Garden Designer

One-foot squares instead of seed-packet rows

Seed packets give spacing for rows: thin carrots to three inches, rows a foot apart. A raised bed has no rows, so those numbers leave you doing arithmetic. The Designer counts in one-foot squares instead. A square holds one tomato, four lettuces, nine bush beans or sixteen carrots, and a zucchini takes a two-by-two block. Drop a plant on a square and the count is already right, so you find out before buying seed whether the bed holds everything on your list.

Neighbours and shade, checked as you place

Most bed problems come from where a plant sits, not which plant it is. Put a tomato next to corn and the square is flagged: both draw the same earworm, and the corn will shade the tomato for most of the summer. Pairings that rest on garden tradition rather than a trial say so. When you're done, "Check my plan" looks for tall plants south of short ones, since the sun crosses the southern sky and a six-foot cucumber trellis throws its shadow north across the bed.

Sowing dates for the beds you drew

A finished layout turns into a schedule worked out from your zone's frost dates. In zone 6, with a last frost around April 25, that puts peas in the ground and tomato seed under lights in mid-March, and tomato transplants out around May 9. Plans save in your browser, keep past seasons so a crop family returning to the same bed too soon gets a warning, and print or share as a link.