[petehog72]

Hey all, has anyone had experience with the allotment planner online, was looking at this and thought it was quite god and appears very useful, of course with all things there is a fee for using this, is it worth paying the annual fee, many thanks in advance        pete

[mjg000]

I have used it for the last 3 or 4 years and found it very useful.  You have to get your site plan right in the first instance but then you can carry it on from year to year with it giving a warning if you don't rotate your veg.  funnily enough, I did the original plan this year but have not felt the need to use it as much as I have in the past, possibly because I've become addicted to this site so don't have the time to worry about updating my online one so often.  It does not have a diary or log feature.

[Alifink]

Being an engineer I've got a scaled drawing of my plot that I print and mark which crops go where, do one a year and that's your rotation fixed (cost free). Also use a diary from the pound shop and write when I need to sow etc, when I did sow and when I start to crop, this can be compared to last year (cost £1).
Has the benefit of a company not passing on your details to God knows how many other companies and spamming you.

[Snoop]

I do my planning on squared paper (a bit like graph paper, only bigger squares). I also do it in pencil! I quite like having it on paper because it's easy to consult when the computer's not on and it's very easy to rethink. And I can lay out the assorted bits of paper next to each other and compare with last year easily. The fact that it's squared paper makes it easy for me to plan spacings as well, rather than being a bit optimistic when faced with the real bed as to how many plants I can fit in.

I pay more attention to my bits of paper than I do to my list of what to sow when, which is on computer. I might take up Alifink's suggestion and move that onto paper too.

[Audy70]

I started off the season with an online planner, a spreadsheet and a notebook. I haven't looked at the planner for months and haven't renewed my subscription; the spreadsheet is to keep track of what seeds I've got and when to sow them. The notebook is used the most throughout the season and comes down the plot with me. So, I'd say give it a go and see if it suits your style of planning.

[surbie100]

I made a scale plan of my plots in Excel. I am getting them printed and laminated to A3 size, but that's because my planning goes through so many iterations and I learn better by doing than typing. I use a notebook to guess how much of each thing I want, then try and make it fit. Doing that helps me learn planting distances, so now I can remember for most veg I grow. I keep an annotated copy of one of John's books in my shed for reference - annotated to add achocha, oca, saffron etc.

At the beginning I was really worried about getting it all right. Now I am a lot less bothered and don't feel at all guilty (ok, not as guilty) about composting the weaker or unwanted seedlings.

It just needs to fit for you - but from previous answers to similar posts, the Growveg planner has a more comprehensive library of veg than most others, and most of us use pencil & paper to work it all out in winter. You'll probably see a lot of posts about it around December/January.

[Growster...]

As we have thirty or so 8' x 4' beds, all we need to know is what went where in previous years, and then rotate crops using that info. We might finish up - say - with some leeks in several beds in different areas, it doesn't matter where they go!

The individual beds are all printed in Excel, and we take blank copies to plan for next year when we have a moment - usually after lunch, with a tincture at hand!

Every year, we decide to do things slightly differently, and decide what to do with each bed - even this year we have decided that we'll not bother with beetroot next year, as we only used half a dozen all season, and kohl rabi is off the menu for Mrs Growster, so the beds can be used something else, to pencil in...