Planting a bed

Opening a bed

Once you’ve created a bed, it appears in the overview. Just click anywhere on the bed – for example on its name or an existing planting.

You’ll also find the bed in the left navigation under “Beds”. This is especially handy when you already have a bed open and want to switch quickly to another one.

Page layout

The page is divided into two areas:

  • Left: The view of the bed. You see it as if you’re standing in front of it – looking from the front edge. The months are arranged one below the other, because grove helps you plan how your bed develops over the course of the year. This area looks slightly different depending on which row companion planting system you use – more on that later.
  • Right: Several panels alternate here:
    • Plant list: You can filter or search for specific plants. Via the actions menu you can create a new planting.
    • Create new planting: When you start a new planting from the plant list, you can click on the desired spot in the bed on the left to place the planting there.
    • Edit existing planting: This panel appears when you click on an existing planting in the bed on the left.

Adapting to mobile devices

If your screen is narrow (for example on a smartphone), it’s not possible to show so much information at once. The bed view and the other three panels (plant list, new planting, edit planting) are therefore shown in tabs above the bed rather than side by side. You can switch between the tabs freely.

In some cases the app switches to the right tab automatically – for example when you start a new planting, it switches automatically from the plant list to the bed.

Plant list

This list initially shows all available plants. You can work with three actions:

Information: Shows you detailed information about the plant. Direct sowing: Creates a new planting where you sow seeds directly into the bed. Plant out into bed: Creates a new planting where you put a transplant into the bed.

The distinction between direct sowing and planting out matters: it affects which month the planting can start. The planned tasks also differ depending on the method.

Filters

Grove offers very comprehensive filter options for plants. These are described in detail in a dedicated chapter of the help.

New planting

When you start a new planting, a new panel replaces the plant list:

  • You can enter the variety and add notes about the planting. At the moment the variety only affects task creation.
  • Key data about the plant is shown for this moment, such as row spacing and spacing within the row.
  • An overview of planting times is included. Depending on the plant, several time windows may appear – for example when early and late varieties exist.
  • The “Plant info” button lets you view further details about the plant.

Placing the planting

The bed on the left changes: small green and red marks show where you can place your planting.

  • Green means: this position is a good choice.
  • Red means: this position is not ideal.

If you hover over a red position, you’ll see why it’s not optimal – for example because the spacing to a neighbouring plant or to the bed edge is too small, or because it’s too early or too late in the year for this plant.

You can still choose any position – grove is just giving you hints to make planning easier.

  • Green/red areas: Show good and poor neighbours respectively.
  • Hatched areas: Indicate good or poor predecessors – more on that below.

Editing and removing an existing planting

Click on an existing planting in the bed on the left. The detail view of that planting now appears on the right instead of the plant list.

Here you can:

  • Change the planting type: switch between direct sowing and transplants after the fact.
  • Change the start month and harvest time: for some plants the harvest may fall in the following year (e.g. Brussels sprouts). Grove will then also show this planting in the bed for the next year.
  • Move the row: use the small left and right arrows to shift the planting one row to the left or right.
  • Delete the planting: the button at the bottom removes the planting entirely.

Important: Changes are saved immediately. You can then simply select another planting or close the edit panel using the button at the top right.

Replanting at the same spot after harvest

You’ll find this option both when creating and when editing a planting. Some plants are harvested repeatedly throughout the year and immediately re-sown or replanted in the same spot (e.g. lettuce and radishes).

Ticking this box tells grove that you plan to replant here regularly.

This affects the duration of the planting in the bed plan. An example: radishes have a growing period of just over a month, but can be harvested through to September. If you start in April and enable replanting, grove plans the planting through to September. Without the tick it ends in May.

The tasks in the plan don’t change because of this – you decide yourself when to replant. You’ll generally see when space has become available to sow or plant again.

Drag & drop

You can also move plantings using drag & drop – and it’s very flexible:

  • You can drag a planting to a different row.
  • Drag the first month to start the planting earlier or later.
  • Drag the last month to change the harvest time.

Bed views

The bed display depends on the companion planting system you’ve selected:

Row companion planting on beds

Here the bed is initially shown at its full width. Before any planting is added, you see the bed width. The bed is always divided into 5 cm sections when you create a planting. Once you place a planting, the distance to the edges is shown on either side. With multiple plantings you see the spacing between them.

