PLOT PLANNING

[AnneThomas]

I know all those experts among you probably know exactly how many to sow and how many to each row just by instinct or experience, but I wondered whether anyone had tried the wikano garden planning tool:

http://www.growveg.com/freetrial.aspx

If anyone had I would be grateful of comments please.
Thanks

[Westi]

Haven't tried it but seen it written up in some
articles. Looks good but would probably be best
for first year onward. Doesn't say you can submit
previous plans, so from this year you could be
putting everything in the wrong place. I enjoy
doing my plan (also good practice with computer
skills), but although I can separate what needs to
go in for rotation purpose quite often mix up things
going in before others have finished, and then I can
never say no when offerred plants so slot them in
where ever there is room which can also throw out
the plan.
The only thing I am really strict with is brassicas as
there is club root on some of the plots and I don't
want that.

Westi

[Primrose]

Have to confess that having only a small vegetable patch and using one of my garden side borders for vegetables, I just have to jiggle things around as best I can on the crop rotation front, trying not to grow tall plants like broccoli in a position where they will completely shade out their adjacent low growing neighbours.
I grow climbing beans and tomatoes in the border against a fence and just switch their positions on alternate years. It's not an ideal situation but it's always worked for me. The beans and tomatoes have been alternating locations for around 30 years since they're both too tall for the vegetable patch and so far, perhaps because I keep the ground well manured/composted, my plants have always been healthy, apart from a couple of bad blight years when everybody else suffered too.

[AnneThomas]

I have given the planner a bit of a run this afternoon - there's a 30 day free trial. It allows you to build a plan of your plot and to plan your veg plantings - showing how many plants you will need to go into the alloted space (although you are restricted to their planting distances as far as I can see at the moment). From your plan it builds a planting list, showing how many and when to sow, etc, based on your own frost dates. It stores your plan and then for the following year you rebuild your plan and it won't let you put veg back into the same spot as the previous year, eg if you try to put brassicas into the same bed as the previous year it colours the bed red. If you try the next year on the colour fades slightly - I think it disappears completely after 5 years.

[skinny_bum]

I plot mine on a spreadsheet and that seems to work well, but you dont get the piccy's

SB