Product Review - groOrganic Garden Planner - Misadventures of a First Time Mom

groOrganic offers many services on their site, the most interesting of which is their garden planner. The garden planner is an online program that allows you draw out your garden plans, as well as input what your planning to grow. You are also able to view planting and harvesting dates specific to your area. It requires no download to use, but you do have to have a membership in the site.

The application is very easy to use. First, you enter you zip code so that you can view your frost dates and edit your growing season attributes. I set mine to a split season since I can’t grow anything during the hottest part of the summer. Next, you input the dimension of your garden and then drag and drop in your veggies. There are also several shape and text tools that allow you to make notes and mark out features. I used the rectangle tool to mark out the area where I have stepping stones. When I had the general layout out done, I spent some time changing up the veggies I had selected to see what would grow better. Once I was finished, I pulled up the sow & harvest chart. The dates are an approximation, but are pretty spot on. Overall, it took me about 30 or so minutes to get it all planned out.

The only downside to this is that you have to pay the membership fee in order to use it. Membership rates start at $39 (Seedling Membership) for use of the garden planner only. The next rung is $99 (Premium Harvest) for the planner, seeds, info sent by mail, free online consulting, and getting your plan reviewed by an expert. It’s great if this is your first time gardening, however even $39 may be a bit pricey for a lot of people…expecially when you can download similar programs off of cNet for free.

Overall, this is a very useful program if your willing to pay for it. The site also offers other products and services as well. If your interested in checking out the garden planner, visit their website.

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