Vegetable Garden Planner review

The unseasonably warm weather here in the GTA has really kicked my thoughts of  vegetable gardening into overdrive. Definitely a good sign, because it means that last year's first steps into veggie gardening weren't a phase. As I'd mentioned in my last post, we'll be creating two square foot gardens this year, rather than one, with the new vegetable garden dedicated to salad ingredients. I'm still unsure about everything that's going into this salad garden, aside from some leaf lettuce, spinach and now cilantro (thanks to BD for the suggestion!); however, one thing I am sure about is that I need to start planning.  

This year veggie garden planning means finding a good online vegetable garden planner.  While there are lots of printable grids and vegetable garden planning Excel templates, there aren't many options when it comes to finding an online vegetable garden planner. My first search mission has lead me to three possible options.  Overall, all of the vegetable garden planners are very easy to use. They're completely online, there's nothing to download and all are fairly printer friendly, should you wish to have a hard copy of your vegetable garden planner. Each of the three displays plants in the square foot garden format. Meaning, four heads of leafs lettuce per square, 1 tomato plant, 9 spinach plants, and so on. I am a square foot gardener, so this is exactly the type of vegetable garden planner I was looking for. Now, on to my discoveries: 

Eat Close to Home  

I dream of salad garden

While the weather outside is truly frightful, what with the extreme cold alert going on in the city and mile high snow banks on every corner, I can't help but turn my thoughts to just a few months in the future when I'll be putting in this year's square foot gardens ...that's right, gardens, this year there will be two veggie gardens and one triangle shaped raised garden in the corner for flowers.

With the second square foot garden going in this year, we've decided to make it a dedicated salad garden. So everything that goes into our salads (with the exception of cherry tomatoes ...more about last year's tomato-zilla at another time) will be coming out of this garden. Now it's just a matter of figuring out exactly what will be going in.

I suppose the most obvious choice is romaine.

In my opinion, every good salad needs the crisp sweetness of romaine as a base.In fact, we'll probably stagger plant two to three squares of romaine, using Mel Bartholomew's 4 heads per square foot recommendation.We'll probably also plant some spinach and possibly a box of green onions. That however leaves several boxes empty in my salad-specific square foot garden. Admittedly, I'm a plain salad kind of girl, but as I discovered with my first square foot garden last year, if I grow it I'll eat it. So I'd like to experiment with some additions to my salad bowl this year. It's just a matter of what.


If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it. So what else should go into my square foot salad garden?