About Garden Plotter

Garden Plotter is a planner for people in their first few seasons of growing vegetables. Tell it where you live and what you're growing, and it works out the dates, watches the weather, and gives you a short list each week, with the reason for every item.

Who it's for

Anyone with a bed, a few pots or a community garden plot who wants to know what to do this week, without reading a whole book first. You don't need to know your growing zone or your frost dates. Missed a week? There's no pile of overdue jobs: the list quietly catches up with where your garden is now.

Where the dates come from

• Frost dates come from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate records for 1991 to 2020, at the weather station nearest your garden. They're shown as a range, because frost doesn't keep to a calendar, and you can change them if your yard runs warm or cold. Outside the U.S., or far from a station, you type in your area's usual dates.
• Sowing, planting and picking windows are worked out from your frost dates and each crop's needs: how long it takes to grow, whether it's started indoors, and how warm the soil should be.
• Weather comes from Open-Meteo, including the soil temperature where seeds sit. When it isn't available, the U.S. National Weather Service fills in, and its official warnings show up too.
• Crop varieties come with the seller and item number from seed catalogs, so the seed list is easy to order from.

What it does

• A first plan in about two minutes: your ZIP code, your frost dates, and a first bed.
• Today: up to five things that matter this week, changed by rain, heat and frost.
• Your garden drawn as it is, with each crop's spot in its bed and a season calendar.
• A journal for photos, notes and harvests, and a recap at the end of the season that shapes next year's plan.
• A garden helper you can ask about next season's plan or a crop that looks wrong, with a photo if you like.
• Frost and heat emails, and the week ahead on Sundays, once you sign in.
• Sharing a garden with the people you grow with.

What it costs

Garden Plotter is free, and there are no ads. You can use it without an account: your garden is saved on your device. Signing in with your email keeps it in step between your phone and this website. See Privacy for what that means for your data.

Where to use it

Garden Plotter works in any modern web browser, on a phone in the garden or a computer at the kitchen table. An iPhone app is on its way.

Get in touch

Questions, ideas or something not working? See Help and support.