Help & FAQ

It’s purely a display choice — it never moves your plants. “Recommended spacing” draws each plant’s circle at the low end of its recommended spacing range, so the bed shows how much room each one really wants. “Actual size” draws much tighter footprints based on square-foot-gardening density, useful when you interplant intensively. Either way, the crowding and companion warnings are calculated from the recommended spacing, so switching to “Actual size” won’t hide a real spacing problem.

The planner only lets you place as many of a plant as you’re actually growing. To raise that number, go to My Garden, find the plant’s card, tap “Edit quantity”, and set how many you’re growing. That count immediately becomes available in the Plot Planner. Tip: use “Fill bed” there to drop several at once instead of one at a time.

You’ve placed all of that variety you’re growing — the palette tracks your real inventory across every bed. Increase the quantity in My Garden (see above) and the extras become placeable.

“Add to Garden” means it’s growing now — it appears in My Garden with watering reminders and a harvest log. “Plan for a future season” files it under the Planned tab for an upcoming spring or fall; we’ll remind you when it’s time to start seeds or transplant, and you promote it to your live garden when you actually plant it.

Every plant has a watering rhythm (every N days). When it’s overdue the card turns blue and says “Needs water”. We check your local forecast — if enough rain fell in the last 24 hours it’s counted as a watering automatically and the card shows a 🌧️ rain badge, so you’re not told to water right after a storm. You can also tap the “Watered” date to log or back-date a watering yourself.

Each row is one plant across the year (Jan–Dec). Amber = start seeds indoors, green = growing outside, orange = harvest, pink = bloom. The vertical red line is today. Once you have more than ~10 plants the rows scroll while the month labels stay pinned at the top.

Yes. Above your plant cards there’s a search box that floats a matching plant to the top — handy with a big garden. To set a lasting order, drag the ⠿ handle on the left of any card. The Garden Calendar uses the same order, so whatever you move to the top of your cards moves to the top of the calendar too.

Your USDA hardiness zone tailors every planting calendar to your local frost dates (or, in frost-free zones, to the cool vs. warm seasons), and unlocks “Suited to your zone” in the Library. Annual veggies always show — they’re grown in one season — while perennials are filtered to those that survive year-round where you live. Set it under Account.

Set a plant’s status to “Harvesting” and a “Record a harvest” form appears on its card. For perennials (which live for years), use “End season” from the card’s ⋯ menu — it saves the year’s notes and harvest totals to the plant’s history and resets the card for next year instead of deleting it.

“Regional” means the plant is regulated as a noxious or invasive weed in some US states — check your local rules before planting. Toxicity banners flag plants (or plant parts) that can be harmful to people or pets. Always positively identify anything before handling or eating it; see each plant’s profile for details.

The Garden Calendar and My Garden are age-aware for perennials. A young perennial (like asparagus or a fruit bush) is shown as "establishing" with a full-year growing bar and no harvest until it's old enough to produce — it even tells you the year to expect your first real harvest. Once it matures, it switches to "established" and shows its recurring bloom/harvest window each year. This stops a newly planted perennial from telling you it's ready to harvest when it isn't.

Open the Archive (in the ☰ More menu), find the plant, and tap ✏️ Edit on its card. You can correct the planted date, the notes, and each harvest's date / amount / notes, or delete an individual harvest row — then tap Save. You no longer need to restore the plant to the garden first.

On a plant's card in My Garden, tap "Edit quantity" to set how many are alive now, and attach a note to the change (e.g. "jackrabbit ate 10"). The card keeps a plant-count history so it can tell the story like "2 of 12", and you can edit or delete those history entries later. The Plot Planner uses the current count to know how many you have left to place.

Dragging places one plant at a time. "Fill bed" lets you pick how many of each variety to add at once, then either "Place where I tap" (drops the group as a spaced block where you tap — easiest on a phone) or "Auto-arrange" (packs them neatly into the bed using companion-friendly ordering). Both add to what's already in the bed; they never wipe it. There's also multi-level Undo.

It powers the sun/shade warnings. Once the app knows which way your bed faces, it can warn you when a tall plant (corn, sunflowers, trellised tomatoes) is placed where it will shade a shorter sun-loving neighbor through the day, and suggest moving it to the north edge. The warning stays off until you set the orientation, so it's never naggy.

Cool-season crops (lettuce, spinach, kale, etc.) can often be grown in both spring and fall, so their profile calendar shows two labeled rows. In My Garden, each plant's window is chosen from its own planted date — a fall-sown crop shows its fall-through-winter window, even wrapping past the new year.

If you garden in a hot-summer region and the plant is heat-sensitive (like lettuce, collards, or artichoke), the Sun quick-stat adds an "afternoon shade in summer heat" note and the Plot Planner factors it into placement for spring plantings. It's tailored to your location's summer heat, not just your winter hardiness zone.

Yes. In frost-free zones (USDA 11+) the app skips the frost model entirely and switches to a cool-season vs. year-round planting calendar instead of inventing frost dates. Tropical and subtropical perennials also surface in the Library for your zone.

GardenBot answers questions about the plants, pests, and diseases in our guides, helps you use the app, and can look at your own garden — your current plants, planned plantings, past harvests, and beds. So you can ask things like "is it too late to plant tomatoes in my zone?", "what's eating my kale?", or "what did I harvest last year?" It's informational, so always positively identify a plant before eating it.