Garden with Insight v1.0 Help: Quick start

Welcome to the Garden with Insight garden simulator, where you plant vegetables in a simulated garden on the computer and watch them grow. You can dig, hoe, weed and harvest using graphical tools that look and work just like their real counterparts. You can customize the climate, soil type, layout, plants, and soil amendments.

Here is how to get the Garden with Insight program up and running in a few minutes. This section is for experienced computer users who want to get started right away. For more details, see the Tutorial or Reference sections.

Start the program

Open the File Manager or Windows Explorer and double-click on the executable file (gwi16.exe or gwi32.exe). If you downloaded the program, the executable file will be on your hard disk in the directory into which you unzipped the zip file. If you received Garden with Insight on a CD-ROM, you can run the program from the CD-ROM by double-clicking on the executable file on the CD-ROM; but for fastest performance you should copy the directory in which the executable file resides to your hard disk and double-click on the executable file there.

The Garden with Insight program will start. This is the main window of the program. It is called the garden window. You can't maximize the garden window because it can only be as large as the picture inside it.

Now we will open the tutorial garden file, which is used for both the quick start description and the tutorial description. Choose Open from the File menu. In the dialog that appears asking if you want to save the current garden, click No. Next, in the file dialog that appears, choose the file tutorial.gdn from the directory in which the executable file was found, then click OK. You will see a patio garden with two prepared soil patches (on the left and center) and several unprepared soil beds (on the right and in the back).

Note: This quick start section assumes you have already installed the Garden with Insight program and that you have not changed the tutorial garden file (tutorial.gdn). The original tutorial garden file is read-only so you cannot save over it. If you want to save the tutorial garden after making changes to it, choose Save as from the File menu to save the file with a different name so the original tutorial garden will be unchanged. If you find major discrepancies between this description and the tutorial garden (if someone has already changed and saved it), look for the file tutorial.gdn in your installation copy and recopy it from there.

Plant pea seeds

Move the mouse around. You are moving a garden glove with an arrow cursor at the tip of its index finger. Notice that as you move over either of the two prepared soil patches the cursor changes to an arrow with a square .

Move the cursor over the seed packet, then click with the right mouse button to pick it up. (You can also hold down the Shift key and click with the left mouse button.) Now the glove is carrying the seed packet and the cursor has moved to the corner of the seed packet. From the third drop-down list box at the top of the window, choose Pea from the list. Move the seed packet to a prepared soil patch. Make sure the cursor is inside the soil patch by checking that the cursor looks like an arrow with a square .

Click once; you have planted a pea seed. The triangle plant symbol you see shows how big the plant will grow when it is full sized. The filled area inside the symbol shows how big the plant is now. Plant a few more seeds. Right-click to put down the seed packet.

Watch your peas grow

Choose Go from the Run menu. As the simulation moves forward, the date on the garden window toolbar will change and your plants will grow. Wait until your plants are nearly grown, then click anywhere on the garden window below the toolbar. The simulation will stop running.

Look at a pea plant close up

Right-click on the magnifying glass. Move the cursor to the base of a plant. You will know when the cursor is at the base of a plant because it will look like an arrow with a leaf attached . Click at the base of a plant. The plant you chose will be shown in detail on the window that appears; this is the browser.

Harvest some peas

To harvest peas from the plant you see in the browser, switch to harvest mode by clicking on the harvest button on the browser, then move the cursor over the plant. Whenever you pass the cursor over a pea pod that can be harvested, a picture (icon) of a pea pod will appear. If no pea pod icons appear, there aren't any peas to harvest yet. In that case, run the simulation again for a week or two then look for pea pod icons again. When you find a pea pod icon, click on it. The icon will appear in the harvest panel at the bottom of the browser.

To see a list of all the items you have harvested from your garden in the harvest window, choose Harvest from the Window menu on the garden window.

To leave the Garden with Insight program, choose Exit from the File menu. If you don't want to save the changes you have made to the tutorial garden, click Don't Save. If you want to save the changes you have made, click Cancel, then choose Save as from the File menu and save the file with a different name (so the original tutorial garden is not changed). Then choose Exit from the File menu again, and click Don't Save.

That's the basic idea, though there are many details to explore when you are ready. To learn more, go through the tutorial and read the reference sections of this help system.