Help

Tap the due badge on a plant, or pick water from its Log… menu. The toast offers "Add a note" and "Undo".

Type in "Find a plant or bed" on Gardens or a garden page — a plant, its variety or nickname, or a bed.

Turn on Arrange plots, then drag the bed, or tap it and tap where it goes. The arrow keys nudge it; R turns a bed.

A bed: the toast's Undo, or Retired beds at the bottom of the garden page. A garden: Retired gardens at the bottom of the Gardens page.

In the add planting dialog, "Can't find it? Add your own plant". Fill in what you know; each field says what the app can do with it.

Open the garden, then People → + Invite. Choose gardener or observer; they get an email with a link. A steward can give a plot with the invitation.

Manage on a garden → Export for spreadsheets of that garden. Settings → Export for everything you have, as one file.

Most things you record are saved on the phone and sent when you are back online. Sign out only once they have gone — Settings warns you if any have not.

A garden is a place you grow: a yard, a balcony, a community plot.

A bed (or plot) is one bed, patch or group of pots in it. Mark a bed indoors and the weather won't affect it.

One entry for something growing in a plot: a row of carrots, four basil plants, an apple tree. It has a status (planned, sprouting, growing, harvesting, dormant, finished), a timeline of what was done to it, and its own tasks.

How the plant started: from seed, a nursery seedling, a cutting, or already growing. It sets where its timeline begins.

The named kind you planted, like 'Sungold'. Handy for comparing seasons.

On its own: one plant, one card — a tree, or four basil plants you want to tell apart.

As a group: several plants treated as one, like 50 seeds sown in a tray. "Separate into plants" turns a group into one card each later.

As a patch: an area rather than a count, like a sown strip of salad leaves. Give its size and it takes that much room in the bed.

An optional name for one planting, so "Bertha" and the other three tomatoes can be told apart on Today and in the drawing.

Both say this plant is not heading for its full size here, so the app stops warning that it is too big for its pot.

Any plant in a pot gets watered more often, since pots dry out faster — except succulents, which store their own water. Bonsai also get a reminder to root-prune every couple of years. A container plant still gets a suggestion to pot up when it outgrows its pot. "Let it grow out" goes back to normal.

Something to do on a day, like watering the basil. Tap Done when it's done; the next one is scheduled for you.

Ends a planting: it was harvested out, died, was pulled or bolted. Its tasks stop and it moves to Finished. Its history stays, and "Plant again" starts it over in the same place.

A perennial — a tree, a shrub, asparagus, a houseplant — is not offered Finish: at the end of its season it goes dormant and comes back. If one dies or is dug up, use "Remove planting" in its Log menu.

An idea rather than a deadline — "consider a bigger pot for the maple". Suggestions are never overdue and never count toward what is due today. Dismiss one and it stays quiet for a year.

A "Harvest" suggestion is an estimate — the day it was sown or planted out, plus the catalogue's days to harvest — never a deadline, and it is honest when it cannot say: a plant with no days-to-harvest figure on record gets no nudge rather than a guess.

Once a planting has been picked, you can ask to be reminded to pick it again every so many days — the tomato-and-zucchini case, where the first picking is nowhere near the last. That interval is yours to set; there is no catalogue figure for how often to pick.

Every task says why it is due: when it was last done, how often the plant wants it, and, for watering, the forecast.

If we're missing something, like a forecast or your last watering, the task says so.

If rain is likely, outdoor watering moves to the next day.

We warn you when frost or high heat is coming, and add a task to protect tender plants.

The USDA zone for your garden, looked up from its location, or typed in if you know better. It says which perennials survive your winters outdoors. It does not apply to indoor plots.

It is looked up for US gardens only for now. Outside the US a garden has no zone until you type one — if you know your USDA-equivalent zone, enter it.

Forecasts and alerts work anywhere.

Planting advice is US-based, so treat it as a starting point.

Hardiness zones and frost dates are US-only for now, but you can enter your own.

Settings → Units switches sizes, temperatures and volumes between imperial and metric. Nothing you recorded changes, and a harvest keeps the unit you weighed it in. An account whose first garden is outside the US starts in metric.

The season review counts a calendar year unless you say otherwise. South of the equator, where one summer runs from December into February, set the garden's season to start in July (Manage → Details) and the review counts July to June, named like "2026–27".

Your average last frost in spring and first in fall, from a nearby weather station. The safe date is later in spring, for tender plants like tomatoes. Your garden may differ a little, so enter your own if you know better.

When to start seeds, plant out and expect a harvest where you live.

A seed gets no watering tasks until it is sown, whether it is planned for today or a later day. A suggestion to sow it appears on Today (a week ahead for a later day); marking it Sown records the sowing and starts its care.

A perennial resting for the winter. Its tasks pause until you mark it growing again.

Some plants are missing details like soil pH. They still work fine; we just don't guess. Plants you add yourself work the same way.

Plants grouped to grow together on the plot drawing, like corn, beans and squash in a three sisters bed. A hill moves as one, and plants in it share ground rather than counting as crowded.

Every member sees every bed and what is growing in it. A bed's records — notes, photos, harvests and history — are for the people who work it or may look at it, and for stewards.

Steward: Runs the garden: who is in it, which beds they work, and can work any bed. Is told when a sensor goes quiet or runs low on battery.

Gardener: Plants and logs care on the beds they work, and on any bed nobody works.

Observer: Sees the garden and what's growing. A bed's records only where they are given a look.

A steward can also let a gardener add beds.

What somebody does on one bed is separate from their role, and there are three choices: not involved, can look, or gardener. Only a steward decides who gardens a bed, and only a steward invites. Somebody who gardens a bed can let anyone already in the garden look at it. Working a bed takes a working seat, so an observer who is given one becomes a gardener.