Add your first garden bed
A bed in Garden Buddy is any growing area — a raised garden bed, a spot in the ground, a pot on the balcony, a greenhouse row. The system tracks each one separately so you can compare yields between locations and so each plant has somewhere to live.
The four fields explained
| Field | Required? | What it’s used for |
|---|---|---|
| Bed name | Yes | Shows up in every other form (plant, harvest, care log) as a dropdown. Pick something specific — “Front raised bed” beats “Bed 1”. |
| Location | No | Free-text descriptor. Useful months later when you’re planning expansion — you’ll remember “back yard near the tap”. |
| Bed type | No (defaults to Raised) | Raised / In-ground / Container / Greenhouse. Drives water-frequency recommendations — containers dry 2–3× faster than in-ground. |
| Size (sqm) | No | Optional but useful long-term — lets the system calculate yield per square metre across crops, useful when deciding whether to expand. |
Common bed sizes for reference
| Bed type | Typical dimensions | Square metres |
|---|---|---|
| Standard suburban raised bed | 1.2 m × 2.4 m | 2.88 |
| Half-size raised bed | 0.9 m × 1.8 m | 1.62 |
| Wicking bed | 1.0 m × 2.0 m | 2.00 |
| VegePod (small) | 1.0 m × 1.0 m | 1.00 |
| VegePod (medium) | 1.0 m × 2.0 m | 2.00 |
| Standard 25 cm pot | circular 25 cm | 0.05 |
| Half wine barrel | circular 60 cm | 0.28 |
| Trough planter (1.2 m) | 0.3 m × 1.2 m | 0.36 |
| Grow bag (large) | circular 40 cm | 0.13 |
Step-by-step
- Open /my-garden/. Scroll to “Your garden beds” — the first card under the intro banner.
- Click the “Bed name” field on the right. Type something you’ll recognise.
- (Optional) Add a location. “Back yard, north-facing”, “Driveway side, full sun”, “Balcony east-facing”.
- Pick a bed type. Closest match. If your bed is a wicking bed, “Raised” is fine — wicking is a sub-type that doesn’t change the watering math much.
- (Optional) Size in square metres. Use the table above to estimate, or measure with a tape (30 seconds).
- Click “Add Bed”. Page refreshes; new bed appears in the list above the form.
How many beds to start with
Add only beds you actually grow in right now. Don’t pre-create “future expansion bed 3” — you’ll forget about it and it’ll clutter your dropdowns.
Suburban backyard
- 1× raised bed at the back
- 1× in-ground patch along a fence
- 2–3× pots for herbs
- Total: 3–5 beds
Apartment / balcony
- 1× container or trough labelled “Balcony”
- Total: 1 bed
Acreage / serious hobbyist
- 3–6× raised beds at different positions
- 1× large in-ground “main patch”
- 1× greenhouse
- 2–4× pots for transplant raising
- Total: 7–12 beds
Just experimenting
- 1× pot or grow bag
- Total: 1 bed
Editing or removing beds
Hover over any bed in the list — edit pencil and archive cross appear.
- Edit — change name, type, size, location. Plants attached to that bed stay attached.
- Archive — bed disappears from active dropdowns but stays in the database. Plants and harvests linked to it remain in your records. Use when you’ve pulled apart a bed permanently.
- Delete — only available if no plants or harvests reference the bed. Use to remove a duplicate created in error.
Once you have 5+ beds, use a consistent naming pattern: “Raised – Front”, “Raised – Back”, “In-ground – Fence line”, “Pots – Herbs”, “Pots – Tomatoes”. The dropdowns sort alphabetically by type, making the plant form much faster to use.
Common mistakes
Creating one bed for “the whole garden”. The point of separate beds is comparing yields across positions. “Whole garden” hides the data.
Pre-creating beds you don’t have yet. Empty beds clutter your dropdowns. You’ll forget which exist physically.
Using the same name for two different beds. Dropdown gets confusing. Use location to disambiguate (“Raised – North” vs “Raised – South”).
Naming a bed by what’s planted in it. “Kale bed” doesn’t work long-term — you’ll replant kale elsewhere eventually. Name by position, not content.
What’s next
One bed in place. Next: decide what to plant, using Plant Now to filter for crops in season in your zone.