The Outdoor Garden Year¶

This journey walks you through a complete outdoor gardening year — from winter planning through sowing and care to overwintering. It chains together existing Kamerplanter pages into a single thread; it does not describe any new features. Where a feature is only partially built or not yet implemented, this page says so honestly.

Who Is This Journey For?¶

For anyone growing vegetables, herbs, or ornamentals in beds, raised beds, or on a balcony who wants to use Kamerplanter for seasonal planning — from crop rotation to sowing dates to overwintering frost-tender plants.

Prerequisites¶

• At least one location with beds or slots — see Locations & Substrates
• Plant species with an assigned botanical family in master data (for crop rotation and companion planting)

The Yearly Cycle at a Glance¶

flowchart LR
    W["Winter<br/>Planning"] --> A["Spring<br/>Sowing & Planting Out"]
    A --> S["Summer<br/>Care & Harvest"]
    S --> H["Autumn<br/>Season End"]
    H --> U["Winter<br/>Overwintering"]
    U --> W

The following steps follow this cycle. You don't need to work through them in order — jump in wherever your season currently stands.

Step 1: Winter Planning — Checking the Sowing Calendar and Crop Rotation¶

Before the new season starts, it's worth looking at two things: what's coming up when, and which family grew where in recent years?

Open the Calendar and switch to the Sowing Calendar view. It shows you, week by week and per species, when indoor sowing, planting out, growth, and harvest typically happen — across the entire calendar year. The Season Overview next to it gives you a 12-month summary with the number of sowing, harvest, and bloom events per month.

At the same time, check Crop Rotation for your beds: which botanical family grew there over the last three years? Kamerplanter automatically warns you when you create a plant if the same family is returning too soon.

Step 2: Thinking Ahead About Companion Planting¶

Before you decide what goes next to what in a bed, take a look at Companion Planting & Crop Rotation. The page explains which species support each other (e.g. tomato & basil) and which you should keep apart (e.g. fennel from almost everything). Compatibility and incompatibility data is maintained in master data; when you create a single plant with a slot, Kamerplanter automatically checks the directly adjacent slots.

Step 3: Sowing and Planting-Out Timing — Ice Saints and Phenology¶

Two concepts accompany you as an outdoor gardener whenever you plan timing — both are established gardening knowledge, regardless of whether you look them up in software.

The Ice Saints (German: Eisheilige) are a series of feast days in mid-May (traditionally 11–15 May, often already 11–13 May in northern Germany) considered the last statistical cold snap of spring. Ground frost can still occur across Central Europe up to this date — which is why the rule of thumb is to only plant frost-sensitive plants (tomatoes, squash, dahlias) outdoors afterward. The last of the five days, "Cold Sophie" (15 May), traditionally marks the end of the frost risk.

Phenology is the observation of recurring natural events as time markers — instead of a fixed calendar date, you use the actual state of nature's development on the ground. The German Weather Service divides the year into ten phenological seasons based on indicator plants. Two well-known examples from gardening practice:

• Forsythia bloom (early spring) — time to plant early potatoes and direct-sow peas.
• Elderflower bloom (early summer) — time to direct-sow frost-tender cucurbits such as cucumbers and zucchini.

The advantage of phenology over a fixed date: it automatically accounts for whether a given spring is early or late — regardless of what the calendar says.

Step 4: Tasks and Care Through the Season¶

Once you have sown and planted out, Tasks accompany you through the season. For recurring outdoor work such as bed preparation or turning compost, create your own recurring tasks or use a matching workflow template.

For the ongoing care of individual plants, the automatic Care Reminders take over. The data model already includes ten dedicated outdoor care styles (e.g. outdoor_annual_veg, fruit_tree, rose, frost_tender_tuber) with matching watering and fertilizing intervals for typical outdoor crops.

Step 5: End of Season — Overwintering¶

In autumn, the question arises for perennial and frost-tender plants: do they stay outside, do they need winter protection, or must they be dug up and stored frost-free?

Step 6: Climate Zones and Hardiness¶

Kamerplanter automatically derives which USDA hardiness zone your site is in from its GPS coordinates, and feeds that into the hardiness traffic light for your perennial plants (see Overwintering).

Frequently Asked Questions¶

See Also¶

• Calendar
• Companion Planting & Crop Rotation
• Tasks
• Care Reminders
• Climate Zones & Hardiness
• Locations & Substrates