The Best Home Gardening and Backyard Chicken Tools & Calculators

Whether you are planning your first vegetable garden or managing a growing backyard chicken flock, having the right tools and calculators at your fingertips can save you time, money, and frustration. From determining exactly how much soil you need for raised beds to calculating feed costs per dozen eggs, the best digital tools take the guesswork out of homesteading. Below you will find our curated collection of the top free gardening planners, planting calculators, soil and mulch estimators, and chicken keeping resources—all organized by category so you can quickly find exactly what you need.

Home Gardening Tools & Calculators

Garden Planners

• Planter - Garden Planner - FREE drag-and-drop garden planner with companion planting suggestions and a clean mobile-friendly interface that makes bed layout simple for any sized plot.
• GrowVeg Garden Planner - Full-featured layout designer with climate-specific planting dates, crop rotation tracking, and the ability to generate a personalized planting schedule for your entire growing season.
• Old Farmer’s Almanac Garden Planner - Square foot planning with personalized planting charts based on your frost dates, offering a straightforward approach ideal for raised bed and small-space gardeners.

Seed Starting & Planting Calendars

• Old Farmer’s Almanac Planting Calendar - Enter your zip code to get precise frost dates and a customized planting calendar that tells you exactly when to start, transplant, and harvest each crop in your area.
• Johnny’s Seeds Seed-Starting Date Calculator - Plug in your last frost date and the calculator generates a complete indoor sowing schedule for dozens of vegetable, herb, and flower varieties.
• Johnny’s Seeds Target Harvest Date Calculator - Work backward from your desired harvest date to determine the latest possible sowing date for each crop—perfect for succession planting and fall harvest planning.
• Johnny’s Seeds Fall-Harvest Planting Calculator - Calculates the ideal sowing window for crops you want to harvest in autumn, factoring in your first fall frost date and each crop’s days to maturity.

Soil & Mulch Calculators

• Kellogg Garden Soil Calculator - Enter your bed dimensions and desired soil depth to get an accurate volume estimate in cubic feet or yards, plus product recommendations based on your project size.
• Inch Calculator - Mulch Calculator - Quickly determine how many cubic yards or bags of mulch you need by entering your garden area dimensions and desired mulch depth.
• Inch Calculator - Topsoil Calculator - Calculate topsoil requirements for new garden beds, lawn leveling, or fill projects with support for multiple unit inputs and bulk or bagged output options.

Seed Quantity & Yield

• Johnny’s Seeds Seed Quantity Calculator - Input your row length or bed size and this tool tells you exactly how many seeds or plants you need, eliminating overbuying and costly gaps in your planting plan.
• Johnny’s Seeds Succession Planting Spreadsheet - A downloadable spreadsheet template for planning multiple successive sowings throughout the season to maximize your garden’s total yield per square foot.
• Johnny’s Seeds Succession Planting Interval Charts - Quick-reference charts showing recommended days between successive plantings for popular crops, helping you maintain a continuous harvest from spring through fall.

Sunlight & Composting

• SunCalc Sunlight Planner - Enter your address and this tool shows the sun exposure pattern across your property throughout the day and across seasons, helping you place garden beds and coops in the optimal location.
• EPA Composting at Home Guide - The official EPA guide to home composting covers what to include, what to avoid, bin setup, maintenance, and timeline so you can turn kitchen scraps and yard waste into nutrient-rich soil amendment for free.

Backyard Chicken Tools & Resources

All-in-One Health & Nutrition

• PoultryDVM Complete Suite - A comprehensive collection of poultry health tools including a symptom checker, drug dosage calculator, nutrient deficiency identifier, and breed comparison database—all in one free online platform.

Breed Selection

• Omlet Chicken Breeds Directory - An interactive breed directory with filters for egg production, climate suitability, temperament, and size that makes it easy to find the perfect breed match for your backyard setup and goals.
• Cackle Hatchery Breed Categories - Browse chickens organized by purpose—egg layers, meat birds, dual-purpose, ornamental, and bantams—with availability information and detailed breed descriptions from a trusted hatchery.

Feed & Nutrition

• Purina Backyard Poultry Feed Guide - Purina’s authoritative guide to feeding backyard poultry at every life stage, covering starter, grower, and layer feeds with specific protein percentage recommendations, supplementation guidelines, and feeding schedules.

Community & Information

• BackYard Chickens Forums - The largest online chicken keeping community with hundreds of thousands of members, free flock management spreadsheets, DIY coop build threads, and fast answers to urgent health questions.
• The Happy Chicken Coop - An extensive free article library covering coop sizing standards, breed profiles with egg production data, seasonal care guides, and health references backed by specific actionable numbers.
• Chicken Molting Guide - A focused guide explaining the 8 to 16 week molting process, its impact on egg production, dietary adjustments for feather regrowth, and how to distinguish normal molting from illness.

Quick Reference: Rules of Thumb

• Brooder temperature: Start at 95°F week 1, reduce 5°F per week until 70°F or ambient temperature
• Coop space: 3-4 sq ft per bird inside, 8-10 sq ft in the run
• Molting: Starts around 18 months, usually late summer/fall, lasts 8-16 weeks
• Egg ROI break-even: Typically 2-3 years
• Nesting boxes: 1 box per 4-5 hens is sufficient
• Roost space: 8-12 inches per standard-sized bird
• Water consumption: Approximately 1 pint per bird per day, more in hot weather
• Feed consumption: Roughly 1/4 to 1/3 pound of feed per standard hen per day
• Garden bed soil depth: 6-12 inches for most vegetables, 12-18 inches for root crops
• Mulch depth: 2-4 inches for established beds, 4-6 inches for weed suppression in new areas