Software for Garden Planning, Planting, Harvesting, and Maintenance

OK, Folks!

I am going to undertake an ambitious project and I need your help.  I want to develop a compendium of different software resources for planning, planting, harvesting, and maintaining a garden.  I plan to investigate and try each item and evaluate it against a set of conditions and factors to try to make some sense out of the hodgepodge.

From searching the forum, I've been to several sites that work through a browser client.  I have a personal bias against having my information stored on the host's server instead of on my hard drive; however, I will try to rate these offerings in addition to any I find that run on my (or your) system exclusively.

My first step is to post this topic asking for your input listing software you have used and or that which you know about but have not yet used.  Please post back in this topic with your input.  I will revisit over the next few weeks to gather results.  When I feel that I have enough candidates, I will post a poll asking for feedback on who uses what so that I can try to assess the popularity of each program.  That will give me a marching order for my own trial and analysis of them.  At the end of the process, I hope to have a matrix of features available in each program and a brief discussion of my experience using them. 

TIA
 

Have you found the previous thread about such things? I found several threads about planners, but I'm not really sure what you are doing and what info would be valuable.

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t590-garden-planning-software?highlight=planner

Thanks, camp!

I'm still mining the forum for references to gardening software.  I had hopes that a popular champion had already been found, but I'm yet to see that. 

As for what I want to do, the plan is to do a survey then a personal trial and then an article describing my experiences.  It will not be a short term effort.  I expect that I will work on this for a number of months before it's done (assuming that I don't lose interest or have the effort superseded by other windmills to tilt at.

LOL! Awesome! and good luck....  

Did you ever figure out what is the best and second best gardening software?

Mother Earth News has an online version of an interactive veg garden planner. It isn't SFG minded, but it is free. But also is not "software" rather a shared online application. Price is right however!

Hello Charmag! Welcome to our party from Atlanta, GA! You've picked a great time since it's the new year.

Lots of friendly folks with good advice here. We love to gab & share pictures.

What are your garden plans?

Thank you.  Can you post a link to the Free "mother earth news" planner?   The only one I saw costs $25/year and is the same as growveg. 

http://www.motherearthnews.com/garden-planner/vegetable-garden-planner.aspx


I have 5 4x4 raised beds and might want to build a few more.   Not sure the plans this year, I was looking for an online tool to help me manage that

Thanks!

Sorry, you are right!   Only free for 7 days!  Here is a free one that I found, not bad!

http://www.smallblueprinter.com/garden/planner.html

Has anyone else noticed that the Gardeners planner isn't working?    I've used this for at least 4 years now.  I'm not sure what I'll use if it doesn't start working soon.

I emailed the company about the Gardeners Planner and the support said they thought it would be up shortly but didn't give me a date.   It might be worth others emailing so they know it is important.   Is it a good tool to use for SFG planning?

You might check Johnny's Seeds:

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/e-pdgseedstart.aspx?source=W_InteractiveTools_122014

Hi Charmag. It looks like we joined about the same time!

I've been using a general purpose drawing program, like Illustrator or (free/open-source) Inkscape.  These are locally-run programs that don't rely on "the cloud", and your work is saved on your local hard drive.