Google Garden Map

Like some of you, I have a spreadsheet of my fruit trees, but I’ve also developed a private Google map (“My Maps”) that gives me a visual representation of where everything is on my 1/2 acre property with notes.

I color code them by fruit type and then when I’m adding new trees, I put larger “?” placeholders as I think about what goes where. You can create layers by fruit type as well to turn on and off if you’d like. It’s pretty easy to use and creates a visual record that’s nice to see.

gardenmap2

It might be helpful for someone…

FYI, I tried Google Earth online and desktop. They can zoom in a little closer, but neither gave the option of these smaller dot icons while editing. Things get too crowded with the larger ones. You can export a KMZ file and then import that into Google Earth if you’d like though…

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I would love to explore this more. I have been trying to keep a record of what is where/going where/open spaces. What I have now is a screenshot of my yard on GoogleMaps, and set beneath another program. Cumbersome.

https://mymaps.google.com

“Create a new map”
Set your address
Set to satellite view under “base map” if needed
Zoom in as far as you can
Add a layer - name it “fruit” or “peaches” or whatever
Click on “add a marker” below the search bar
Name the marker (you can edit later)
Hit save
The marker will appear with a default icon and a white box for editing or setting colors
Click the paint icon to set a color and more icons to find the tiny dot icon, which is the smallest one and gives you more space for the markers
You can add an image too if you’d like of the fruit or flowers or whatever
Repeat ad nauseam, creating new layers for other fruits if you’d like
You can drag markers in any order under a layer

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Thank you very much for sharing this information. I’ve been trying to find a rudimentary way to do this exact thing but I didn’t know about the mymaps feature. I have access to Autocad at work but I haven’t used it in years and the learning curve is STEEP, enough that I don’t want to bother with it for a hobby project.

After playing around quickly with the program I wanted to point out that you can choose different plant related icons too, not just solid colors.

I also wanted to mention - @dimitri_7a has a really great spreadsheet linked in his profile that he said I can use to format my own “haves list”. I have (slowly) been making a few changes and adding to my own list the past few weeks as I have time available, but I’ll post that to my profile when I get it reasonable. Tools in the spreadsheet are a bit light compared to Microsoft Excel, but the filter and sort features are still robust enough and maybe I just need to use Sheets more to familiarize myself.

ctrl x (cut), ctrl c (copy), ctrl y (redo), ctrl d (copy above), ctrl z (undo) are all commands that should make life a lot more efficient too.

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Looks good… I’ve only ever used MyMaps for things at more of a macro scale. Nice use of it for this though, especially leveraging layers to separate different fruit species.

Definitely Google Sheets for the win here. Being able to access it anywhere, from any device, with only a browser as the barrier to entry. :thumbsup:

I like https://keep.google.com/ for quick notes and the like. I’ve also for the past few years been keeping an “edibles journal” in it where I kind of in diary fashion, document the date and what was going on. For example:

2019/04/13 - A little over half of the 25 recently grafted trees are showing some bud movement to green tips now. Montmorency Cherry heavily blooming. Half a dozen or so Apple trees in the orchard are blooming. Butternut buds are opening.

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Great idea! I started one in QGIS but never really finished it. The latest satellite image shows my trees really well.

I’ve now started a spreadsheet where I formatted the cells in squares and basically mapped it to scale to the best of my ability. Just took a measuring wheel out. I’m just not sure how to proceed with it next.

Totally agree, I love having it on my phone, and everything is backed up.

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I have been using keep for years to organize my life in general. It’s great.

@disc4tw Thanks for the @dimitri_7a spreadsheet link…I was updating mine yesterday and wondering about something like this.

@wdingus I had started using Google Keep a bunch of years ago but forgot about it! I might go back to using it…

I use the Google Drive drawing program to keep track of stuff. I used a satellite image to get the rough layout.

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That’s one of the Google Docs apps I had not really looked into all that closely. Looks like a lot of potential for an orchard map or similar…

https://docs.google.com/drawings/

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This is basically what I wanted to do in Autocad. Like an offline version of what @fruitkismet is working on!

My husband (an arborist) uses this same method when working with his clients. If I weren’t doing things on such a small scale, I’d probably use MyMaps too.

For those of you looking for an spreadsheet with relational database features… check out AirTable sometime.

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I’m pretty spoiled. My job is maps and databases, so I have access to the industry standard software through work. I keep a map with all the trees and shrubs, and they all have tabular data associated with them. It’s easy to keep everything to scale, and I can easily simulate 3D by including fields for the estimated heights of plants.

As @Travis mentioned, QGIS is great for this and is free. There’s a bit of a learning curve if you’re not familiar with GIS concepts, but you can do quite a lot once you get over that hump.

Another option is Sketchup from Trimble: https://app.sketchup.com/app. It’s an easy-to-use but powerful 3D modeling application. It’s easy to draw everything to scale and to move individual items around. They have a free version (Sketchup Web), or you can pay for a subscription for better performance and increased capabilities. Here’s a partially complete model that I’m working on for planning out options in my yard:

The really nice thing about Sketchup is that there’s a robust user community. This means there are lots of tutorials on blogs, youtube, etc, and there are tons of pre-made models that you can drop into your model, so no need to build a tree from scratch if you don’t want to.

