Using IG for Vegetable garden

[diegartenfrau]

Has anyone tried to use the IG or IG pro for keeping track of their vegetable garden?
I am trying to make it work so I can see, where I planted what Vegetable, for Rotation purposes. When to plant, when to harvest. Spray schedule.Having the info on each vegetable in a profile. Keeping track of everything related to vegetable gardening.

Did anyone try that? Would it be managable? Could it be done?

Isabell

[ideasguy]

There are a number of options Isabell.
I'll make my suggestions, and I hope other members will chip in with their ideas.

The suggestions below apply to Flower Genie, Ideas Genie, IG Pro and Bonsai Genie

I would recommend Option 2

You can have:

Option 1)  one database with:
1a) one Gardener for your plants garden
1b) Multiple Gardeners for your Vegetable Garden e.g.
My Garden 2005 - With Garden areas, and Veg planted in the Garden areas in 2005
My Garden 2006 - With Garden areas, and Veg planted in the Garden areas in 2006

Option 2) one database with:
2a) one Gardener for your plants garden
2b) ONE Gardener for your Vegetable Garden
Garden Areas organised by Bed
------------- Bed 1 ------------------------
Bed 1 2005 - Veg planted in Bed 1 in 2005
Bed 1 2006 - Veg planted in Bed 1 in 2006
------------- Bed 2 ------------------------
Bed 2 2005 - Veg planted in Bed 2 in 2005
Bed 2 2006 - Veg planted in Bed 2 in 2006
 
You can use Garden Dividers (the dashed lines) to segregate these by Year (below), or by Bed (above)

2c) ONE Gardener for your Vegetable Garden
Garden Areas organised by Year
------------- 2005 ------------------------
Bed 1 2005 - Veg planted in Bed 1 in 2005
Bed 2 2005 - Veg planted in Bed 2 in 2005
------------- 2006 ------------------------
Bed 1 2006 - Veg planted in Bed 1 in 2006
Bed 2 2006 - Veg planted in Bed 2 in 2006

Use Shuffle buttons to arrange beds and dividers.
It will be easy to change between 2b) and 2c)

The above mixes all plants together in one database, Flowers + vegetables.
If you dont want Flowers and Veg appearing in the same database, then Option 3 is the solution.

Option 3)
You set up 2 databases on your hard disc. One for Flowers etc, one for Veg.
The second database is essentially a SWAP, on your hard disc, or Flash!
See other threads on how to make a SWAP.

Option 4)
Since Flower Genie is pretty forgiving with plant names, it wont mind if you throw a lettuce at it!
Use Flower Genie for Veg and IG for Flowers etc.
Same Gardener/Garden Area set up as in above

Option 5)
I start writing Veg Genie!

Finally, following the suggestions in 1 and 2 for Gardener/Garden Area set up in any combination (provided the Vegetable plants are in the same database) you will be able to select a plant and click on the "Who has this" button (in most programs) and this will  show you the history of Gardener/Garden Area for the selected plant.
e.g. for potatoes, it will show which garden areas they have been planted in over the past years in your records.

Comments from all please! We need you to join in.

[diegartenfrau]

Hi George,

I've been playing a little bit with putting my veg garden into the database. I started to put the two Vegetable garden areas upper and lower veg garden. then I added the beds, numbering them from 1-13 for the upper, including the year 2006 (Bed 1-2006) after I did that, I thought. I need to not just keep track of the year, but also the seasons. We have a long growing season here, so my garden get's going from early spring until fall, even through the winter. I still have lot's of lettuce and other cool season stuff growing right now. So now I have to rethink that again.

Your idea of writing Veg Genie, is sounding better all the time

I got a very large vegetable garden. On top I have 13 beds, on lower garden so far 9. right now I have over 1000sqft, but there is still more room to grow more. So thinking I will have to put in all that data, for each year, each bed, for every season. It's making my head spin

So, doesn't look like there are other vegetable garden users out there. No other response to my question so far.

I will have a cappucino now

Isabell

[ideasguy]

Just so we understand - which option did you go for Isabell? One of the ones I posted, or something else?
Does it look practical?

RE: Veg Genie
Well, if you can tell me what you want, I may be able to develop a special program.
Incidentally, I do have a very rough cut Garden Planning module.
I havent worked on it for about a year now, but it was looking OK. Nothing flashy, no 3D, no what your veggies will look like at night etc.  ) but it looked practical, and may have been good for Veg gardening.
I was at the stage of linking it to the plants in IG.
It may be some time before I get back to it though.

