Last year, I stumbled upon a little website called SmartGardener.com
At first I was skeptical. I mean... it's free.
I took a shot and signed up.
I can unequivocally state that it was totally worth it. I recommend this website to everyone I have met who is interested in planting a garden. It is simple to use, contains a tremendous library of organic and heirloom varieties of edibles, and... did I already mention that it is FREE?
Here is a short(ish) synopsis of the program.
Step 1: Set Up Your Garden:
My garden was a bit complicated to set up. We live on an acreage now, and we built an 8'-0" deer fence around a 30' x 90' garden. This is not your standard size garden, so it was a tall order to set up the beds we were planning to plant. However, for a normal-sized garden, this would be a simple step of choosing the size of raised beds, in-ground beds and containers you plan on utilizing.
At this stage you input your zip code and note the orientation of your garden (which side faces north).
Step 2: Select Your Plants
Begin browsing the delicious smorgasbord of veggie and herb varieties in their expansive library. The plant list is tailored to what will grow in your climate, which includes a recommended planting time (for indoor seed start, transplant, and outdoor planting times) and an approximate harvest window. There is a tremendous variety of vegetables and herbs. Each variety also has a short description of the flavor and benefits to help determine which would best suit your taste (literally).
Once you have selected all of the vegetables and herbs you want to plant, you click back over to your garden layout.
Step 3: Create Your Smart Garden Plan
The garden plant list will now be populated with all of the plants you have selected in step 2. To create your garden plan, you can simply hit the "Recommend" button. This will generate you a recommended garden layout based upon the orientation of the sun and will maximize your square footage. However, if you want to organize your plants in any specific way, you can drag and drop your selections where you choose and customize your garden.
Your garden is set up to be a grid. Each square of the grid is a square foot. The program sizes the plant 'blocks' according to their recommended planting distances/ mature sizes.
Step 4: Weekly Checklist
Congratulations, you have your garden planned! Smart Gardener has generated a weekly checklist of what needs to be done for every plant in your garden. You can choose to be sent weekly e-mail reminders, and there is a journal section for you to make any notes which will help you in future seasons.
Another benefit of Smart Gardener is that as you add plants to your garden, it generates a shopping list for you. Smart Gardener has partner seed company websites which all carry organic and heirloom variety seeds. Your shopping list automatically moves your chosen seeds 'to cart' and if you want to buy your seed online, you can choose to "buy [seed company] items now." This takes you to the seed company's website... with all your seeds already in the cart. You don't need to manually add the seeds to cart yourself.
Add Ons:
Smart Gardener is free. However, they offer add on packages to expand the use of the website for additional needs. For example, I have added the berry package to my account to allow me to access the berry library and add it to my garden checklist. A few other example add-ons are as follows: Shade, Shapes and Successions. This allows you to even further micro-manage your garden by adding sources of shade (allows you to better plan where shade-tolerant plants reside), shapes to annotate paths, fences, trees and structures adjacent to your garden, and succession plantings.
Each of the add-ons are a one time fee, and vary from $2-$5.
So, take a minute to check it out! The site is well designed, offers helpful tutorials to assist through the set-up phase, and is an extremely helpful tool to start (or keep up with) your garden.
http://www.smartgardener.com/