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Do you use ArcGIS or another platform at work?

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We use ArcGIS. They have not quite a monopoly on the industry, sort of like Microsoft. It’s expensive, but honestly it’s way more than a casual user would need anyway.

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After some testing, I discovered that with the free version of ArcGIS Online, you can add and update your own data. This has a lot of advantages over Google maps. Once you get it up and running, it’s easier to maintain the data, and you have lots of options for how it’s drawn and labeled. Also, you have access to a wide range of additional layers that you can add to your map, such as elevation, weather, etc. Here’s how to get started.

Before you begin, you’ll need coordinates for your fruit trees (or at least one general point for where your orchard is to get you started) and an idea of what attributes of your trees you would like to record. If you have a GPS unit, you can just use the GPX files. To get your coordinates, you can go to Google Maps and click on a location on or near your property. Don’t worry about getting it perfect, we can update the location(s) in the map.
image
Next create a spreadsheet with all the attributes you want to record, plus a field each for Latitude and Longitude. If you don’t have spreadsheet software, you can just use a text editor such as Notepad and separate the columns with commas (just be sure to include commas around blank columns, and don’t forget the column names!). You’ll want to save the spreadsheet or text file as a CSV. You can add as many rows as you want, but you only need one to get started. Make sure you have all the attributes you want, though, as you can’t add more columns later.

Next, you need an account with ArcGIS Online. Go to https://arcgisonline.com and go to Sign In. You can either link an account with Google, Facebook, or Apple, or you can create a new account. Once you have your account, your next step is to create a map. Click on the word “Map” at the top to open the map viewer. This will open a new blank map. At the top left, find where it says “Add” and select “Add layer from file.” Then navigate to your CSV to select it and click Import Layer (note the highlighted tip).
add layer from file
select file

If you set up your CSV correctly, it will ask you how you want it to draw. You can select one of your attributes to be a unique identifier or just draw the location. You can change this later if you like. Once you set this up, you should see a point on the map at least in the ballpark of where you intend it to be. Don’t worry if it’s not quite right, we’ll edit that later.

Now’s a good time to orient you to some key menu options:
Menu orientation

  1. Enables editing, which will allow you to create new features, update attributes and location, or delete features
  2. Basemap switcher. The default is Topographic, but you might want aerial imagery.
  3. Pulls up the list of layers with layer options
  4. Pulls up the legend of what the different symbols mean.
  5. Opens the attribute table, which is basically the spreadsheet behind the points.
  6. Opens the symbology options.
  7. More options - allows you to do things like save your layer, configure the popup, and configure labels.

Now that you have your layer in the map, you’ll want to save your layer and your map. Select more options (7 in the pic above) and click on Save layer. You need to give it a name and some tags. You’ll do the same thing to save the map by selecting the save button just a little to the right of top center. This will make sure you can access this all next time you log in.
Create item

Now, we can start adding and editing features. If you click on the edit button, you will see the option to add features. If you’re symbolizing by an attribute, it will give you templates that automatically fill in that key attribute, which is useful if you have a bunch of the same kind of tree to add. Just select a template and click the place on the map where you want it. A popup will display where you can fill in the other information about the tree. You’ll also see this popup if you click on an existing point, so you can update records. To change the location of an existing tree, click on the point, then drag it where you want it. Hit Close when you are done.
Add features

If you toggle back to Contents, this will stop editing and you can navigate the map instead. Clicking on a tree will bring up the popup with the attributes. If you want to customize this a bit, pull up the More Options menu for that layer and select configure popup. You can set a title as either text you type in, an attribute (or attributes!) from you data, or a combination (use the “+” next to title to select attributes to use). You can also choose to show/hide attributes or make them not editable, or turn off the thousands separator for numeric attributes, under “Configure Attributes.” Don’t forget to save your map changes!

By default, all of your layers and maps will be visible only to you, but you can choose to make them publicly available if you want.

This tutorial just scratches the surface of what you can do with this tool, but it should be plenty to get you started. The free version is somewhat limited, but still quite powerful. I know they put some limits on how much data you can store with them, but I’m not sure what those are. It should be more than sufficient for any hobbyist grower, though. Go forth and map! @disc4tw

image

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There’s also some good free training materials available. If you click on your username and select Training, which brings you to the training page. If you then open the course catalog, you can check the box for Free courses, and then click on ArcGIS Products → ArcGIS Online to pull up all the relevant free videos, courses, tutorials, and documents.

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Interesting that the image resolution is so high in your area. For my remote location, ArcGIS and Bing have terrible resolution compared to Google maps. The ArcGIS tools look great, but aren’t useful when this is what your image looks like:

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I’ve also been thinking about google maps as a base but here too the maps have really low resolution. I think next step for me is to get a friend with a drone to take good pictures in the right angle and use those photos as bottom layer in InDesign or similar software.

I’ve got a rough draft made using InDesign and google maps now but there’s a lot of errors and a little messy to update when adding new plants (45 already ordered for spring…)

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