GARDENSTUFFS
Practical gardening guides, tools, and growing know-how.
From frost dates to fertilizer rates, GardenStuffs pairs free hands-on calculators with practical growing guides and a richly illustrated museum of garden tools and gear. Dig in, plan your beds, and grow with confidence.
Garden Tools & Calculators
Free planners for every stage of the season — watering, planting, composting, soil, and feeding.
Fertilizer Application Calculator
Calculate precise NPK application rates for organic and synthetic fertilizers by plant and area
Garden Layout Planner
Design your garden layout with companion planting suggestions
Garden Pest Identifier
Identify common garden pests and get organic treatment solutions
Plant Spacing Calculator
Calculate optimal plant spacing for your garden beds and rows
Planting Calendar
Find the best planting dates based on your growing zone
Soil Volume Calculator
Calculate how much soil, mulch, or compost you need
Sunlight Requirements Guide
Match plants to available sunlight in your garden areas
Watering Schedule Planner
Create a watering schedule based on plants, climate, and soil type
Garden Tools & Gear
Wander an immersive museum of garden tools and implements through history — digging & soil tools, cutting & pruning, watering, cultivation & carrying, and power tools, each with its own gallery so you can trace the histories and ideas that connect them.
Tour the museum →From the Journal
Worked guides on spacing, soil, fertilizer, watering, sun and planting dates. Each one runs a real example through one of the tools above and says what it leaves out.
Holes in Your Seedlings: Slugs, Cutworms or Flea Beetles?
Ragged holes, tiny shot-holes and seedlings felled at the soil line are three different pests with three different fixes. How to tell slugs, cutworms and flea beetles apart, and protect young plants without poisons.
Aphids, Whiteflies or Spider Mites? Telling the Sap-Suckers Apart Before You Spray
Aphids, whiteflies and spider mites all suck sap and all leave yellowing leaves, but they respond to different first steps. Three quick tests tell them apart in a minute.
Companion Planting in Practice: Which Pairs the Layout Planner Flags, and How Far to Trust Them
The Garden Layout Planner lists good companions and crops to keep apart. This guide shows exactly which pairs it knows, how it decides, where the pairings have a practical basis and where they are tradition.
How Many Bags of Mulch Do You Need? Depth, Area and Round Beds Around Trees
Mulch is bought by volume and spread by depth. Here is how to work out cubic feet, cubic yards and bag counts for borders and tree rings, with figures from the GardenStuffs Soil Volume Calculator.
What Vegetables Grow in Partial Shade? Matching Crops to 2, 4 and 6 Hours of Sun
A shady yard can still feed you, as long as you plant what you eat by the leaf or root rather than by the fruit. Here is what the Sunlight Requirements Guide suggests at each band of sun, and what to expect from it.
How Many Carrots, Onions and Garlic Fit in a Bed? Close-Spaced Crops in Numbers
Root crops and alliums are planted inches apart, so a small bed holds hundreds of them. This guide counts carrots, onions, garlic, beets and radishes in real bed sizes with the Plant Spacing Calculator.
Keep Learning
Plant families, pests, techniques, and a plain-language gardening glossary — everything you need to dig deeper.
Visit the Learn hub →