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Garden Planning Spreadsheet

Updated: Mar 3, 2020

Where are my fellow spreadsheet geeks? 🙋🏽‍♀️ This is how I stay organized with WAY too many varieties of food

I grow A LOT of things throughout my acre, 84 varieties this years, not including the hot lovers in the greenhouse. I'd rather grow 12 diff squash than 3 of one kind, etc, etc. I have no 'veggie' garden per say (no big square off by itself), my veggies are worked into sections of my landscape, some in ground, some in raised beds. My plan 6 years ago was to landscape and plant 2/3 of the property, leaving 1/3 for the animals/ shop. Then #Gardenmath #crazyplantlady happened.

2 yrs ago I added a chicken garden. Last year I added a 12x3' raised bed on the driveway by my shop, a new bed by the compost & added a hammock /vining arbor to an existing raised bed. There were no more sunny spots and I was DONE, nothing else could be added. WHEW...



THEN in Dec my new neighbor cut down a slew of 70' trees on the south-east side of my property as a fire break. Well hello ☀ This bed below is my first plan, adding another 72sq feet to my garden plus 80' of vertical space. My seed shopping cart exploded, lol.

I always expect to lose 20% of my crop to animals and want to have enough to give away, so I plant a LOT in many areas over my acre. Because of so many crops I heavily rely on companion planting and crop rotation so I have to spend less time on the day to day maintenance. Serious spreadsheet action was now required to manage it! It's a work in progress, I'm open to feedback and questions. I've tried SO MANY APPS and nothing I found allowed me to do all these things. If you know of one that does, even a pay type, please inbox me!! I must own that.


FEATURES

  • The types of plants are broken out by families for easy crop rotation.

  • Plants are noted by season in first column (I used light red and blue for hot and cool season, purple for things I grow in both)

  • HLB - Soil Nutrient Needs - Heavy, Light, Builders

  • pot up dates, plant dates - Obv adjust to your location! A dash (-) for pot up date means I go straight to ground. NOTE: if you're new to gardening, note that not everything needs to be seeded indoors. Often you don't save any actual time and seedlings can suffer with not enough lights.

  • Pot up, plan dates - I adjust each year, especially when it's a plant new to me. I'm zone 5b although I get into ground soon with plastic draping. I was eating corn last July

  • Dates to maturity - take from your seed pkg

  • Companion plants - # blanket the area with this plant, X - avoid planting together, Y - other great plants

  • I use the notes app on my phone for additional 'on the fly' details. I log the date and what I see in the garden, what I'm harvesting when, etc. I tried remembering year to year, that didn't go well. lol

  • Below are the links for excel or google sheets version, basically a template you can download & edit for your own needs. NOTE - there a section off to the right that you may want to realize is there before you delete rows. I list all my 'beds' and my rotation plan, so it's quick and easy to have an overview of what's going where.



Happy Growing, Cooking & Eating!

XO Dana K


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