Last year, our publisher gave us permission to plant a community garden for our office, and we’re just starting to gear up for the coming season. I’m excited by the chance to participate this time around, even if all I manage is to water and weed a few times. (Check out Mother Earth News’ coverage of our work garden.)
In designing the garden, participants drew on the expertise of the many plant-knowledgeable individuals in our work community, and on the useful tools of our new Herb Garden Planner technology.
The Ogden community garden was designed using the new Herb Garden Planner.
The Herb Garden Planner is full of useful, easily personable information. It provides information about the first frost dates in your area, or allows you to set the frost dates yourself based on what you experience in microclimates. If you’re designing a garden for the first time or thinking about ways to redesign your current garden, you can customize both your garden’s beds and the plants that go in them. The Herb Garden Planner keeps track of the space you have and the requirements of each plant you plug in so that you can optimize your growing space.
Other useful features we’ve found include the scheduling and records functions. Once you decide on the seeds or plants you want to use, the Herb Garden Planner can provide you with a personal planting chart so that each plant will get its best growth. You can also plan crop rotations, cover crops to improve soil and succession sowings for fast-growing plants. The records function allows you to detail your observations of how different varieties of plants behave in your garden over the growing season so that you can refer to them the next time you plant.
Now I’m wishing I had a space for more than a few small container herbs at home!
Click here to learn more about the Garden Planner and try it free for 30 days.