One customer made a drawing of his garden and scanned it into the computer, and used the lassooing feature to identify the plants.
That would be a good idea for you to adopt. Perhaps a drawing of each bed.
More fun!
 
I'm really pleased to read how you grow your own vegetables. I suspect that practice is dying out over here. People just take the easy option and buy from supermarkets.
Is vegetable gardening popular in your region of US?

Do you work more in the veg patch than in the flower patch?

I think you have earned that cuppa!

[Kew]

Until very, very recently I grew masses of veg. I'm not as yet into the FG programme so I'm not too certain of how it operates yet, but a dedicated veg 'section' run as per FG would be very popular, I have no doubt about it.
Each year, possibly due to the organic and environmental thing, we see more and more people taking up allotments and turning back gardens into profitable fruit and veg areas. A look at the garden sites on line quickly shows how many new people are taking up this past-time and especially so of those in early retirment, a army of people constantly seek advice in the fruit and veg forums.
A winner, no doubt!

[ideasguy]

With a little dedication by the user, it will work well in FG.
FG and IG have the same database structure in releation to Gardens and Gardeners.

I'm looking forward to user feedback on the various approaches suggested earlier.

I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle Veg Genie (as mentioned in this thread) in 2007. Gardening season approaches!

[Trevor Ellis]

I agree that either a section dedicated to fruit and veg or even a dedicated programme (sorry George!)  would be a great asset. For this year I too am using the garden areas section in IGP to record what goes in (numbered beds etc) and will play around with some of the ideas already suggested. I have two areas dedicated to veg, each of about 600sq ft and a soft fruit area (only a couple of blackcurrants, gooseberries, a few raspberries and some rhubarb in it as yet) of about 1000sq ft. So - nothing much to report as yet but thought that I'd just add support for the general idea. I remember trying to set up a system in the programme for recording two other gardens that I tend but came across the problem that plants that I'd input into the other two gardens other than my own were appearing in the database for my own garden. I must get back to trying to solve this one - I'm sure it can't be too difficult to solve can it?. Therein may lie something that would be useful for the veg gardening.

Trevor E

[ideasguy]

A number of discussion points in that message Trevor.

As you have said, In any one database, even when you have multiple gardeners, the plants are shared.
Advantages:
1) You only have one genus/species/plant profile to maintain.
2) By adding the plants to Gardens and Garden Areas, they can be seggregated.
Disadvantages (or advantage in some cases?)
1) When you access a Genus or use A-Z, all plants are shared.
2) When you create specimens, all specimens are plant profiles are shared.

If you want to separate the plants by Gardener, then there is another simple option.
Heres option 3 in my reply to Isabells (diegartenfrau) original posting to initiate this thread:

Option 3)
You set up 2 databases on your hard disc. One for Flowers etc, one for Veg.
The second database is essentially a SWAP, on your hard disc, or Flash!
See other threads on how to make a SWAP.

How to make a SWAP? Read this thread:
http://www.flowergenie.co.uk/ideas/forum/index.php?topic=201.0
Its essentially a "special backup".

Next article to read:
New program - Switch Databases - GA026
http://www.flowergenie.co.uk/ideas/forum/index.php?topic=211.0

GA026 allows you to work with multiple databases, in complete isolation. Examples:

1) Gardener 1
2) Gardener 2, Gardener 3 and Garden 4 (could be gardens youve visited)
3) Veg?

[diegartenfrau]

Hi,

I got tired of having only one Database for vegetable and flower garden. Having all plants mixed together in the plant files. So I tried the
'Swap Data Base' function yesterday.
I love it.
It is like having two IG Pro

Over the last few months I worked periodically inputting all the vegetable seed names from my seed packets. At first I tried to put as much Genus, cultivation and plant data in for each vegetable, from several sources, including the Internet and reading through my favorite Northwestern Vegetable gardening book "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades' from Steve Solomon, anybody living west of the Cascades I highly recommend his book.

In the end I decided, that my first and most important purpose for the Vegetable IG Pro is to keep track of what, when and where to plant. So I stopped putting in so much information. As long I have the info of when to plant (season), when to start the seedling in pots. I can at least use that information to get going. Otherwise I fear I won't be using the IG Pro for Vegetable growing for many years ahead. Now I can start planning my new years garden (I almost got all Veggie common names put in) and the rest information I can put when I have time.

So now I have a Data Base just for Veggie garden, I rethought the way I divided the garden areas. This is what I came up with.

The Data Base is already called Vegetable Garden.

