OK, I am going to expose my geekiness to the world.
I have an excel spreadsheet that I call the “Plant Gant” to guide my gardening activities. You can see a snapshot of it below. A PDF version is here plant-gant-rev5, or if you want the actual excel file, email me and I will send it to you.
Plant Gant
I compiled this from planting recommendations in Steve Solomon’s book , the Territorial Seed catalog, my notes from last year, and data from the NOAA weather web site.
Each variety is listed on the left, and then the corresponding soil temperatures for planting, and days to maturity (which is the day I can expect to start harvesting). Each respective colored bar then extends out through the growing season, with the cross hashed areas being the harvest time. Some varieties have a “Cold Fr” date for when they move outside to the cold frame, and “Tran” means when they are actually transplanted into the ground.
As you can see, some types have multiple plantings, so there are lines for each that extend over different time periods.
Obviously I tweak this a little based on the weather, but so far I have been pretty much sticking to it. I find it to be a great reference and planning tool for figuring out what I need to do each weekend, and more importantly when we can start expecting to get food from the garden.
