The headline number
“Plants placed” is the number of final plant positions that fit at the spacing you entered. It counts plants after thinning, not seeds to sow, transplants to buy or a harvest. If you edit a spacing value, the count uses your value; presets are only a starting point.
The status line under it tells you whether every requested plant fitted. A green dot means yes. An amber dot means some did not, and the planner has not reduced any spacing to squeeze them in.
Four numbers that describe the bed
| Number | What it means | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Placed | Plant centres that fit inside the bed with their spacing and edge room. | Use the marking-out table to put them in the ground. |
| Unmet | Requested plants with no position left, listed per crop. | Accept fewer, or use the wider, longer or reordered options the planner reports. |
| Unallocated | The strip along the front that no crop was given, as a length × width and in ft². | Leave it, or add a crop; the planner lists how many of each current crop it could hold. |
| Vacant positions | Unused places inside a crop’s own strip, because rows are whole but quantities are not. | Request a few more of that crop at no extra space, or ignore them. |
Why strips leave gaps
Every crop gets a strip across the full length of the bed, made of whole rows. A strip’s depth is its number of rows times its row distance, so a partly filled last row still takes the full row distance. In the salad and roots example, 48 carrots at 3 in fill 2 rows of 32: the strip is 6 in deep and has 16 vacant places.
Strips also keep half a spacing at each boundary, so neighbouring crops never share a gap smaller than either crop’s own spacing. That is deliberately conservative: it keeps each crop at the distance you entered. It can leave slightly more space between strips than an experienced gardener would, and the planner does not try to pack crops more tightly than that.
Crop order decides who loses space
Strips are allocated from the back edge in the order the crops are listed, with a trellis crop always first. When the bed is too narrow for everything, the crops at the end of the list are the ones that miss out. The two plans below use the same 8 × 4 ft bed and the same three crops, only reordered.
With tomatoes first, the tomato and pepper strips use 42 in and the 6 in left cannot take a 12 in lettuce row, so all 8 lettuces are unmet. With lettuce first, the lettuce and pepper strips use 30 in and the 18 in left cannot take a 24 in tomato row. Neither order fits everything: the three strips need 54 in and the bed is 48 in wide.
Put the crop you care most about first. If the bed can be wider, the planner tells you the width that fits every request.
When plants do not fit
The “What to do next” section of the result is worked out by re-running the same rules with adjusted inputs, so its figures follow exactly the same rules as the main result. Your options, starting with the four it reports:
- Keep the bed and plant what fits. Often the simplest answer.
- Make the bed wider to the width reported, if the frame or ground allows it.
- Make it longer instead. Longer beds add places to every row, so this helps even a one-row trellis crop.
- Change the order so the crops that matter most come first.
- Check the spacing method. Row presets need far more width than block presets; see the blocks and rows example.
What it will not suggest is tighter spacing. If your seed packet or local guidance supports a smaller distance for your variety, enter that value yourself; do not reduce it only to clear the warning.
What the plan does not show
The drawing is a measured arrangement of plant centres. It does not know which way the bed faces, which crops will shade others as they grow, whether you can reach the middle, when each crop is sown, or whether two crops are good neighbours. Tall and trellised crops can shade shorter ones depending on where the sun is, so decide which real edge is the back before you print. The methodology page lists every assumption the tools make.