I made a Vegetable Garden for each Year.
Calling it Isabell's Vegetable garden 2006
            Isabell's Vegetable garden 2007
            Isabell's Vegetable garden 2008

each garden is divided in:
           -----upper garden-----
           -----lower Garden-----
 I have a garden divided in 2 levels, because my husband made a level vegetable garden in a hilly yard

There we have a long growing season, and I want to keep track of where I grew what in Spring,Summer and Fall/Winter

I numbered my Beds for upper Garden from 1-13
                                  lower Garden from 1a-9a

I came with then naming each Bed not just 1,2..... but Bed 1 Spring
                                                                             Bed 1 Summer
                                                                             Bed 1 Fall/Winter
for the next year garden season I have the same just for the Vegetable Garden 2007, 2008 and so on.
I think as I progress through 4 Years of Gardening, I will just simply rename the first Vegetable garden with the new Year, because then I really don't need the info of that old garden anymore. 4 year rotation should be sufficient Data.

I also made a crude sketch of my two garden divisions, with the numbered Beds, I scanned it as a picture file into the computer , link it to the garden and as I add the plants into the garden beds, I lasso the area of the specific Vegetable and link it to the Plant.
So now I not only know which Bed had what, I know exactly  in which spot of the Bed I grew it.

So what you all think? Am I over organizing this? 

My Flower garden is somewhat wild and uncontrolled (lazy pruner, always to late to move something, too many plants I need to have)
but for my vegetable garden it all needs to be neat and in order. I am a split personality Gardener >lol<

Isabell Norman





           

[bossgard]

Isabell:
From first reading about your vegie garden, I would say you have some great plans going here, and also some great plans to accomplish it. I am going to see if I can follow you and basically do the same thing, only, of course, localiizing it to may own situation. I, like you, thought that I was having to put too much into data for the vegies, and the fruit, etc., so I limited my data input to only that, that I thought essential. I finished it just the other day, and have been waiting for you to come up with this. Is it okay that I try to follow you, and with your's and George's help try to duplicate your efforts?

This past year, I bought myself a 8'x10' green house, a rather nice one, and am eager to try starting some of the vegies earlier than direct seeding into the soil. Particulary, those of the Brassicaeae family. There's an art and a science in green house growing, I hope I can at least half-way master it to get some good results! I love Brussels Sprouts.

The vegie garden is essential to me and my friends, because it helps so much on the food budget, and we both have freezers, I bought a vacuum type of packaging unit last summer for the vegies, and whatever else we might want to freeze, and it is great. Do you have one?

My computer education has been quite limited, basically self-taught by reading, etc. I'm amazed at George's patience with me in explaining the workings of Pro.

The packaged seeds that I use are on sale this week at a close-by store, so I'm checking my purchase lists right now, and at least purchase some of them in the next few days. I grow my flower plants basically from seed, too. I can't afford to purchase very many established plants. I'm trying to finish getting the flower data into Pro now.

Toby

[ideasguy]

Isabell, you are a star!
Your method of dealing with Vegetables is absolutely brilliant.

I'm proud of you! For me, its like a dream come true. I write the software, make it flexible, and leave it to the users to figure out how to configure their database and how best to apply it to their own specific application ? or in your case, applications.

This is one of the best appIications I have seen detailed by a user of the software.
Take a bow, lady.

The Data Base is already called Vegetable Garden.

That?s good, you are using the SWAP database feature, and using the SWITCH database program GA026 to select whichever database you choose to work on.
Members: If (as in Isabells example) Vegetable Garden is created as a SWAP, it will appear as that name in the pop-up in GA026.
You select it from the pop-up. Means you dont have to click Browse and go hoking through folders to find it.
Means you can SWITCH very quickly between databases.
You can also use the Go to most recent SWITCH folder button and SWITCH even faster!

I made a Vegetable Garden for each Year.
Calling it Isabell's Vegetable garden 2006
            Isabell's Vegetable garden 2007
            Isabell's Vegetable garden 2008

That?s a very good idea

each garden is divided in:
           -----upper garden-----
           -----lower Garden-----
 I have a garden divided in 2 levels, because my husband made a level vegetable garden in a hilly yard

That?s great, you are using the Garden Divider function.

There we have a long growing season, and I want to keep track of where I grew what in Spring, Summer and Fall/Winter
I numbered my Beds for upper Garden from 1-13
                                  lower Garden from 1a-9a

I came with then naming each Bed not just 1,2..... but Bed 1 Spring
                                                                             Bed 1 Summer
                                                                             Bed 1 Fall/Winter
for the next year garden season I have the same just for the Vegetable Garden 2007, 2008 and so on.

Brilliant!
Gosh (OK Begorrah), that?s a lot of beds!!

