A friend from our local farming non-profit, Farming Falmouth, turned me onto this application. It’s called SeedTime – it’s an app for planning gardens. He wanted me to evaluate it for the non-profit with an eye toward using it to plan gardens around town and … I bought it for myself. Some people can’t resist buying clothes, jewelry, and watches. This is the third online program and second piece of software I’ve purchased to play in my yard with. I know plenty of tech-savvy nature lovers, but gardeners? Not sure. Feel free to set me straight, but I think I’m pretty weird.
Anyway, the screenshot above is a pic of my developing and definitely NOT finished backyard plan. I’m grouping things that grow happily together and then matching that according to what gets planted during a given week. So, for instance, this picture above shows what’s growing in April. Later on, there will be other crops added and the crops and arrangement will change.
I managed to jam some garlic in before it got too cold – but I forgot to add it to my plan, so I’ll rework it to include the garlic, my rhubarb plant, and some herbs I put in the day we arrived. (Yes, I’m that attached to my plants.)
The planting – onions, early start indoors – starts in a couple of weeks! Wow! Last year I direct-seeded onions and wound up with teeny-tiny little ones. I guess now I know why! They weren’t in for long enough!
I have always ignored the days to maturity on my seed packets for three reasons. 1- I’m lazy (or too busy drinking wine while I plan the garden). 2- I am not growing for profit so I don’t *need* to know how long till maturity. I can just, you know, plant them and see what happens… and 3 – I’m not disciplined or organized enough to plan my calendar around my planting activities. I know my limits and the truth is I like to play in the dirt. I made mud cakes when I was a kid, too.
But seedtime makes it both effortless and fun to just plant things when you’re supposed to, and to actually *know* when to harvest them — It’s on a color-coded calendar! No more staring at the aerial parts and wondering if my roots are ready. It’s an epiphany.
Honestly, in all of my years working in the software industry I have appreciated A LOT about the cool things we built, but this takes the cake. And no, those guys have no idea I am writing about them in this blog.
I wish they included annual herbs (herbs that won’t grow happily in the northeast) in their crops schedule. I’ll suggest it!
Backyard Botanics 