Excel Spreadsheet To Plan Your Garden Planting Dates
March 14, 2009 43 Comments
I’m kind of known for my crudeness. In my natural environment I am foul and fourteen.
And many of the things I create are also crude.
This spreadsheet for example. I decided to quickly hash it out because I wanted some help deciding when to plant all kinds of things. Putting it in this format helped me and it may help you. Go ahead. Take it. Download it and use it at your own peril! It’s not fancy, but if you know excel you’ll be able to figure out how to customize it a bit or add some crop that I don’t have included. It’s got a northern bias. You may have a southern bias. Feel free to change it, but from my perspective the northern view is always more northerly.
I used a bunch of different sources for the frost date timings. Some came from vegetable books I’ve got, some came from online, but the sources are too numerous for me to properly cite. Without question the greatest inspiration though came from Skippy’s Vegetable Garden and her planting calendar. Hers is FAR easier to use and I recommend it over mine. The only thing you can do with mine that you can’t with hers is build in your own plants and your own timings.
Great excel spread sheet, excellent planting plan , I’ve adjusted last frost date for my allotment in Essex, UK and will plant accordingly. I’ll keep you posted on the results!
Thank you Robert! Looking forward to seeing how your allotment goes.
thank you this is awesome, the detail of the organization is just what i needed. thank you for taking the time to do this and for sharing. Im planting in northwest ohio, hoping this helps me along the way
You are very welcome! I hope that it helps. You should seek to modify the formulas and timings to suite your zone, but it should work in general. I made several adjustments to the timings just based upon my own experience and they may not be perfect for you.
You are using your super powers of “Excelling” for good, I see. Thank you Dr. Evil…glad to see you’re turing over a new leaf. HA
Any use of Excel powers is automatically evil Sunspot!
Awesome calendar! Excel scares me, I’ve only been able to work it to figure out small business income and expenses so I’m in awe. Thanks =)
Thank you very much Amy! But Excel skills are not awe worthy… pretty sure I’ve seen your design work (your blog website and your business site for example) and that’s a far, far more impressive set of skills. Hope the spreadsheet comes in handy for you. Let me know if anything is wonky and i’ll fix it.
Pingback: Another great planting calendar | Garden of Eatin'
Pingback: Contextures Blog » Use Excel to Plan Your Garden
I was just coming here to check out the calendar again and the link to it – http://www.totalmagic.com/garden/Garden.xls – is blocked by Google as a possible attack site. Just wanted to give you a heads up, hopefully it’s fixable!
whoa! thank you amy… i am checking it now. The site is actually a friend of mine’s. Thanks for the heads up.
New google doc link for now for the planting calendar…
hi there, i found your post when i searched for a gardening excel sheet, thanks!
How do I go about downloading it? Or do I simply edit the google doc? I don’t want to edit it if it edits YOUR copy, yknow?
Thanks
Hi Lindsey! Wow.. honestly despite this post and that file being the single most popular hit on my website for over a year now… nobody has ever asked that question and I therefore have never checked. I assumed that it was easy to download a file from google docs. But it isn’t! In fact it appears to be impossible. And that means that nobody has ever been able to download this thing!
So, thank you very much for asking. I have moved the file now to media fire and it should allow you to download it. If it doesn’t, please comment back here and I will e-mail the file to you. Good luck!
Thank you!! Yeah I’m sure others figured it out, but I don’t get google docs haha. Thanks so much!!!
I just wanted to let you know that you’re mediafire link isn’t quite right. If you click it, it inputs the web address twice so that you end up on the main mediafire sign up screen. Deleting the extra address from the link does bring you to the correct page however. Thank you very much for sharing your work
Man! I can’t seem to get the stinking file right! Thank you Renee.. fixing it now.
Not your fault at all Lindsey for not getting the google doc thing to work. Thank you for letting me know it wasn’t working. Hopefully it is, but if anybody else wants to download this and is having trouble, post in these comments and i will e-mail it to you. Your e-mail is linked to your comment, but nobody else can see it.
Hi there- this spreadsheet is exactly what I’ve been looking for! However I too am having trouble getting the link to work. Would you mind emailing it to me? I hope you’re not sorry you offered
Hi Susie.. the file is on its way to you! Good luck.
Hi,
Can you please email me the very clever Excel spreadsheet everyone is raving about?
I can’t wait to use it! You should consider writing a book. This info does not appear to be anywhere else!
Thank you!
Spreadsheet is on its way! Enjoy.
I can’t figure out how to download the garden planting dates spreadsheet. Can you email it to me? I would appreciate it very much.
On its way kyle.
oo! oo! I want a copy!
On it’s way Jacob!
On its way Jacob.
Please good sir, I am about to take my first foray into the world of gardening this year, and I would definitely appreciate a drink from your cup of knowledge to keep me from completely messing it up.
Oh my! Dylan you were always smarter than me. You’ll likely be a full-fledged farmer in about 2 weeks. The planner is on its way! Your last frost date is probably about 4-25.
Could I have a copy too?
I would really appreciate it!
I would also love to have a copy of your spreadsheet. Could you send it to me please? It will save me a lot of time. Thanks for posting this!
As of 7/5/2010 the link still doesn’t work. And the suggestion of removing the duplicate doesn’t work either.
I’d like to see your spreadsheet, probably modify it (I’ll share any mods with you!). I’d like to have one with mid-summer to fall plantings based on first fall frost date. Also handle succession and compainion plantings per square in a square foot garden. A challenge to improve my Excel skills…..
I’d appreciate it if you’d email me a copy of your current version. Thanks!
i’ve posted the link in the comments to get the file
I have signed up to MediaFire to download your planting spreadsheet but the link provided on this Web page doesn’t seem to work! Please would you email me a copy of the sheet?
Thanking you in advanmce,
Ray Osmond.
I have signed up to MediaFire to download your planting spreadsheet but the link provided on this Web page doesn’t seem to work! Please would you email me a copy of this sheet?
Thanking you in advanmce,
Ray Osmond.
copy and paste the following to into your browser’s URL box get the file
http://www.mediafire.com/?qy3ji5z3izn
I may be the only ignorant one who’s posted here, but can someone send me directions on how to add my own plants to this spreadsheet? I get the first two rows on the right, but past that, I can seem to figure it out. PUHLEEZE!
Billie, sorry for just replying now. The spreadsheet isn’t the easiest thing to modify, but if you have some experience with formulas in Excel, you can simply change them in the grayed out columns to the right. If you don’t have experience following and changing formulas in Excel, I’d just find one of the plants I already included that have close planting times to your plants.
Thank you for a useful tool that saved me tons of frustrating attempts with the spreadsheet. I appreciate your generosity in sharing this.
My pleasure Valeria. It’s not the most intuitive tool, but it works.
Thanks for posting this I was trying to make my own but you saved my alot of time and yours is so much better!
Thanks for putting this together. I had no problem downloading from Google docs (File, Save As). But It turns out that I shouldn’t be starting my tomatoes till next week, but thyme, basil and broccoli should start yesterday! It’s barely spring and I’m already behind!