I think as I progress through 4 Years of Gardening, I will just simply rename the first Vegetable garden with the new Year, because then I really don't need the info of that old garden anymore. 4 year rotation should be sufficient Data.
Now, that is original!

Now that is REAL good! You have found a solution to the "crop rotation" problem we've been discussing.

I also made a crude sketch of my two garden divisions, with the numbered Beds, I scanned it as a picture file into the computer , link it to the garden and as I add the plants into the garden beds, I lasso the area of the specific Vegetable and link it to the Plant.
So now I not only know which Bed had what, I know exactly  in which spot of the Bed I grew it.

Thats my girl  Now THAT-  is just fantastic!
I'm delighted to see that application for the Lassoo feature!!

So what you all think? Am I over organizing this?

   
What do I think?
I think you are a genius!!
I don?t think you are over organising this at all. Its perfect, and I think it would be fairly simple to apply (at least I hope so!)

Now, you've set me thinking again.
One thing I can do to make this easier is to provide a new button Duplicate a Garden.
This would allow you to select (say) Isabell's Vegetable garden 2007 and generate a new Garden - say Isabell's Vegetable garden 2008

I can see Toby is also impressed. Go ahead and set up this model, Toby and let us know how you get on.

.Over to members ? what do you think?

[diegartenfrau]

Hi everybody,

it's nice to hear some like my approach to dealing with using the IG Pro for Vegetable gardens. 

And sure Toby, go ahead copy and use as much you like with what I come up with. We all are here to help each other figuring out how to use the program and to find ways to use it to fit certain applications. Right? And to help George to improve it, to make it the best (In my opinion it is already) program available to gardeners, no matter whats their application. Improvements are always good, it can always get better. Right?


I have to say a lot of, maybe the most, Kudos belong to George. He is the one who made it possible for Gardeners to use the program as it best fits their specific use. I have used other garden program before, and while some had flashier looks, they never fit my applications well. They might be useful for some people, but not most people. Some mainly help design how your garden can look, but they mostly are for ornamental gardens, don't work for vegetable gardening and on top are very limited even for your Flower garden because they don't give you enough plants to work with. Others are for vegetable gardens, but if you don't follow the Square foot gardening rule, they don't work for you either, I was never able to input my vegetable garden in their programs, plus they didn't work for ornamental gardens. The flexibility to use the program, as one wishes or needs, is what makes IG pro so great
 
>>You can also use the Go to most recent SWITCH folder button and SWITCH even faster!<<

I found this Switch button the other day, and it is really neat. I first wasn't sure what it would do, I just clicked on it, hoping that everything I worked on the last hours wasn't all lost.

>>Gosh (OK Begorrah), that?s a lot of beds!!<<

I have a rather large Vegetable garden, The whole area is probably 1800 sqft, but I only use around 1000 right now. The other area has my compost heaps (three big bins) and whatever compostable stuff we get from the local Compost facility. Right now I have  a big heap of Chicken compost and another Heap of Mint compost. We have a lot of Mint farms in this area, so Mint compost is very common out here. Some of the area we are planning to put a Green House on. Maybe with a chicken coop behind it. I really would like to have a few chickens, we are allowed to have 3, no roosters.

So there are a lot of Beds but most are smaller then the average Gardener would have. I am kinda short, and also have a bad shoulder which gets inflamed sometime, especially by over reaching. So I made my Beds just the right size that I don't have to overreach, the middle is easy to get to, to work in.

>>I'm delighted to see that application for the Lassoo feature!!<<

The Lasso feature is really neat. I used it some more yesterday evening and I noticed again the problem where the coordinates seem to be in the wrong place. George is aware of this problem already and is working on it. So I know it is only a matter of time before it is fixed.
When you open the garden picture in GAOO5 all the coordinates seem to be in the right place, but when you open the picture through the GA004 the Lasso seems to be out of place, sometimes a long way from where it is supposed to be. I noticed another difference today. In GA005 the Lasso is black in GA004 it is white, maybe that helps in figuring out whats wrong. The white one, you can hardly see on a white background.

I also have a question about the Lasso feature. Is it possible to make the Lasso feature, that it also can create free form Lassos or at least round ones? There I have a somewhat irregular, not square Vegetable garden area. Some of my garden beds are not square or rectangular, but irregular shaped, curved or zigzaged. When I try to make a Lasso for a vegetable coordinate in the irregular bed, the square does not fit properly and so it is never on the right spot. It is hard to mark where the plants are supposed to be.
That would be a real good feature. Squares work good in a square foot garden, but in a free form shape it doesn't work so well.

