The VGA Online Help - Plot Manager & Beds

The Plot Manager and Growing Beds

Managing your Plots

This screen enables you to create and design multiple plots - one for each of your growing areas (in Version I.4 up to 200). Typically you might have a plot for the following: Greenhouse, Cold frame, Back garden, Allotment, Polytunnel, etc. Each plot can hold up to 100 beds that you can draw and position interactively (see below).

Once you have drawn the beds for each plot (you can add more later if you wish), you can record every time you treat a bed with manure, etc. Each of these actions is added to the data that VGA stores and the History of each bed viewed over past seasons.

As crops are grown in a bed, again the data is recorded and the VGA will help you avoid pest/disease problems by alerting you to re-planting crops from the same family within 3 years.

Take time to experiment with all the functions on the plot design screen. You can always delete beds before any planting. Once you have drawn all your beds, use the Lock function to prevent accidental changes. All changes to the plots are automatically saved when you leave the program.

The latest version allows the printing of your bed layouts. Simply click on the Print Plot button and a dialogue allows you to select the paper size and orientation, colour or black and white. The best results for plots are when the orientation is set to Landscape. It is suggested that your first test printouts are in black and white only, to save ink. if you have a print preview facility with your printer driver it is worth switching this on so you can see the likely results on screen before printing.

The Plot Tool Bar

The tool bar offers several useful functions:

Print Plots Includes the ability to print out the layouts of all your plots.
Show/Hide Control the display of vegetables on beds. Clicking on the Show/Hide button switches the vegetable display on and off.
New Plot To add a new plot click on this button - a dialogue pops up and you can add the name of the new plot. Up to 200 plots can be configured.
Lock/Unlock Locking the plan prevents accidental changes to the Beds once they are created. Clicking on the Padlock button switches the lock on and off.
New Bed To create a new bed click once - a dialogue box allows selection of the type of Bed (see below). Use the arrow keys to control the position and shape of the Bed.
Delete Bed Once beds are completed you can go to the crop screen and record sowings, etc. Because of this it is not possible to delete a bed after crops have been sown on it. However, deleting the last bed drawn before it has been sown/planted on is ok.
Scroll plan left & right, up and down The units on the plan are there for guidance only - the plan area can be scrolled without limit. However, the maximum number of beds that can be drawn in any single plot is 100.
Zoom out (-) & Zoom in (+) To zoom in closer press the (+) button. To back away from a plot click on the (-) button.

Working with Plots
Plots are your principal growing areas. Each plot is named and given a short code to be used to identify it later. The VGA can accomodate up to 200 individually named plots and within each there can be up to 100 beds.	Select required plot	Creating a new plot 1. Press the New Plot button:

	2. Enter a unique name and code for the plot. When plots are first created they are empty of beds. On leaving the VGA all plot data is automatically saved. It is possible to reset the program so that you can start from scratch - see Advanced features to learn how to do this.

Working with Beds

1. Select Bed Type & Shape from dialogue box

2. Position and shape Once drawn beds can be moved and precisley positioned using the cursor (arrow) keys. The Keys on there own will move the currently selected bed left, right, up or down.

By holding down the Shift key and then using the cursor keys the bed dimensions can be increased.

Holding down the Ctrl (control) key and using the cursor keys will reduce the bed dimensions.

Press the right mouse button when the cursor is over a bed and a pop-up menu displays a list of options:

Bed# 1 - The Bed number id -in the sequence in which the Beds were drawn.
Bed History - Shows a list of all events affecting the bed since it was created.
Dig - Equivalent to turning over the soil.
Treat Soil - Adding fertiliser, etc to the soil.
Delete Bed - Remove the bed from the plot.
Edit Bed History - Change records for this bed.

Note that in general it is only possible to remove uncultivated beds. This makes sense as removing a bed is equivalent to removing all the top soil.


You can record all the soil treatments via this dialogue - you then have a record of how the soil has been fed and when you might need to repeat. All these entries show up in the Bed History list.