Tool — Form GL-1

Garden Planner

Set your bed size, pick crops, and click squares to plant them. The planner checks each square against the ledger as you go: place two crops recorded as bad neighbours side by side and the square turns red and tells you why. When you're done it returns a planting calendar derived from your zone's frost dates and a supply list sized to your bed.

Plan your bed

Form GL‑1
Sets your frost dates.
USDA hardiness zone.

Choose a crop, then click squares to plant it

Each square is one square foot. The number is how many plants fit that square at recommended spacing. Squares turn red when two neighbours are recorded as a bad pairing.

Conflicts
Nothing planted yet.

How to use it

  1. Enter your ZIP code. This sets the frost dates every calendar date is counted from. Check the zone it resolves to — ZIP-to-zone is an approximation at the 3-digit level, and mountain and coastal areas vary a lot within one prefix.
  2. Set your bed size in feet. The grid redraws as one square per square foot. Existing plantings are kept when you resize.
  3. Choose a crop, then click squares. Choose "erase" to clear individual squares.
  4. Watch the conflicts panel. It lists every problem pairing among the crops you've placed, with the reason.
  5. Read off the calendar and supply list at the bottom once you've planted at least one square.

What the planner won't do

It won't tell you a layout is good. Companion planting evidence is thin enough that no honest tool can promise a bed will yield more because of how you arranged it. What this planner does is narrower and more defensible: it stops you making the pairings that are actually documented as problems — usually shared pests, shared diseases, or one crop shading or outcompeting another — and it gets your spacing and timing right, which matters far more than adjacency.

For the reasoning behind that, read does companion planting actually work?

Start from a proven layout instead

If you'd rather not start from an empty bed, the layout plans are complete beds with spacing and conflicts already resolved — a 4×8 beginner bed, a salad bed, a three sisters plot, a pollinator strip and more.

Common questions

How does the planner know which plants conflict?
It checks every square against the ledger's 542 recorded pairings. A square only turns red when the neighbouring crop is recorded as a genuine problem — pairings we graded "not supported" are ignored, because flagging folklore would make the tool useless.
What size should a raised bed be?
Four feet wide is the standard because it lets you reach the middle from both sides without stepping on the soil; anything wider and the centre becomes hard to work. Length is up to your space — 8 ft is common because lumber comes in 8 ft lengths. Depth of 10–12 inches suits nearly everything, with 18 inches or more for long root crops like carrots and parsnips.
Does the planner account for my climate?
Yes. Enter a ZIP code and it resolves your USDA hardiness zone, then derives every date from that zone's median frost dates. Zones 10b and warmer have no frost date at all, so the planner explains what drives timing there instead of showing dates that would be meaningless. Always sanity-check the resolved zone — see our accuracy notes.
How many plants fit in one square foot?
The number on each planted square is the square-foot-gardening density for that crop — 1 for tomatoes, 4 for lettuce, 16 for radishes. Crops that need more room than a single square carry no number. The spacing calculator shows the same bed spaced three different ways.