Plan, Implement and Track your gardening with GrowVeg! #review #gardenplanner #GIVEAWAY

I must admit that I was skeptical about using the GrowVeg Garden Planning tool for my gardening this year, and often do not utilize organizational programs as I should.  With GrowVeg I was pleasantly surprised by how easy to use it is and how much more organized my gardening has become.

The last couple of years the produce was not as good a yield as I was hoping and thought that maybe the reminders and helpful tools included with this program might help my

garden areas be better this year.  

Review:

Grow veg has a lot of things going for it, but what I had to decide is whether or not it was truly worth paying $25 a year for. Keep in mind that Grow Veg does offer a free trial for 30 days to try the software out. 

I was able to plan my garden and print out a copy of it and my plant dates for free. But I wasn't sure it worth continuing to pay for.  As I continued to use it this year for the first time I'm finding that in the long run it is a great program and has great potential for the years to come.  It is easy to use, has step by step guides, map and draw features for all shape and size garden areas, lots and lots of tools and features to aid in planning, planting, growning and rotating crops each year.

I must say that I will keep using this program to get the most out of my gardening and keep it easy to do, reminders of when to plant, water and feed as well as finding the best plants for each garden area each year.  From beginner to pro, GrowVeg is a great tool for any gardener regardless of experience level!

See what the experts at GrowVeg have to say about their product:

Our Garden Planner makes it easy to draw out your vegetable beds, add plants and move them around to get the perfect layout. Either metric units or feet and inches are supported and any shape of garden can be created.

Whether you use traditional row planting, raised beds or Square Foot Gardening the Garden Planner adapts to suit your gardening style.

The Garden Planner has over 200 vegetables, herbs and fruit and detailed growing information is just a click away. As you add vegetables the space they require is clearly shown by the coloured area around each plant and it calculates how many plants will fit into the area.

Crop rotation is easy as the Garden Planner warns you where you should avoid placing each vegetable based on what was in your previous years' plans.

The Garden Planner adapts to your own area using our database of over 5000 weather stations. Print your own personalised planting chart showing how many of each plant you require and when to sow, plant and harvest them.

Twice a month the Garden Planner sends email reminders of what needs planting from your garden plans.

The Garden Planner is both easy to use and flexible. Organise which crops will follow on from others using the succession planting feature and see how your garden will look for each month of the year. Customised varieties can be added with their own spacing and planting dates.

Like a garden journal, you can add notes to your plants and plans to track how they grow.

Want to try it FREE for yourself?  ENTER TO WIN a 1 year subscription.  Just enter by leaving me a comment about your garden(s) below!  Must be 18 or older to enter/win.  Contest Winner will be chosen using Random.org on Thursday July 23rd 11pm CST.

Disclosure: I received free the item(s) mentioned in this post in exchange for my honest review. Regardless ~ All my reviews are my honest and personal opinion. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”.

Book Review - Outdoor Crafts

 

 In honour of Earth Day (April 22nd) Dorling Kindersley have put together a fantastic selection of titles that will help you stop and appreciate the world around us. The books in this "Earthly Pleasures Boutique"  are currently available at 30% off  and cover books for children and for adults. One of these books is Outdoor Crafts and we were sent a copy for review.

The best endorsement for this book is not what I can write about it but what I can show you. This is what our 5 year-old daughter thought of the book. When I went to

get the book off the shelf to take some pictures for the review, it was gone and this is where I found it:

 and this is what happened when I tried to take it back for review!



 
So as you can see, this was a very popular one in our house. I only managed to get the book back by promising to do the butterfly, dazzling decorations craft with Evey & Gabriel right away - The pictures of our crafting efforts are at the end of this post, because right now I want to tell you about the book.

Outdoor Crafts from Dorling Kindersley is a collection of fun projects that children can make and do outside - some projects are suitable for kiddos on their own, others need adult supervision & input.



 Outdoor Crafts incorporates natural materials that children can find around the house, in the recycling,  in their backyard, or that they've grown themselves in a garden or pot.

This book is divided into three sections — Make It, Cook It, and Create It. Interspersed among these elements there are also pages about how plants grow, which plants to grow for a fragrant garden or a container garden, bug quizzes and much more.

In Make It you & the kiddos can create labels for the garden, decorate flower pots, and build a "Garden Buddy" from tin cans, plastic cups and any other assorted items you might find around the house or in the recycling. There are 10 projects in this section but many of them - such as the dazzling decorations craft can be adapted in any number of ways.



 

In Cook It, children can get recipes for herb and cheese muffins, blueberry cheesecake in a glass, lemon ices and more using the crops from the garden. I particularly liked  the herb tea made from the herb garden planted in a suitcase with flags of the world to denote where each herb came from.

And finally in Create It, you can learn how to make a Leaf Stepping Stone path in the garden, make paper from corn husks  and so much more.



 

In Outdoor Crafts the projects are complete with the easy-to-follow instructions and step-by-step photography that are Dorling Kindersley's trade mark. Kids of all ages can take part and create wonderful crafts they'll be proud to display and they don't need a huge garden to, or even any garden at all to enjoy it.

Our "Dazzling Decorations" Craft

Gabriel made a flower

Disclosure: I received free the item(s) mentioned in this post in exchange for my honest review. Regardless ~ All my reviews are my honest and personal opinion. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”.

Make A Happy Bee Garden

Making bees happy is an easy task and a fun way to create a garden that attracts these beneficial insects. A happy bee garden promotes overall environmental health as honeybees are on a drastic decline lately. In order to make a happy bee garden you need to plant flowers they love, provide a water source, and provide a little shelter when it gets hot out. Here is a quick guide to make your bees happy and get them to come back to your garden all year to pollinate your flowers and vegetables.

The best way to attract bees to your garden is to plant wildflowers that are native to your area. One thing to remember is that the honey produced from one swarm of bees is directly related to the types of flowers that they are helping to pollinate in that specific geographic area. What’s interesting is that even a bee hive located a few miles down the road will have honey that tastes different. Happy bees have a diversity of plants and flowers to choose from. Make sure to not only to plant native wildflowers but go ahead and mix in other gardening favorites.

Flowers that have a single row of petals are more attractive to bees as they are easier for them to get the nectar from. Many layers of petals are harder for the honeybees and they don’t visit them as often. The single petal flowers also have more pollen than other flowers, which provides more food for the honeybees.

Bees are naturally attracted to certain colors more than others. They gravitate towards yellow, white, blue, and purple flowers. Of course they will pollinate others, but these colors are their favorites. Another thing to remember is to plant flowers that bloom at different times of the year so the bees will have a reason to come back to your garden all year long. Bees are hungry and spend the majority of their time in search for nectar.

If you live in the colder regions of the US, a happy bee garden would include flowers like Crocuses, Foxglove, Geraniums, Hyacinths, Roses, and Lilacs. Bees love to pollinate fruits and vegetable plants as well and will visit blueberries, blackberries, tomatoes, and peas.

In areas where there are milder winters with warm summers, these bees prefer Asters, Black-Eyed Susans, Clovers, Cosmos, Crocuses, Daylilies, Foxglove, Geraniums, Marigolds, Roses, and Zinnias. Make the bees happy by also planting strawberries, blackberries, tomatoes, and cherry trees.

The hottest zones in the southern states also have a great collection of native bees. The bees in the south like the nectar from Cosmos, Dahlias, Geraniums, Hibiscus, Hollyhocks, Marigolds, Poppies, Roses, Sunflowers, and Zinnias and even most cacti.  Don’t forget to plant watermelons, squash plants, pumpkins, cucumbers, and their absolute favorite are citrus trees!