Plan a vegetable plot: beds, dates, water and compost
This kit follows a vegetable season in the order its decisions arrive: how many plants the beds hold, when to sow and plant out, how to spread the harvest, whether last year’s seed is still any good, how much water the drip lines can deliver and what goes into the compost heap. Each step opens a Toolmoz tool already filled with a worked example. Change the numbers to your own as you go.
Gardening is local. The dates, densities and rates in the examples are common rules of thumb, not advice for your soil, climate or varieties, so your seed packets and your own records come first. The tools do arithmetic on the figures you give them and nothing more.
- 6 steps
- About 30 minutes
- Runs on your device; nothing is uploaded
Review status. Not yet reviewed by a specialist in this craft. The arithmetic is checked by tests against independent calculations, but the practical advice is a starting point: if you can improve it, a pull request is welcome (see docs/niche-kits.md in the Toolmoz repository).
Before you start
The boxes are for you while you work. They are not saved and leave this page when you do.
The steps
Count the plant spaces in your beds
Square-foot gardens divide a bed into one-foot squares and plant a set number in each. The tool turns a bed’s width and length in feet, and the plants per square, into a grid and a total, so you know how many seedlings or seed spots to plan for.
Take from the result: The total number of plant spaces. Work it out for each crop’s own density (for example one per square for tomatoes, four for lettuce) and add the beds up. The 4 × 4 bed with one plant per square, in the Presets menu, shows a bed of large plants.
Example loaded: Raised bed 4 × 8 ft, four plants per square. A 4 ft by 8 ft bed as 32 one-foot squares with four plant spaces in each, the density often used for lettuce and similar small leafy crops.
Date every sowing and planting-out
Seed packets give timings in weeks before or after the last frost. Turn each into a whole-day offset from your frost reference, negative before it and positive after, and the tool lists the calendar dates, with a transplant date where a crop is started indoors.
Take from the result: A dated list you can copy into a calendar. Replace the frost date and the crops with your own, using the offsets from your packets.
Example loaded: Five crops around a 10 May frost reference. Sowing and planting-out dates for tomato, courgette, runner bean, lettuce and carrot, counted in days from a last-frost reference of 10 May 2027.
Stagger sowings so the harvest does not arrive at once
Sowing a quick crop all on one day gives one glut and then nothing. The tool repeats a sowing every set number of days, adds your days to harvest to each date and multiplies the plants per sowing, so you can see when each batch will be ready.
Take from the result: The sowing and harvest date of every batch. If the last harvest falls after the weather turns for your crop, reduce the number of sowings or shorten the interval. The weekly radish example is in the Presets menu.
Example loaded: Lettuce: six sowings, 14 days apart. Six sowings of a dozen lettuce each, a fortnight apart from 12 April 2027, with harvest 50 days after each so the cutting never stops at once.
Test old seed before you rely on it
Sow a counted batch of each packet (40 is plenty) in the same compost, count how many seedlings come up within the time the packet gives, and the tool shows each batch’s germination percentage side by side.
Take from the result: The percentage for each batch. As a rough guide, divide the plants you need by the rate to find how many seeds to sow: 20 plants from a 65 % packet is about 31 seeds (20 ÷ 0.65).
Example loaded: Last year’s packet against a fresh one. Two 40-seed germination trials: 26 of 40 from a packet kept since last year (65 %) against 36 of 40 from a fresh packet (90 %).
Split drip lines into zones your tap can feed
A tap delivers a limited flow and every emitter takes its share. The tool multiplies each line’s emitters by the emitter rate and packs whole lines into zones that stay within the flow you give it, one zone running at a time.
Take from the result: Which lines share a zone and each zone’s flow against your limit. It packs lines in the order you list them, so reorder them to try another split. Use a flow figure you measured, for example with a bucket and a timer.
Example loaded: Four drip lines on a 120 L/h budget. A raised bed, tomato row, fruit bushes and herb pots on drip lines with 2 or 4 L/h emitters, packed into zones that each stay within 120 L/h.
Balance the compost heap by carbon and nitrogen
Compost needs carbon (dry, woody “browns”) and nitrogen (soft, wet “greens”). Enter each material’s dry weight and its carbon and nitrogen percentages and the tool gives the blend’s carbon-to-nitrogen ratio by dry mass.
Take from the result: The blended ratio. Roughly 25 to 30 parts carbon to 1 of nitrogen is the starting range often quoted. The grass-heavy example in the Presets menu comes out near 17 to 1: see how much dry leaf it takes to bring a rich pile back.
Example loaded: Autumn leaves, grass clippings and kitchen scraps. A pile of 8 kg dry autumn leaves, 3 kg dry grass clippings and 2 kg dry kitchen scraps, blending to about 27 parts carbon to 1 of nitrogen by dry mass.
When you have the numbers
What this kit does not cover
- Dates are arithmetic from the figures you enter. They do not know your weather, microclimate or varieties, and a late frost or a cold spring will move them.
- The bed tool applies one density to every square and ignores crop spacing, shade and companion planting. The drip tool ignores pressure and pipe friction. The compost tool ignores moisture and how fast materials break down.
- Nothing here covers soil testing, crop rotation, pests, food safety or the safe use of fertiliser and compost: follow product labels and local guidance.
Sources and further reading
The tools’ own pages explain their methods and list their sources. Presets are worked examples from the Toolmoz repository, each checked against an independent calculation.