Planning your Square Foot Garden planting in Excel 6
Planning out a timeline for each of a few dozen squares in a Square Foot Garden can be daunting. There are a lot of variables to consider.
When do you have to pull out the plants to still have time for the summer plants?
Do you have time to fit three plantings in one square?
How do I get that hottie at Starbucks to pay attention to me?
Do these pants make me look fat?
Is it weird that touching cottonballs grosses me out?
NOTICE: My solition will not answer all of these questions.
Visualizing the data is key to understanding it. This year I used Microsoft Excel with some special formulas and formatting to see where I could fit in all the crops I want. Just click the link below to download my template. I left some data in the sheet to help you get started.
Here’s how to use it:
- Determine how long your growing season is and enter it in the cell next to “Season Length (days.)”
- Add your plants and the length of time until the harvest is complete.
- Below that first entry add the next crop you would like to plant right below it.
- Notice the color of the cell at the top of the section you are typing in. As you enter data you will see that box change color. When you have extra time remaining for more plants the box is green, when you are getting close to running out of days it turns yellow and when you might not have enough time it turns red.
Have any questions? Just ask here or on Twitter.
Josh,
It might be good to have all the vegetables, their number of days and the number of plants for square foot on another tab or another area of the tab so we can just cut and paste rather than look it up in the book.
@maryh
Great idea! I know people’s comfort with Excel varies greatly, so I thought I would float out a simple first version and go from there.
I might be able to get fancy with drop down boxes later, but for the next revision I’d be glad to add the in from the book.
I don’t think this is an acceptable solution. It only answers 2 out of 5 questions and one of them isn’t how to get the chick at starbucks. Plus the boxes aren’t square. I am trying to plan my SQUARE foot garden. The rectangles are throwing off all my planning.
With that said, It really looks helpdful, let me know if you need any help with the excel.
@joe
LOL. I will see if the next spreadsheet can answer the question about the Starbucks hottie.
I think I might make a beta 2 in Excel, but after that I will probably make an application.
I like this! I am so using it! In the process of planning my first garden in a new home–we bought a yard–they threw in the house! Hoping to plant on the long weekend(doesn’t everyone in my area do that?) Better get shakin and plan this thing so there are no mistakes or surprises! Thanks so much for sharing!
[...] In the next post in this series I will tell you how to plant in each square. To hold you over until then check out my article on Planning your Square Foot Garden planting in Excel. [...]