To show you what I mean, I attached a picture of the upper Vegetable garden area.

I am leaning more and more toward the look of a French Potager Garden. I don't want my Vegetable garden just be utilitarian but also pretty to look at, a place I like to hang out in. So slowly I have been incorporating flowers into the area, I grew some Poppies for Bread seeds in there last year (pretty and useful), some edible flowers and some shrubs for the birds, which have berries I can use as well (Elderberries) but I would like to add maybe a nice water feature, some Yard Art, at least I want to make some of my Bean poles and other Trellises prettier to look at. Add a Bench, some planters around the green house.  I want my garden to be as nice then the flower garden. Something like that http://www.thepotager.com.au/Potager_Garden/   or  http://growingappetite.com/index.php?tag=potager

So having a free form Lasso feature would be really great to have.

>>One thing I can do to make this easier is to provide a new button Duplicate a Garden.
This would allow you to select (say) Isabell's Vegetable garden 2007 and generate a new Garden - say Isabell's Vegetable garden 2008<<

That sounds like a neat idea. Definitely it would make input of Data a lot quicker, most of it already would be in there.

Isabell

[ideasguy]

Begorrah, you sure know how to flatter a Guy, Isabell 
IG Pro best in the world WOW! Kudos Gosh!! FAR too much to handle in one day 
Seriously, that is all so very encouraging. It took about 2 years of development before releasing IG to the public. Very often during that long lonely period I wondered ? will anyone ever use this stuff? Its nice to know the answer is - Yes

Sorry to read about your restrictions in movement, but, good for you, you've designed your garden around those limitations. I say limitations, but in reality, you are infinitely more active and mobile than many of todays modern missies.

Some little things to explain.
The colour of the border for the shape when lassoing a plant (or region) in a Garden photo.
In the programming language Ive used (Visual Foxpro) I can choose from a range of border styles, widths and colours.
In testing, it became apparent that a black border is fine on a light photo, but became almost indistinguishable on a dark photo.
Hence, I selected an option which automatically adjusted, depending on the background.
If you look carefully, you will find that the border actually changes colour if it encapsulates a region with drastically differing colours.
Thats the setting I arrived at. Its fixed in the current version.
I'm not sure without checking if the same option is provided for all screens where you look at lassoed plants.
I could provide a pop-up to allow the user to select the border width, colour/shape etc, so you could select from the pop-up if a particular  lasso was hard to see for any selected photo.
Overkill?
It does add to complexity, so a bit daunting to someone new coming on the screen for the first time.

RE:

I also have a question about the Lasso feature. Is it possible to make the Lasso feature, that it also can create free form Lassos or at least round ones?

I'm afraid the answer is - not easily (Version 6??). 
At present, the only solution is to do multi-lassoos.
Easiest to explain for a plant.
You have a photo on the left, list of photos in the garden are on the right.
Click plant in list.
Now to lassoo. Drag the mouse and capture your first lassoo.
Once added, Drag the mouse again, lassoo and Add.
You can lassoo as many regions as you wish for the same plant.
Then, no matter where you click on the plant, the name appears.

Now some good news:
One thing I can do to make this easier is to provide a new button Duplicate a Garden
That is actually quite easy and I will do that very soon.
It?s a feature which would be very useful for Garden Designers, who can make a copy of the garden for one client and duplicate the plant list  as a starting point for the next client.

I'll now pass this over to the members to discuss your Potager Garden. Looks real good!
Comments please, members!!

[bossgard]

George and Isabell: My feelings exactly in your statements about George and the purpose(s) behind the IDG family of software, and the Community. I have all my data base entered, except my Tuberous Begonias, and will wait on that until I have taken them out of storage. I find that the various growers call 'varieties' by different names and yet side by side they are the same. When I dug them I indicated any that match, so it should cut down on my final entries. I have two things going for me now, I want to get my backups under control, and also get into the PRO ver.5 Label program, because I will need those very badly. I did some experimentation last year using a M/S Office program and posted it on the Forum under the Label topic. I'm going to start conversation with George today (hopefully) about the label program on Pro. Please watch for the postings on the topic, I most definitely would like your input, and from others of course, too. When we have that under control, I will swing into the Vegie program that you did such a beautiful job done. Thank you very much, I second all of George's kind words that he has said about you.
 - Toby

[diegartenfrau]

oops, Sorry!!!!! the picture is still way to big. I resized the picture several times. I have to learn how big pictures should be to add them to forums. Those pixels and KBs don't mean anything to me computer challenged person.

Isabell