Garden Fairy in grove – plan beds automatically with companion planting

Planning a garden can get pretty complicated. That is exactly why grove exists, because back then we found it really complicated too, with books, cross tables and paper. grove already helps you a lot with the plant filters and by showing companions and crop rotation.

But now a bit of magic comes into play: the Garden Fairy.

She looks at a single bed or even your whole garden, ideally picks up your well-kept wishlist and does in seconds what takes hours of puzzling by hand. If there is already something in the bed, she looks for matching companion crops and for anything that could still go in before or after. So she fills the gaps and makes use of your space. If the bed or the garden is still empty, she first places the large main crops and builds further plantings around them.

Want to use green manure? She can help there too. She plans it for you based on the crops of the past year and the crops already planned for the new one. What she watches most closely here is crop rotation, so that legumes don’t follow each other, for example.

The nice part: none of it is set in stone. The suggestions first appear only as a preview on the bed. You can look at them in peace, change them one by one and only then accept them. Whatever you don’t like, you discard.

Two jobs: vegetables and green manure

The fairy can do two things for you. Which one, you choose right at the start in the dialogue under “What should the Garden Fairy do for you?”:

Plan vegetables: the fairy plants empty beds, fills gaps in beds you have already planned and uses free periods for pre-crops and follow-on crops. This is about the harvest.
Green manure: the fairy sows plants you don’t harvest but return to the soil. They improve the earth, collect nitrogen, loosen the subsoil or hold nutrients in the bed over winter.

The other options are described in the chapters “Planning vegetables” and “Green manure”.

Starting the Garden Fairy

You can call the fairy in two places: for a single bed or for several beds at once. In both cases you first choose the job in the dialogue and then set the matching options.

A single bed

Use this when you are working on one particular bed.

Open the bed.
Click Garden Fairy in the bar at the top (the purple wand icon).
Choose the job, set the options and click Get started.

Several beds at once

This version plans across your whole garden.

Go to “Beds” in the navigation.
Click Garden Fairy. This starts selection mode, and to begin with all beds are ticked.
Tick or untick the beds the fairy should work on. Clicking a bed tile toggles the selection.
Click Start at the top (the purple play icon), choose the job, set the options and confirm.
The fairy works through the beds one after another, the sunniest first. That way sun-loving plants like tomatoes get a bright spot first. If beds are equally bright, she keeps the order of your overview. You can cancel a run at any time; it then stops after the current bed.

When planning vegetables, the fairy spreads your wishlist across all selected beds. That is the real strength of this version.

Viewing, changing and accepting suggestions

Whatever the job, and whether it is one bed or several: the fairy never writes anything down straight away.

Preview on the bed. The suggestions appear dashed and in violet right in the bed plan. So you see immediately what would go where.
Change them one by one. You can click any suggestion and adjust it like a normal planting, or delete individual ones.
Stop suggesting a plant. If you don’t like a plant, you rule it out right on the suggestion. More on this under Plants you don’t like.
Accept or discard. If everything fits, you click Apply. The suggestions then turn into real plantings, along with all the tasks that belong to them. With Discard you delete all suggestions in one go.

After a run across several beds, each bed tile shows you how many suggestions are waiting there and which plants are suggested. You can open each bed separately, check it, change it and accept it. Or finish centrally in the overview with Accept all or Discard all.

As long as suggestions are open they stay, even if you briefly do other things in grove. You should not close or restart the app or the website though.

Notes from the fairy

If the fairy can’t find room for a plant from your wishlist, she doesn’t keep quiet about it. The Notes button shows you which plant she skipped and why: a bad predecessor or successor, bad companions, an unsuitable row type, too little space or an unsuitable planting time. Often it also says which main crop she chose instead. If the fairy added partners, she lists them there as well.

The fairy also speaks up about light. If she had to put a plant somewhere darker than it likes, you’ll find that in the notes. If none of your beds is sunny enough for a sun-loving plant, she tells you that too. If the plant can be grown in a pot, she suggests a pot in the brightest spot. More on this under Sun and shade.

If a plant from your wishlist doesn’t suit any growing location of your beds, the fairy tells you that as well, for example: Tomato wasn’t planned, it isn’t suited to a raised bed or a cold frame. More on this under The growing location.

