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GardenTrack is open to a small group first. You need the invite code from your invitation the first time you sign in — after that you never need it again. Here is what each message on that screen means.

The first time you open GardenTrack — and again any time you start your garden over — it asks where you garden and what is growing, one thing per screen. Here is what it does with each answer, and what happens if you skip.

GardenTrack asks which variety of a crop you planted, because a Sungold and a Cherokee Purple ripen weeks apart. Three honest answers when you add a plant — pick one, say you're not sure, or type the name — plus two that need no tapping at all: photograph the seed packet, or just say it in a chat about a plant you already have.

Where the app's numbers come from, how much of it is sourced, and how to download the crop and variety data free.

What happens when you tap Add to my garden while reading, where those plants are kept, and the button that carries them into the app and sets your garden up around them.

Tap the + in the middle of the bar, pick a plant, pick what happened. Watered, fed, picked, saw a pest, or just looked it over and it was fine. No typing unless you want to, and no AI involved at any point.

GardenTrack asks whether each plant is in a tray, a pot, a bed or the ground. It is the single biggest input into how often it tells you to water — and it keeps asking until you answer.

Tap Look beside any crop while you are adding a plant and you get one answer: can this go in your garden this week, based on your own frost dates. Then a button that brings you straight back with it chosen.

A single button in your profile deletes every plant, bed, journal entry, photo and reminder you have, and leaves your account signed in. It is meant for starting over from scratch. Here is exactly what goes, what stays, and why there is no undo.

The Ask tab is a chat, in the shape you already know from every other chat app. What makes it different is that it opens already knowing your plants, your frost dates and your notes — so 'what should I do this week?' has a real answer instead of a general one.

Photograph a plant to find out what it is, or what is wrong with it. GardenTrack answers using that plant's own history — what you fed it, when it went in, what you wrote down in June. Here is what it can see, what it refuses to guess, and why it never adds a plant without asking you first.

On any plant's page there is a line that says Something looks wrong? Tap it and you get a list of what people actually see on that crop — holes in the leaves, a dark patch on the fruit, wilting in the afternoon. Pick one and you get the causes, written by the people who study that crop, with their name on it and a link back.

Every screen in GardenTrack has a small pencil button. Tap it, say what is wrong, send. The app attaches which screen you were on, so you never have to describe it.

What each failure message under a message actually means, why Try again sometimes looks like it is doing nothing, and where your words are while they wait. Nothing you typed is lost when a send fails — it is on your phone, queued, and it goes on its own.

The four numbers GardenTrack keeps about how the app is used, what one of those records holds — a random number and a timestamp — and why it stops the moment you make an account.

The screen you open in the morning. What lands on it, what order it comes in, and the one rule behind that order: only two things ever outrank a job you asked for yourself.

The screen for looking rather than doing. Seven days at a glance, every job on the day it lands, and no progress bar — because deciding to do none of it today is a perfectly good answer.

A fruit tree owes you three or four jobs a year, not one a week. GardenTrack lists them with when each one falls, and it knows that a cherry must not be pruned when an apple is.

Some of the scariest things a plant does are the plant working correctly. GardenTrack names the three that get misread as a dying plant, tells you what the plant is actually doing, and says when the sign is really a deadline.

A task that says "Thin seedlings" is only half an instruction. GardenTrack now puts the measurement in the job itself — how far apart, how deep, how much water, and how to tell a thing is ready.

Come back from a week away and every garden app shows you the same undifferentiated list. GardenTrack sorts the once-a-year jobs into the ones you can still do and the ones whose window has closed until next year — and it will not accuse you of missing anything from before you had the app.

Almost every date in GardenTrack is worked out from your last and first frost. Here is where those two dates come from, how precise they are, and what happens if you skip the step.

GardenTrack checks every perennial you add against how cold your winter gets, and tells you before you plant if it will not come through. It never stops you — it tells you what to do instead.

GardenTrack walks you through the week of moving seedlings outdoors: one step a day, a bring-in time for each one, and a record of how long they were actually out.

GardenTrack checks tonight's forecast against every plant you are growing and warns you about the ones that will not survive it. Hardy crops stay silent on purpose.

Tap through to your week from Today and the band draws every crop you started this season across your year, colored by what it is doing, with the ones that run out of year named underneath. Trees, bushes and canes get a ring rather than a bar.

When a run of hot days is coming, GardenTrack checks it against the plants you are growing and tells you the evening before. Plants in pots get a different answer from plants in the ground.

Every 'days to maturity' number counts from sowing, and a cutting or a nursery plant was never sown here. What we can tell you, what we round toward, and the two things you can look at that beat any number.

Photographing a plant writes a journal entry. The picture is saved on your phone first so it works with no signal, then backed up. Here is what it does, and the two things it does not do yet.

Two ways to make a plant leave your garden, and they mean opposite things. Delete is for something you added by mistake and it removes every trace. Recording a death keeps the plant, the dates and the journal — because a plant that died is a real thing that happened in your garden.

The floating microphone starts listening the moment you tap it, right where you are standing. Opened on one of your plants it says which plant, and it takes a photo. Here is what it does, what it deliberately does not do, and the one thing about speaking that needs a connection.

Take up to ten photos as you walk, tap which plant each one is, and every picture gets looked at. What we notice goes in that plant's record. What we did not look at says so.

Tap Harvested and the app asks how much, with the amounts you actually pick already on buttons. Answer in a second or skip it — either way the harvest is already saved.

Every plant in GardenTrack lives somewhere — a bed, a row, a pot, a windowsill. Here is where your places are listed, how to rename or resize one, how to make a new one before you plant anything, and what happens to a place you empty out.

Everything you record is written to your phone first and copied to your account afterwards. Here is what the counter at the bottom of the screen means, and what to do when it says a change is not backed up.

Every plant keeps a dated record, and every bed shows the record of everything in it. Entries are sorted into what happened, how it went, and whether it was worth remembering.

Every entry across every plant and every season, in one list you can search and filter. GardenTrack works out what each entry is about as you write it, so "everything about pests" is one tap rather than opening plants one at a time.