Guides & Tools
Two paid tools for growers in zones 2 to 5. Both do the thing free articles structurally cannot: run your own numbers, on your own land, and end in something you can build from.
The whole property, in the right order
The Short Season System
A cold-climate design manual for people whose ground freezes.
$99
CAD · introductory, rising to $149
Mainstream permaculture was written where water is the binding constraint. In zones 2 to 5 it is heat and season length — and water can be stored while heat cannot. That single difference reorders the entire design sequence, and the order is what this teaches.
- 354-page manual · 17 chapters · 105 original diagrams · 61 pages of appendices
- A 341-species cold-hardy plant database, in the appendices
- 41-page workbook · 16 printable worksheets
- Four calculators — backwards planting, winter feed, larder audit, 52-week calendar
- 182 cited sources, and about 80 boxes marking where the evidence is thinner than usually admitted
It ends in nine drawings of your own land, not a reading list.
One structure, in depth
The Canadian Greenhouse Planner
What to build, what it costs to run, and whether it pays back.
$29
CAD
Enter your postal code once. It resolves to one of 64 Canadian reference locations and fills in your design temperature, degree-days, frost depth and winter sun angles — then turns them into a heater size, a fuel bill, a bill of materials and an honest payback figure.
- 44-page guide · every decision in build order
- 25-page workbook · 11 printable worksheets
- Calculator with 226 live formulas
- Six field cards, made to be printed and taken outside
The worked example in it comes out at a fourteen-year payback, still negative at ten. We publish that number rather than hide it, because it is the number you actually need before you spend twelve thousand dollars.
Which one is for you
They look like they overlap. They don’t — one decides where things go, the other decides what you build once that’s settled.
| Short Season System | Greenhouse Planner | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Your whole property | One structure |
| The question it answers | Where does everything go, and in what order do I decide? | What exactly do I build, what does it cost, does it pay back? |
| What you end up with | Nine drawings of your own land | A heat-loss figure, a bill of materials, a payback number |
| When it’s useful | Before you commit to a layout | Once you know where the greenhouse goes |
If you’re only adding a greenhouse to a site you’ve already committed to, buy the Planner. If you’re deciding where anything goes — orchard, beds, shelterbelt, structures — start with the System. The System’s cold-air chapter answers the siting question the Planner assumes you’ve already settled.
Everything free lives elsewhere
The Cold-Climate Zone Planting Calendar is free and always will be. Enter your postal code and it counts back from your frost dates to give sowing, transplanting and harvest windows for zones 2 to 6. Get it on the homepage — and every guide on this site stays free to read.