After a run across several beds you’ll also find the Notes button in the bed overview, next to Accept all. There you see the notes for all beds at a glance, sorted by bed.

Plants you don’t like

If the fairy suggests something that never ends up on your plate, you don’t have to keep rolling the dice. Click the suggestion in the bed. Below the icons in the action menu you then see in red, for example, Stop suggesting Okra.

One click, and all open Okra suggestions disappear, on your other beds too. In all further runs the fairy leaves the plant out, for vegetables and for green manure alike. She only fills the freed-up spot on the next run. Plantings already in your beds stay as they are.

This also applies to plants on your wishlist. So you can, for example, plant your chillies yourself and still keep them on the list.

If you change your mind, open the plant’s detail page and untick “Garden Fairy does not suggest this plant” under “Personal”.

Planning vegetables

This job is about the harvest. Think of the fairy as an experienced gardener walking through the garden with you, saying: “something could still go here.” She covers three typical situations:

Planting an empty bed. Depending on the size of the bed, the fairy sets one or more main crops and arranges matching companion crops around them. Or she looks for suitable plants based on the row type in the systems by Gertrud Franck and Familie Langerhorst.
Filling gaps in a planned bed. If there are already plantings, the fairy looks for matching companions that still fit into the gaps.
Using free periods. If a bed is only planted in May, early crops like spinach, lamb’s lettuce or winter purslane can grow before that. Or winter cress after the harvest. The fairy finds pre-crops and follow-on crops like these and suggests them.

What she always watches:

Companions. She doesn’t put bad companions next to each other and prefers good ones.
Crop rotation. She avoids bad predecessors and successors and takes into account what stood in the bed in previous years and what you have already planned for the years to come.
Planting times. Every plant only ends up where it fits the calendar.
Light. Sun-loving plants go on your brightest beds, plants for partial shade and shade rather on the darker ones. More on this under Sun and shade.
Growing location. She likes to put radishes in a raised bed or cold frame, but never tomatoes in a cold frame. More on this under The growing location.
Quantities. She plants as much as a household usually grows, matched to the size of your garden. More on this under How much the fairy plants.
Your wishlist. If you keep a wishlist, the fairy works through it first.
Growing partners. When she places a plant that has a growing partner, she adds the partner: basil beneath the tomato, celeriac into the row with the leeks, beans and squash next to the maize. If there are several partners, she prefers one from your wishlist. This also works for plantings that are already in the bed.

The wishlist

Planning vegetables works without a wishlist too. But with a well-kept wishlist the fairy works far more precisely, because then she knows which plants you actually want in the garden. You’ll find it in the navigation under Wishlist.

For the fairy it makes a difference which version you keep the list in:

Simple: you only say which plants you want. The fairy prefers the ones that have no place in the garden yet, and plants the usual quantity for the size of your garden.
With quantity: you also give a quantity, say six lettuces. The fairy spreads the outstanding amount across your beds until the need is covered. This quantity always applies, even if it fills up your garden. If you leave the field empty, the fairy uses the usual quantity.

How to set up the list, copy it from last year and filter by it is described in the wishlist guide.

Sun and shade

For every bed you can set under Light whether it is sunny, in partial shade or shady. How that works is described under Creating beds. Every plant has a note of how much light it needs. The fairy brings the two together.

What counts is not how bright a bed is on its own, but how bright it is compared with your other beds:

Your beds differ in brightness. Tomatoes, peppers or basil go on the sunniest beds. Plants that cope with less light are more likely to end up on the shadier ones.
All beds are equally bright. If your whole garden is in partial shade, for example on a north-facing slope (like our garden at home), light plays no part. The fairy then plans as usual by crop rotation, neighbours and wishlist. The tomato isn’t left out just because no bed is sunny.

For the fairy, light never rules anything out. Crop rotation and neighbours come first. If the tomato can’t go on the sunny bed because of crop rotation, the fairy puts it on the next brightest one. Only a plant that needs full sun always goes to the back of the queue on a shady bed, even if you have no brighter bed. If it is on your wishlist, the fairy still plants it and gives you a note.

