Kitchen Garden Aid
is a planning tool for kitchen gardeners.Prerequisite
A kitchen gardenThe meaning of crop rotation and companion planting.
How to do it
Arrange your kitchen garden in a grid. Squares should be one by one feet in size. If it is your first time using this software draw last years garden setup. After that draw current year. Each square can contain on or more plants. It is important that you put out stationary items, and not only plants, so that you can have a location reference from year to year. Save your garden blueprint. Next growing season you can add a new garden setup.Benefits
In some squares you can see either a green ok icon or a red ban icon. This is called a hint. Hold your mouse over one of those icons and you will get a short explaniation of its reason. There are eleven diffrent types but more will be added in future version. Another benefit is you dont need labels in your garden.Hints
Good companionHint created when placing a beneficial plant nearby
Example: Carrot with radish
Bad companion
Hint created when placing a disadvantegous plant nearby
Example: Carrots with dill
Fight disease
Hint created when placing a disease fighting plant nearby
Example: Strawberries with borage
Pest repel
Hint created when placing a pest repelant plant nearby
Example: carrots with onion
Flavor improvment
Hint created when placing a flavor improving plant nearby
Example: Tomatos with basil
Same family or Same family nearby
Hint created when placing a plant at the same square or neighbouring square within the same family within n years
Example: Broccoli after cauliflower
Species repetition or Species repetition nearby
Hint created when placing a plant of the same species at the same square or neighbouring sqaure within n years
Example: Potato after potato
Good crop rotation
Hint created when placing a good forecrop previous year
Example: Legumes before brassicas
Bad crop rotation
Hint created when placing a bad forecrop previous year
Example: No example
An Example
Open Kitchen Garden Aid and on the menu click Help - Show me an example. Now you can see four beds each with 16 squares. You can also see the year 2009 and 2010. This is a history of what we have planted in the garden. Click the year 2010.
In the top left square, we have planted carrot and dill. Carrot doesn't grow well around dill so we get a small red ban icon 
in that square indicating this is bad. Hold mousepointer over the icon to see short explination.
In the bottom left bed we have planted Brassicas. In 2009 we also planted brassicas here. This is bad for many reasons and so we get a red ban icon here aswell.
In the top right bed we planted and onions. This is good because it will distract the carrotfly so we get a green ok icon
here in each square.
In the bottom right bed we have planted strawberries and garlic. This is a good combination and so we get a green ok icon
There are hundred of this rules. The idea of this program is to visualize them.