Re: Veggy garden planning software

**J* B* <j*@starband.net>**

Andrew
In 1986 I hornswaggled Rodale Press into publishing a vegetable  
gardening software package that a friend, Gary Gack, and I had  
designed and developed.  This was back before Windows so from a  
graphic point of view it was pretty bad.  However, "Garden Manager"  
did just what you asked.  It allowed you to describe in square feet  
each bed you had in the garden and give each bed a name.  Then you  
could add as many varieties of as many vegetables as you wished.   
Each variety had a separate file with planting dates,  days to  
maturity, etc.  It worked with weeks as the basic variable and the  
program was keyed into week numbers and appropriate dates of the  
year.  We had a table that estimated how much space each vegetable  
would take in terms of square feet.  When you put that figure in the  
variety file you could edit it.  The idea was to be able to plan a  
garden by adding the number of plants of a variety to a specific  
bed.  The total of the square feet in the bed was tracked and you  
were told when you had exceeded the space available.  You could do  
successions and the program adjusted keeping track when there was  
space unused in a bed.  You could edit maturity weeks as you  
harvested. Then there was an ongoing total of the harvest in  
pounds.   There was a record of this year's garden that could come up  
next year and simply be tweeked instead of starting from scratch.  Is  
that what you are looking for?  It had other features, but I forget  
them at the moment.  We sold five copies of the program through  
Rodale.  I sold about 50 and got raves back from many.

Now I have to find a copy of the program.  I think it still runs.  My  
programmer probably can translate it to today's x's and o's.  It  
would be a nice thing to add to the Cornell vegetable variety web  
site.  Should I go ahead and try to rebuild that antique?

Jeff

On Dec 18, 2008, at 8:29 PM, Hamptongar@aol.com wrote:

I'm sure that many of us are going to be doing a great deal of   
writing about
vegetable gardens in 2009.  I haven't written for the 'new'  vegetable
gardener in well over 15 years but with this renaissance in home   
growing I'm
covering the basics beginning in January and taking the topic right   
through to the
fall for several columns a month.

One thing I'm looking for is very simple vegetable garden  planning  
software
that will allow the gardener to age his/her garden on a weekly  basis  
to see
how spaces in the garden are used and then become vacant as a crop   
matures
thus allowing good successioal planting and planning by allowing a  
crop to
disappear as it matures.  So far no  luck.  I've looked at Growveg  
and Plangarden.
Surely there's some  freeware of shareware that does this...or not.   
Anyone
have any ideas or  are we back to graph paper and Post Its?

Andrew

Andrew Messinger
The Hampton Gardener is a registered  trade mark and is published every
Thursday in The Southampton Press, The Press  and the Easthampton Press

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