If you start the fairy for a single bed, she compares it with all your beds of the year. In a run across several beds, the beds you selected count.

The growing location

For each bed you set under Growing location where it is: outdoors, greenhouse, raised bed, cold frame or pot / container. How to do that is described under Creating beds. Each plant has a rating for how well it suits each growing location. The fairy prefers plants that grow well there:

Radishes and lettuces like a raised bed or a cold frame.
Tomatoes, peppers and aubergines she prefers to put in the greenhouse.
What doesn’t work at all in a location, she never plans there, not even from your wishlist. Tomatoes grow too tall for a cold frame, and maize doesn’t belong in a pot.

She makes one exception for underplanting. Parsley under the tomato in the greenhouse is right, even though parsley usually grows outside or in a pot.

If a plant from your wishlist doesn’t suit any growing location of your beds, the fairy tells you in the notes. In a run across several beds, she names all growing locations of the selected beds.

How much the fairy plants

If you don’t set a quantity, the fairy goes by the size of your garden. She adds up the area of all your beds in the year, wherever they are. For each plant, grove knows how much of it a household usually grows in a small and in a normal-sized garden.

Small garden. Variety comes before volume. On 4 m², for example, the fairy sets two tomatoes and still has room for many other plants.
Large garden. Here she plans the quantities usual in a home garden, about seven tomatoes on 50 m². The quantity grows more slowly than the area: a garden twice the size doesn’t get twice as many tomatoes.
Pollination. Some plants need company. The fairy always plants maize as a block, because the wind pollinates it. Of courgettes and pumpkins she plants at least two.

The quantities apply to the whole garden and the whole year. If a plant already stands in another bed, the fairy counts it. Partners such as the basil under the tomato also stick to the quantity.

On beds with row companion planting, a row always runs the full length of the bed. A single row there can hold more plants than the fairy actually intends.

If you grow more, for instance to be self-sufficient or to sell, enter your quantities in the wishlist under “With quantity”. That quantity then always applies.

Settings for planning vegetables

Before the fairy gets going you can set a few things in the dialogue. The defaults suit most cases, so you don’t have to change anything.

Plant main crop in the centre. In row companion planting the main crops usually stand in the middle of the bed, with the companion crops to the left and right. Turn this off and the fairy places the main crops more towards the left. This setting only applies to beds of the type Row companion planting on beds.
Add partners. With this, the fairy adds the matching partner to plants that have growing partners. On beds with row companion planting, underplanting goes into a row of its own to the left and right of the tall plant, close to it. That way there is still room for further neighbours. With the Gertrud Franck and Langerhorst method it goes into the same row, even if the row type doesn’t fit. If you switch the option off, the fairy treats the partners like perfectly ordinary good neighbours.
Randomness. This brings variety into the suggestions. At the far left the fairy suggests the same plants on every run. The further you turn the slider up, the more likely she is to try something different. That way you can compare several runs and pick the suggestion you like best.
Row spacing and Plant spacing. Here you allow the fairy to go slightly below the recommended spacing. The further you turn the slider up, the closer the plants move together and the more fits into the bed. On beds with fixed rows following Gertrud Franck and Familie Langerhorst the row spacing is fixed and can’t be changed.

Tips for good results

Keep your wishlist up to date. That is the biggest lever for suggestions that hit the mark.
Keep your previous years current. The better the history of your beds is kept, the cleaner the fairy plans the crop rotation.
Try the randomness. If you don’t like a suggestion as a whole, simply discard all changes, turn up the randomness and try again.
Large main crops need space. If a large plant stands in the middle of a bed, there is little room next to it while it grows. Sometimes you can move the existing planting a bit towards the edge, then something else is more likely to fit beside it.

Green manure

Green manure is the single most effective thing you can do to improve your soil. You sow plants you don’t harvest but return to the soil. Legumes like clover and vetch collect nitrogen from the air with their roots, deep-rooting plants loosen compacted earth, and a closed plant cover protects the soil from drying out, silting up and leaching. The most important principle behind it: the soil should never be bare.

Unlike with vegetables, the fairy plans green manure across the area, not in individual rows. It is broadcast, often as a mixture of several species on the same area. Among themselves, green manure plants don’t need to keep any spacing.