Row companion planting after Gertrud Franck and the Langerhorst family

Here the bed is not displayed in centimetres but divided into A, B and C rows. You also see spinach rows, and for the Langerhorst family method the clover paths as well.

Multiple plantings in the same row

You can also combine several plants in the same row – for example celeriac and leek, which do each other a lot of good. They are then shown slightly offset from one another.

To edit such a planting, click on one of the two plants and select at the top which of the two you want to edit.

Neighbours

Good and poor neighbours are a key factor in companion planting. As soon as you start a new planting, you can see how the new plant gets on with the existing ones:

  • Green background: Good neighbours – they benefit each other.
  • Red background: Poor neighbours – best avoided.

Tip: Use the filter dialogue to search specifically for plants that are good neighbours for particular other plants. You can even select several plants, and grove will show you plants that are good or at least neutral neighbours for all of them.

Important: Good neighbours are only shown while you’re editing – otherwise the bed would become too cluttered. Poor neighbours, on the other hand, are always shown, even when you’re not editing a planting.

Crop rotation / predecessors

You’ll only see this section once you’ve been working with grove for at least a year. Grove remembers which plants grew where in each bed in previous years – going back up to seven years.

For beds using the Gertrud Franck or Langerhorst family methods you won’t see this feature. With those beds, a well-considered crop rotation is already built into the growing method itself – you can find out more here.

When you create a new planting or edit an existing one, the bed shows directly whether there were good or poor predecessors at the desired spot:

  • Green hatching means: the plant that grew there before is a good predecessor for the new planting.
  • Red hatching means: the previous plant is a poor predecessor – for example because it left behind diseases or certain substances in the soil.

In the hatched area you can see the name of the predecessor plant and the year it grew there. Plus or minus symbols give you a hint about the strength of the effect:

  • One or two plus signs (+ / ++) indicate moderately good or particularly beneficial predecessors.
  • One or two minus signs (- / –) indicate moderately poor or particularly problematic predecessors.

If both good and poor predecessors occurred in the same spot over recent years, grove shows only the poor ones – because their negative effect generally outweighs the advantages of the good ones.

To keep track across multiple years, predecessor information is shown in several rows – depending on how many years you’ve been working with grove:

  • The top row shows predecessors from three years ago,
  • the middle row those from two years ago,
  • the bottom row those from last year.

A row only appears if there were actually good or poor predecessors in that year.

The width of the hatched area reflects the zone of influence of the predecessor plant. Large plants like cabbages or beans have a wider effect than smaller ones like lettuce or radishes.

When you’re not editing a planting, grove only shows the problematic predecessors in the bed. These are then shown directly alongside the relevant planting, with information about what the poor predecessor was.

Keyboard shortcuts

The keyboard lets you take a few shortcuts. Here are the available keys:

  • Esc: Cancel creating or editing
    • ends editing a planting
    • cancels creating a new planting
  • Delete / Backspace: Deletes the currently selected (edited) planting
  • Arrow keys (only when a planting is selected)
    • Free bed: ← / → / ↑ / ↓ moves the allocation by 1 cm
    • Bed in row companion planting: ← / → moves the allocation by one row
  • Shift + arrow keys (only when a planting is selected)
    • Free bed: Shift + ← / → / ↑ / ↓ shrinks or enlarges
    • Bed in row companion planting: No function
  • Ctrl/Cmd + arrow keys: Same function, but 5 cm or 5 rows
  • Ctrl/Cmd + C: Copies the currently selected (edited) planting
  • Ctrl/Cmd + F: Opens the plant filter dialogue (plant list)
  • Ctrl/Cmd + I: Opens the info dialogue for the current plant
  • + / –: Zoom (not yet functional for beds in row companion planting)

Settings

You can show and hide various elements. This mainly concerns neighbours and crop rotation.

Printing

We’ve created a detailed print layout. It prints your bed much as you currently see it on screen – because not everyone wants to stand in the garden with a laptop or tablet.

In the print settings you can specify the format, orientation and scale. For smaller beds, two months might even fit side by side on one sheet.