I made mine in Excel (actually, the OpenOffice equivalent, but either will work). I set it up so each cell of the spreadsheet represents 1x1 foot in the garden, then color code things like beds (green), walkways (brown), and patios/structures (grey). I keep a blank one called "gardenplan", then each season just use the "Save As" feature to make a copy of it, named along the lines of "gardenplan_Spring2013" and fill the bed cells with plant names.

It works for the first round or two of planting, but eventually I get swamped with garden chores and stop updating it. Oh well, it's a nice idea in theory

I have my whole garden mapped out but I use Word .. never thought of using a spreadsheet. Nice job! I do have my seed catalog in spreadsheet form and have columns for sowing date and germination date

Thanks very much.

I hadn't thought of using a grid to make a map, or of using Excel to serve as the grid!

It makes a lot of sense to collect your discoveries into a spreadsheet or other document. I haven't gotten that far for MY climate yet. Really all I have is what I read in catalogs, seed packets and online. Generic advice like (6-8 weeks before frost frost date".

I did put those generalities together into a Word "table", just so that I could see what tasks were coming up, and which ones I was late getting to. As I determine the dates that work best in my yard, for specific varieties, I think that a spreadsheet or Word doc would be a better way to save that information.

Yes, my spreadsheet actually has a second page (tab? not sure what they're called) with info on timing. Plant name, sowing date, germination date, transplant date, first harvest, last harvest... something like that.

Unfortunately, it suffers from the same problem as the map - it just can't keep up with what I do outside when I forget about updating it for a few weeks

I know what you mean! I always plan to do five times as much as I have time to do. When I really discipline myself, I plan to do twice as much as I can.

I keep thinking that I'll have more time when I retire ... but will I have any energy?