My good friend introduced me to Smart Gardener via Pinterest. The description was something along the lines of, "this site plans your garden for you." As a new gardener, I was skeptical. Sounds a little too good to be true, but I checked it out anyways.
At first I was enamored. It allows for garden planning in 4 steps:
1. Layout your garden - you are able to choose the square footage of an in-ground garden, or choose from a variety of containers/raised beds. Cool!
2. Select your plants - this is limited by season, and you cannot mix cool weather and warm weather vegetables. Not cool! Varieties of vegetables are also limited if you are looking for something specific, but you can add them manually.
3. View your plan - you get a little image with your selected plants on it, plus the space they require in your garden (square footage), planting depths, seed spacing, plant dimensions, and what to plant next to each other or not (FYI: parsnips hate everyone). They will also recommend plant layouts for you. Cool!
Here is what my Spring/Summer 2013 Garden Plan looks like (my layout, not the recommended one):
*You will notice on the left sidebar all the cool little infos about the Celebrity tomato plant.
4. Receive weekly To Dos: once you are all mapped out, the system will generate your To Do list and you can add notes and start a journal for garden. Would-be-cool if I could integrate my cools and warms.
Overall, I liked Smart Gardener, but my inability to mix cool and warm veggies on one garden plan, and subsequently on the to do list, bothered me. Lastly, I stated in my veggie preference that I wanted to grow winter squash, but the system never gave me the ability to add it. I suspect there are ways around this or a fix, but I just haven't tinkered around enough to figure it out.
I will be taking my little garden plan (with some tweaks) to the nursery think weekend as I go seed-starter shopping. Updates to follow. :-)
At first I was enamored. It allows for garden planning in 4 steps:
1. Layout your garden - you are able to choose the square footage of an in-ground garden, or choose from a variety of containers/raised beds. Cool!
2. Select your plants - this is limited by season, and you cannot mix cool weather and warm weather vegetables. Not cool! Varieties of vegetables are also limited if you are looking for something specific, but you can add them manually.
3. View your plan - you get a little image with your selected plants on it, plus the space they require in your garden (square footage), planting depths, seed spacing, plant dimensions, and what to plant next to each other or not (FYI: parsnips hate everyone). They will also recommend plant layouts for you. Cool!
Here is what my Spring/Summer 2013 Garden Plan looks like (my layout, not the recommended one):
*You will notice on the left sidebar all the cool little infos about the Celebrity tomato plant.
4. Receive weekly To Dos: once you are all mapped out, the system will generate your To Do list and you can add notes and start a journal for garden. Would-be-cool if I could integrate my cools and warms.
Overall, I liked Smart Gardener, but my inability to mix cool and warm veggies on one garden plan, and subsequently on the to do list, bothered me. Lastly, I stated in my veggie preference that I wanted to grow winter squash, but the system never gave me the ability to add it. I suspect there are ways around this or a fix, but I just haven't tinkered around enough to figure it out.
I will be taking my little garden plan (with some tweaks) to the nursery think weekend as I go seed-starter shopping. Updates to follow. :-)
This makes me even want to garden, and that's saying something!
ReplyDeleteHi Adrienne,
ReplyDeleteSmart Gardener would like to offer your a free Smart Add On of your choice for writing a review on us. If you are interested let us know and we will add it to your account. You can reach us at support@smartgardener.com Thanks again.
Bobby and the Smart Gardener Team