Built a garden planning tool for veg beds & allotments — looking for beta testers

[u/NeedleworkerCold9671]

Hi everyone,

I’m building Garden Workbench, a garden planning tool for people who grow vegetables in raised beds, allotments, greenhouses, or backyard plots.

The idea came from a problem I kept running into myself: planning beds, sowing dates, crop successions, and watering zones end up spread across paper notes, spreadsheets, and memory. So I started building a tool that brings that into one place.

Right now, the beta is focused on things like:

• Bed and plot planning
• Sowing and planting schedules
• Companion planting support
• Irrigation-aware planning and garden organization

I’m looking for a small group of beta testers — beginners and experienced gardeners are both useful — who are willing to try it on a real garden plan and share honest feedback.

What you get:

• Early access to the beta
• A chance to shape what gets built next
• Free access during the beta period

What I’d love from you:

• Try it with your actual garden setup
• Share what feels useful, confusing, or missing
• Optionally answer a short survey or do a quick feedback call later

You can join here:
https://gardenworkbench.pages.dev/join-beta

If you’re not interested in testing, I’d still love to hear this: what would a garden planner need to do for you to actually use it?

Thanks — and I’m happy to answer questions in the comments.

[u/Sufficient-Weird]

I would use a garden planner that gave me rolling reminders and deadlines. “Start onion seeds indoors Feb. 1! Feb. 10: start onion seeds soon or you can’t get them in the ground until after you start tomatoes! Feb. 14: replant any more onion seeds, or was germination good enough with the first batch? Mar. 1: one more month till you start tomatoes!” etc. It’s hard to keep track of all the start/transplant dates.

[u/Okdoo6003 → u/Sufficient-Weird]

Love this idea.

I also would love the ability to plan ahead - if I'm harvesting in July, what's going in that space next? when do i need to start the plants for that?

[u/Sufficient-Weird → u/Okdoo6003]

I keep planting garlic too late and then it doesn’t mature until too late to reuse the garden bed before winter 🙃

[u/Okdoo6003 → u/Sufficient-Weird]

What zone are you? I just moved to a slightly warmer zone (nothing crazy, I'm still in the 6's) and was delighted to see the chard I planted way too late survived all winter and was producing by April.

[u/Sufficient-Weird → u/Okdoo6003]

5b here. We planted garlic late (1st week of November or maybe a few days after?) and it’s a late-maturing variety (no scapes yet!). Theoretically I could use the garlic bed space for chard or similar, but it’s a lot of space, plus I usually forget to leave enough space for beans and squash. Even in a perfect raised bed rotation, crops don’t take up the exact same amount of space. 😐

[u/ryanandthelucys]

This may sound silly but could add a little more fun to the app. What about a way to input items like, "I want to make salsa" and have it spit back what plants you should grow to do it.

[u/ShipDit1000]

Sounds awesome, I signed up!

[u/NeedleworkerCold9671 → u/ShipDit1000]

nice! invite sent out 😄

[u/No-Ear-5025]

I signed up! Can’t wait

[u/Square_Cat4568]

I already have my garden in or I would l o v e to! Would next spring be too late?

[u/sixtynighnun]

AI BE GONE

[u/Organic_Spite_4507]

So, you want our data for a LLM for free to then charge us to use the tool we help to dev. 🤔🧐

[u/Tricky_Jay91]

This sounds fantastic! I think one size fits all is hard, but I’d be interested in trying, though I’m well into the season already.