, take some time to use garden planners to organize exactly what you want. Without a plan, you could run out of space for all the seeds you hoped to plant. Or you could run into issues trying to calculate how much to plant per person if you're growing all your own food.
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You may also make the mistake of placing two plants near each other that don’t grow well together. There’s a lot of variables that go into planting the perfect garden.
To achieve a healthy, abundant garden, use garden planners to organize everything you want to plant. (Note: you don't need a perfectly flat, sunny backyard for a good garden. Learn about permaculture design principles to make the most of the space you have.)
There’s a wide variety of free garden planners available online. Some planners have more detail and customizable features than others, but they all have specific uses. Here are the seven best free garden planners to help get your garden started this spring.
#1. Better Homes & Garden Plan-a-Garden App
This free tool from Better Homes & Garden allows you to plan your garden in a 3D setting. It has some pre-made garden planner templates to give you ideas, and hundreds of different plant varieties to drag and drop to your desired location. You can save and edit plans as you go, as well as export and print out the list of plants needed for ordering your seeds or seedlings.
#2. Garden Visualizer from Marshalls
This free garden planner from Marshalls (UK), looks a lot like an early rendition of Minecraft. It gives you the ability to plan out every aspect of your garden, including size, trees, retaining walls, walkways, greenhouses, etc.
It’s very easy to use for beginners and allows you to see your potential garden from all angles. Since this helps you create a garden and landscape from scratch, it’s ideal for people who are planting and building a garden for the very first time.
And if you're on the fence about gardening, don't be. Learn about the many physical, emotional, mental, and environmental benefits of gardening before reviewing the many free garden planners available.
#3. Gardeners Supply Company
Gardener’s free garden planning tool is ideal for people with limited gardening space. This tool bases your plans on the square footage, not traditional gardening rows. Just drag and drop plants to your desired locations on the customized map.
After you’re satisfied with the plan, simply print off your map and get started planting. It also includes a rainfall and soil calculator to help you plan how much soil and rain you will need for certain parts of your garden.
#4. Shifting Roots Garden Planner & Journal
This free, printable garden planner and journal from Shifting Roots has everything you need to plan, track and record your garden this year.
It includes sections to record your seed catalogs, grid outlines to sketch your garden, checklists, and weekly garden journals. Also, it has a garden budget tracker and pest trackers. Having all the information about your gardening efforts in one place will help you plant an abundant garden every year.
#5. The Old Farmer’s Almanac Garden Planner (Free 7 Day Trial)
Although this planner requires a subscription after a 7-day free trial, you can plan your garden in a week before it runs out. This tool will help you plan the ideal garden, no matter your space or gardening goals.
It also uses data from over 5000 weather stations. This will tell you exactly what dates to plant certain seeds in your geographic location. Even better, it has an app that you can use to record data and notes about your garden. There are so many different aspects to this tool, it’s one of the most versatile and useful programs available.
#6. Gardena’s My Garden
Gardena’s planning tool has many of the basics included in other software. It provides you a bird’s eye view of your potential garden and allows you to drag and drop plants to customize your garden space.
You can add different features to your garden, and start with a variety of templates if you don’t know what you want. This rudimentary program is ideal for people just trying to get a feel for planning a garden.
#7. Green in Real Life
These free garden planning printables allow you to organize and plan a garden at your own pace. They help gardeners of every skill level build, plant, track and organize an abundant garden. You can mix and match different sheets depending on your needs. Customize your own garden planner from over 62 different free PDF worksheets.
If you’re planning on having a vegetable garden this year, one of these free garden planners will help you plant your ideal garden. Each one has different customizable options. Find the right one for you, and take advantage of everything it has to offer.
For beginners, make sure you use a planner or similar resource that will tell you the best types of seeds to plant next to each other. This knowledge is something that comes with years of experience or learned through generations of gardeners. Either way, you must pay attention to what plants you place next to each other to ensure they all grow healthy and abundantly.
If you don’t feel like using a program, just sketch one out by hand and make a list of the supplies you will need. No matter how you do it, planning your garden beforehand will go a long way to helping you harvest an abundance of produce this fall.
Bonus: Raddish App for Customized Garden Planning
Recently I had the chance to check out a new free gardening app -Raddish. I'll be writing a full review on this in the coming months, but wanted to mention it now.
In just 10 minutes I was able to install the app and get key recommendations to help maximize our garden production. The app uses your location to pull climate statistics and data. It then gives you recommendations based on your family size and goals, as well as your gardening season (first and last frost dates.)
Raddish is available for free as an iPhone or Android app. Give it a try!
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