Home Grown Live! - Garden Tasks


This section deals with recording all the typical garden tasks involved in growing your own food. Each of the tasks shows up in your Journal in the Events column and can be viewed/edited from there.

Each task is either for a particular Crop or Bed and forms part of the 'History' of each.

Tasks for Plots & Beds

These tasks cover:
  • Add New Plot - Create a new Plot (i.e. when you take on a new allotment).
  • Add New Bed - Set up separate growing areas within a Plot.
  • Treat Soil - Whenever you add manure, lime, etc. to a particular Bed.
When a Plot or a Bed is set up you can add an image for each in the My Plots section.
Tasks for Crops

These Crop related tasks cover:
  • Sowing/Planting - Whenever crops are started.
  • Transplanting - Moving/Repotting part or all of a crop.
  • Thinning - Removing weak or crowded plants.
  • Treating - Foliar feeds, insecticide sprays, slug pellets, etc.
  • Clearing - Removing from the Bed when the crop is finished.
  • Harvesting - Whenever you pick or dig up something.
  • Rating - How was it for you? Rate by Taste, Yield, etc.
The Sowing, Harvesting and Rating of crops appear in the Live! listings so others can see what you have done too.
Example Tasks

Adding a New Plot

Plots are used to group separate growing areas togther. Some areas that you might set up as Plots are:
  • Conservatory
  • Home - a collection of WIndowsills.
  • Greenhouse
  • Cold Frame
  • Polytunnel
  • Back garden
  • Allotment
  • Foraging - different locations
There is no limit to the numbers of 'Plots' you can set up either - and also to the number of Beds each may have. Note that you don't have to stick to just allotments and beds, you can set up whatever is convenient to your growing.

Sowing/Planting Crops

Here we are Sowing Broad Beans on the North Side Shelf of my first greenhouse. The notes indicate the compost I am using (as a trial). I have already recorded a number of packets of seeds I have in the Seed Manager so I just have to make a selection from that list to get the crop variety for this sowing record. Note 2 of the 11 botanical 'family' pictures are greyed out. This tells me that I have sown crops from those families (Alliaceae and Solanaceae) in the last 2 years - a useful aid to ensuring proper crop rotations (on a bed-by-bed basis).
Next tour topic: Plots and Beds
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