Choosing the right method

Green manure differs above all in when it grows and how it ends. You choose one of four methods, and after that only plants that fit in terms of timing and winter hardiness come into question.

Autumn, frost-killed: You sow after the harvest in late summer or autumn. The plants are killed by frost in winter and stay as a protective mulch layer. In spring the soil is available again straight away. Typical examples are phacelia, buckwheat, yellow mustard and common vetch.
Autumn, overwintering: Also sown after the harvest, but the plants are hardy and stand through the whole winter. In spring you cut them down and work them in. This keeps nutrients in the soil over winter, and living roots protect the earth. Typical examples are winter rye, hairy vetch and crimson clover.
Spring, pre-culture: Sown in spring, with a short growing period. It grows before the main crop goes into the bed and is cut down and worked in beforehand. Good for a quick portion of green matter ahead of the summer plants.
Year-round, fallow: A whole season of green manure in a year when a bed would otherwise rest. This is the most thorough cure for exhausted soils, often with perennial species like clover or lucerne.

What matters to you

Green manure plants can do very different things: one collects nitrogen, another loosens the soil deep down, a third drives out nematodes. So that the fairy picks the right species for your soil, you tell her what matters to you.

To do that you sort a list of properties by dragging the handle. Whatever is at the top is most important to you:

Gather nitrogen. Legumes enrich the soil with nitrogen that the next crop feeds on. Good ahead of heavy feeders like cabbage or tomatoes.
Loosen the soil deeply. Deep-rooting plants break through compaction and leave root channels for water and air.
Fight nematodes. Some species push back or fight harmful nematodes in the soil.
Suppress weeds. Fast-growing, densely covering species leave weeds no chance.
Support bees and insects. Flowering green manure like phacelia is valuable forage for bees.
Bind nutrients. Some species catch dissolved nutrients and keep them from leaching away over winter.

Two examples: if your soil is exhausted, you pull “Gather nitrogen” and “Loosen the soil deeply” to the top. If nematodes are troubling you, put “Fight nematodes” in first place.

How many species? The mixture

It often makes sense to sow more than one green manure plant and mix several instead. Different species combine their strengths: a legume delivers nitrogen, a deep-rooting plant loosens, a grass builds plenty of root mass. If one species fails, the others step in.

With the Species per area slider you set an upper limit for how many species may go onto one area. If the fairy finds only one genuinely suitable species, she prefers to sow that one rather than padding the mixture out with an unsuitable one. The more species you allow, the more varied the mixture, but the more seed and effort you need.

Regions on large beds

On large, continuous beds the fairy can divide the area into several regions and sow its own plant or mixture in each one. There is a solid reason for that: it makes crop rotation easier to keep to. On one side you can sow brassicas, for example, and legumes on the other, without them getting in each other’s way.

You control this with the Form sections on large beds switch. Small beds get the same mixture across the whole area anyway, so splitting them up isn’t worth it.

Crop rotation with green manure

Green manure belongs in the crop rotation too. The most common mistake is choosing a green manure from the same plant family as the crop before or after it. Brassicas like yellow mustard or oil radish before or after cabbage can encourage clubroot, and legumes directly before beans or peas lead to soil fatigue or clover rot.

The fairy takes this into account automatically. She rates every green manure by what stood in the bed before, what comes after and what grows next to it in the same period. She clearly avoids bad predecessors, successors and companions, and very bad ones almost entirely. So if there is still a bush bean in the bed, she won’t suggest vetch next to it. For this to work well, well-kept previous years help, just as with vegetables.

How green manure is shown

On beds with row companion planting, plantings are created every few rows. This is meant to represent a broadcast sowing.

Tips for good green manure

Never leave the soil bare. Whenever a bed or part of it becomes free, green manure is worth it, even if only for a few weeks.
Legumes pay off ahead of heavy feeders. If cabbage, tomatoes or squash are coming next year, pull “Gather nitrogen” to the top.
When in doubt, phacelia. It isn’t related to any vegetable family, so it fits into any crop rotation, flowers for the bees and germinates reliably.

By the way, green manure is not carried over into the new year during the year change. It depends on the crop rotation and is best recalculated by the fairy every year.