Vegetable Garden Calculators

Growing your own vegetables has seen a huge resurgence in the UK, with allotment waiting lists stretching to years in many areas. Whether you have a full-size allotment plot (the standard size is 10 rods, or approximately 253 square metres), a few raised beds, or just some containers on a patio, planning your growing space properly is the key to a good harvest. Our vegetable plot size calculator helps you work out how much space you actually need to feed your family, based on which crops you want to grow and how much you expect to eat.

The UK vegetable growing season broadly runs from March to October, though many crops can be started earlier under cover or harvested well into winter. Potatoes are the nation's favourite allotment crop, and our potato chitting calculator covers seed potato quantities and the all-important chitting period from late January onwards, with first earlies going in the ground around mid-March in southern England and early April further north. Runner beans are another British garden staple — the runner bean calculator works out bamboo cane quantities and spacing for the traditional wigwam or row support structures.

Crop rotation is fundamental to healthy vegetable growing, and the allotment planner calculator helps you organise four-year rotations of brassicas, legumes, roots, and potatoes to prevent soil-borne disease build-up. The crop yield calculator gives realistic UK harvest estimates, so you can plan how many plants to grow — for example, a single courgette plant in a good summer can produce 15-20 fruits, while a 3-metre row of runner beans typically yields 10-15kg. For crops that need regular feeding during the growing season, the tomato feed calculator works out correct dilution rates for popular UK liquid feeds.