Frequently Asked Questions

Free Trial and Subscription

Q. Is it really free to use the GrowVeg.com Garden Planning Tool?
A. Yes, for 30 days you get the fully working version of our Garden Planning Tool. There is no limit to the number of garden plans you can produce and all the advanced features such as crop rotation are available. There is no obligation to subscribe at the end of your free trial and we do not require any financial details unless you decide to subscribe.

Q. Why Should I subscribe if I can just sign up for the 30 days free trial?
A. Once your 30-day free trial is over you will need to subscribe if you wish to continue accessing the garden plans that you have produced and receive the emails that remind you when to sow and plant. When you come to plan next year's garden the GrowVeg.com Garden Planning Tool will remember your garden layout and where crops have been grown in previous years. This allows you to quickly produce next years' plans without having to re-draw your layout. In addition, GrowVeg.com shows you where to avoid for crop rotation, based on your previous years' plans.

Q. Can I share my account with others?
A. The GrowVeg.com Terms and Conditions only allow people in the same household to share one GrowVeg.com account. We would respectfully ask that you do not share your account details with others. Special accounts are available for schools and charities who need multiple-user access. Please Contact Us for more details.

Emails and Privacy

Q. Will I receive junk email if I sign up for an account?
A. You will only receive emails you opt-in to, such as reminders of when to sow and plant the vegetables in your garden. We also send two introductory emails to help you learn to use our site and reminders if your subscription is about to expire. GrowVeg.com never sends spam or gives your details to any third party except where required to by law or for the normal operation of our business. Full details are set out in our Privacy Policy.

Subscription and Payment

Q. How much does a subscription to GrowVeg.com cost?
A. Your first 30 days are free and there is no obligation to subscribe. After that it costs £15 (US$32 or €20 approx) for a one-year subscription to the Garden Planning Tool or £25 (US$53 or €34 approx) for two years. School accounts are available for teachers who wish to use the Garden Planning Tool with their students at a cost of £45 ($90 or €60 approx) for up to five classes per year. Please use our Contact Form for further details about school accounts.

Q. If I subscribe before my 30-day trial ends, will I lose my remaining 'free' days?
A. No, we add your one or two year subscription on to the remaining days of your free trial.

Q. How can I be sure that it's safe to use my credit card on GrowVeg.com?
A. We use PayPal, the leading provider of secure credit card transactions on the Internet, for all our credit card processing. Our site is secured by industry standard technology (see the padlock symbol when you navigate to our Subscription pages.) We never store any credit card details on our servers. If you still have concerns then you have the option of using a PayPal account or even sending us a cheque.

Q. Will you continue to take subscription payments out of my bank account each year?
A. No, we simply send you a reminder asking you to re-subscribe via our website.

GrowVeg.com Garden Planning Tool

Q. Do I need to install any software?
A. No, GrowVeg.com's Garden Planning Tool simply uses Adobe Flash player, version 8 or above, which is installed on well over 95% of all internet-connected computers. Adobe Flash works with Windows PCs, Apple Macs and Linux, in all major browsers. If you need to update your version of Flash player, then you will be notified when trying to launch the Garden Planning Tool, with a link to the page for the free download.

Q. When I click to start the Garden Planning Tool it doesn't work
A. As long as you have tried waiting for the Garden Planning Tool to load then you probably need to give your computer a bit of a helping hand. Our Technical Help page gives all the details you need with practical steps and details of how to contact us so that we can help you sort it out.

Q. Do you have a stand-alone version of the GrowVeg.com Garden Planning Tool that I can install?
A. No, we only provide an online version so that all our customers are using our most up-to-date software and we can keep backups of the data.

Q. Can GrowVeg.com adjust planting times for the Southern Hemisphere?
A. Yes, when you specify that you live in a country in the Southern Hemisphere the planting seasons are adjusted automatically.

Q. A vegetable I plant is not shown in the Garden Planning Tool
A. In order to keep the loading speed of the Garden Planning Tool to a minimum we have only been able to put the most common vegetables and fruit into the Garden Planning Tool. If one that you plant isn't there then you can:

• Choose the closest vegetable to it and use that picture instead. If necessary you can give it a text label to make clear what it is.
• Use one of the generic vegetables we have provided such as 'Other', 'Herb', 'Fruit Bush' or 'Tree'.

If we receive a lot of requests for a particular vegetable it may be added in the future so feel free to Contact Us if you wish.

Q. Can I print my plan larger?
A. Yes, simply open your plan, click the Settings button (next to Help on the right), and un-tick 'Print plan on a single page'. If you want to change the size you can do so by using the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons before printing.

Q. Why are plans limited to 28 metres in size?
A. The Flash software we use on our site limits us to this size if we want to use certain drawing features. Also, plans get very slow if you make them too large and you end up scrolling around the screen a lot, so it is best to split your plot into several separate plans if it is large.

Q. I want to grow more than one crop in the same space. Is that possible?
A. For the sake of simplicity we have not yet included this feature, although it is something we hope to introduce in the future. For the moment there are two possible solutions:

• Simply add the crops on top of each other on the plan. This has the disadvantage of being visually less clear but we deliberately allowed vegetable symbols to overlap for exactly this reason. The advantage is that the planting lists then show the correct numbers for sowing and planting in one place.
• Create two (or more) plans for the same year. This can be done by starting a new plan, based on the previous years' one, and then resetting the Year to be the same. If you wish, all vegetables can be copied across as well as the garden layout and you can then delete the ones which will have already cropped and add in your second batch.

Problems

Q. My garden plan won't save. What should I do?
A. This is usually because you are trying to create a plan on the 'Welcome to GrowVeg.com' tab which has saving disabled. You need to create a new plan using the 'New Plan' button on the left of the toolbar and give it a name before you can save. More details are on our Tutorials page. Failing that, please contact us via the Technical Help page.

Q. The GrowVeg.com Garden Planning Tool runs slowly on my computer
A. Try restarting your computer and making sure that other demanding programs are not running at the same time. The Garden Planning Tool does slow down with very large garden plans but speed can be increased by using the Settings button on the toolbar and selecting to 'Only show end plants in rows'. Alternatively a large garden or plot can be split into separate smaller plans.

Q. Scrolling is very slow on my garden plan
A. Again, try the steps mentioned above. Also, click and drag the scroll bar itself, rather than the end arrows.