From a question to a garden you understand

I started veggie.farm because I kept searching for answers to the same questions: What should I plant, and when? What tolerates shade? How much room and water does it need? What works where I live?

I also wanted to learn from one season to the next: what changed, what worked, and how I could improve my soil and harvest. Even finding an affordable soil test could mean another round of searching.

Useful information was everywhere—in Extension resources, research, public datasets and gardening websites. Bringing it together for my own garden took work. My experience collecting data and building mapping tools gave me a starting point; living in Massachusetts gave the project a useful geographic focus.

Read, try, observe, improve

veggie.farm began as a collection of gardening information and data experiments. Garden Planning Studio developed from that foundation into an interactive application for arranging beds and plants, exploring 2D and 3D layouts, and keeping a plan as ideas change.

The guides help you understand a choice. The tools help you compare conditions. Studio gives the plan a shape. Your own observations tell you what happened next.

Start with a questionFind a tool for planting, light, plant problems, pruning or harvest. Try the StudioStart a practice garden with a 4 × 8 ft bed, without an account or home address. Explore the guidesLearn about vegetables, fruit, herbs, soil and the changing season. Keep what you learnMake a dated observation and export a copy of your browser-local journal.

Keep the source and the uncertainty

A parcel map does not measure the soil in a bed. A plant model does not establish how much sunlight reaches its leaves. A calendar estimate is an invitation to inspect the crop.

The application keeps reference data separate from your editable plan, retains citations and source records, and labels incomplete public-garden studies. Studio saves locally; optional accounts let you explicitly upload private personal plans. The observation journal remains browser-local. See how the data is used.

The aim is practical: somewhere to turn gardening information into a plan you can see, change and learn from. The next useful evidence comes from gardeners trying a real task and showing where the application helps—or gets in the way.