Garden Planner
Split one bed between three crops and get areas, plant counts and expected harvests for each.
Most real beds are mixtures, and mixtures are where planning usually gives up and guessing starts. This planner divides a bed between up to three crops by the share of the bed each one gets, then works out each crop’s true area, its plant count at proper spacing, and its expected harvest, with a strip map of how the bed divides. It is the quick answer to ‘I want tomatoes, beans and lettuce in the 4 by 8: how much of each fits?’
Shares are percentages of the bed’s area. Rows and blocks divide a real bed more naturally than square feet, so treat a share as ‘this fraction of the rows’ and the plant counts stay honest.
How this is worked out
Each crop’s plant count = its share of the bed area divided by the square of its spacing, rounded down, exactly as the single crop calculators do it. Yield = plants x the typical yield per plant. Shares are normalised in the strip map only; the counts always use your raw shares against the true bed area, which is why the warning appears when shares miss 100: the planner shows your numbers, not tidied ones.
Assumptions:
- Blocks, not interplanting: the maths assumes each crop occupies its share solidly. True intercropping (lettuce between young brassicas) beats these counts by using time as well as space, at the price of more management.
- Edge rows beside paths yield a little more per plant (light and air), centre rows a little less; the averages already assume a normal bed mix of both.
- One season at a time: a bed replanted with a succession crop mid-season earns that crop’s yield on top of these figures.
Worked examples
1. The standard 4 x 8 mixed bed. Half tomatoes (4 plants, roughly 16 lb), 30 percent bush beans (about 21 plants at 4 in, though beans would usually take whole rows), 20 percent lettuce (about 36 plants at their grid). The example defaults show the pattern: a fruiting anchor, a legume block, a salad strip.
2. A salad bed. Lettuce 60, radish 20, spinach 20: hundreds of small plants and a season of picking, which the planner counts honestly because spacing, not appetite, sets the numbers.
3. The three sisters warning. Corn, beans and squash in one bed genuinely share space (the beans climb the corn), so their planner counts, which assume separate blocks, understate the system. Interplanted traditions are the known exception to this tool.
Layout rules that make mixtures work
Arrange blocks by height and season. Tall and trellised crops on the north edge (south edge in the southern hemisphere) so their shade falls off the bed; short fast crops where they can be picked and cleared early; thirsty crops grouped so the watering pattern is simple. Keep one crop per block big enough to matter: below about four plants of a fruiting crop, records, feeding and pest watching all blur, and below a square foot of a salad crop the picking is hardly worth the label.
Finally, plan the second act: what follows each block when it finishes. A lettuce strip cleared in June is a bean row in July on any good plan, and the planner’s yield figures for the bed should be read per filling, not per year.
Common mistakes
- Confetti planting. Alternating single plants of many crops looks abundant and manages terribly: nothing can be watered, fed or cleared as a unit. Blocks are the unit of sanity.
- Ignoring mature size. Shares are allocated by the gardener’s April imagination; the plants spend them in July. A 20 percent zucchini share is a 60 percent bed by midsummer unless it is at the edge with room to spill outward.
- Shade theft. Corn or trellised beans on the south side of a bed (northern latitudes) tax every row behind them. The map does not show shadows; the gardener must.
- No empty share. A plan at exactly 100 percent has no room for the path you will want, the replacement row when something fails, or the flowers that pull in pollinators. Leaving 10 percent unallocated is realism, not waste.
Putting the result to work
Screenshot or copy the plan into the garden notebook with the sowing dates from the Seasonal Garden Calendar. Check the family’s rotation before committing the bed (the Crop Rotation Planner), and for pure single-crop precision work, the Plant Spacing Calculator remains the sharper tool.
How do I split a bed between crops?
- Enter the bed’s length and width.
- Pick up to three crops and give each a percentage share of the bed.
- Read plant counts and expected harvest per crop, and the strip map of the split.
- Keep shares near 100 percent in total; the planner warns when they are not.
- Arrange blocks tall to the north, and leave a small share unallocated for paths and spares.
Can I plan more than three crops in a bed?
The planner handles three blocks, which covers most real mixed beds and keeps the layout legible. For more crops, run it twice: fix the first bed’s split, then plan the remainder as its own bed. In practice, beds with more than three or four crop blocks become hard to water, feed and rotate well.
Why do the counts use my shares even when they miss 100 percent?
Deliberately: your shares are your intent, and quietly rescaling them would hide an underplanted or overcommitted bed. The strip map normalises so it always draws, while the warning tells you the counts reflect shares as entered, and what to do about the difference.
Does interplanting beat these numbers?
It can. Intercropping pairs a fast crop with a slow one (lettuce between brassicas, radish in the carrot row) so the fast crop harvests before the slow one needs the space, effectively farming time. The gains are real but management heavy, and this planner prices the simpler block system honestly rather than guessing at pair dynamics.
How should I arrange the blocks in the bed?
By height first (tall to the north in northern latitudes, south in southern), then by season (earliest finishing where access is easiest), then by thirst (grouping the watering). Keep each block at least a row wide, and sprawling crops at an edge where their overflow has somewhere legal to go.
What about the paths inside a big bed?
Deduct them before planning: a 10 ft bed with a 2 ft central path is two beds of 10 by 4 for planning purposes. Running the planner on the true planted dimensions keeps plant counts honest, which is the entire point of the tool.
Counts and yields use the same spacing and per-plant yield planning figures as the Plant Spacing and Crop Yield calculators.
