A few questions about you and your place, and the app stops guessing

Common questions

Why does the address box fill in as I type?

So you do not have to type the whole thing, and so a typo does not send your garden to the wrong town — new on 7 September 2026. After a few letters the box offers matching addresses; tap one and the app looks up your frost dates for that spot. Pressing return on what you typed still works, and a ZIP on its own still works. If nothing appears under the box, nothing is wrong — the suggestions come from a lookup service that may be switched off on the day, and the box then behaves like an ordinary one.

Nothing is growing yet. I am only planning. What do I do on the plant screen?

Tap Nothing yet, I am planning under the list — new on 7 September 2026. The question becomes What do you want to grow?, the spot question asks where it will live, and the plant is saved as a plan rather than as something in the ground. Its season is then drawn from your last frost, which is the earliest it could go in. Tap the same button again to switch back. Either answer is a good one. The app does not think less of a garden that is still on paper; it only wants to stop pretending a plan is already growing.

Where does it live only gave me three pictures. Where do I name the bed?

Later, on its own page — and you may never need to. Setup asks what kind of spot it is, as three painted pictures: a raised bed, a pot, or the ground. Those three all describe the same thing — what the roots are sitting in — and the app can use that straight away, because a pot dries out faster than a bed. The growing space is created with that kind as its name. Open it from the Garden screen, tap the Details tab and then Edit, and you can rename it, give it a size, or say more. A greenhouse is a garden zone rather than a kind of spot, and that is asked about there.

The last screen says what the app knows. Why is there no first job?

Because a wrong first job would be the worst thing we could show you. Until 7 September the setup ended by picking one task for your new plant. A plant the app met a minute ago has no history to pick from, and a job that is wrong for your garden — water something that is already wet, cover something that is already inside — would tell you the app does not know what it is talking about, on day one. So the last thing you see is what the app knows: your frost dates and where they came from, your plant, its spot, and its whole season drawn against your dates with today marked on it. Jobs come once the app has something true to base them on.

The season drawing is labeled Typical season. Why not my actual dates?

Because setup did not ask when the plant went in, and a screen that does not ask must not answer. The band shows that plant's typical season where you garden — when seeds are up, when the first flowers come, when picking usually starts — worked out from your own frost dates, not a national average. A stage that is already behind you says when it usually begins, never done, because nobody logged it. Tell the app the planting date on the plant's own page and the same dates become yours. A plan is drawn from your last frost, which is the earliest it could go in.

Setup used to end by asking which plan I would pick. Where did that go?

It's gone. After setup you make a free account with your email, and that's all. You don't pick a plan to get in. The five setup screens are all about your garden. What the free plan holds, and what a beta invite code does instead, is in When am I asked to create an account? below.

When am I asked to create an account?

At the end of the first interview, and it's free. When you open the app without an account, it asks you a few questions about you and your place, builds a free plan for your first spot, then asks for your email and sends a code. The garden you just described goes onto the account. Paid plans open Jan 5, 2027, at $15 a month or $150 a year, and you pick one from inside the app. If you’d like to join the beta, fill in the form at gardentrack.app/beta. If you were sent an invite code, tap I’m a beta user under the email box and enter it there. Nothing is charged, and no card is asked for.

You never pick a plan to get in. The five-screen setup has no account step, because it runs for someone who already has one. There is a free plan. It gives you 10 active plants with no limit on growing spaces, plus Today, frost and heat warnings, the journal, adding plants by hand, and a one-time taste of the AI: 5 Talk credits (about two dozen messages), 2 photo adds, 2 diagnoses and 1 garden walk, which don't reset. Planning is on the paid plan.

Email is always there; buttons for Google or Facebook appear only when we have switched them on, so you will never see a button that does nothing. Someone who already has an account signs in as usual.

Setup used to ask what I want from my garden. Where did that go?

Off the setup path, on 9 September 2026 — you now answer it on your Profile, under What Rafe knows, or the first time you talk to Rafe.

A stranger wants their plant before their philosophy. It was the very first screen, before we had even asked where you garden, and it was the one question on the path that was about you rather than about your garden. Setup is five screens now and every one of them is about the garden.

Nothing is lost. It is the same question with the same four answers and it writes the same thing: food, to stop losing plants, to get better at it, or a place that looks good. Say you want food and the plant screen offers tomatoes, lettuce, basil, peppers, carrots and beans; say a place that looks good and it offers marigolds, sunflowers, zinnias, nasturtiums, lavender and cosmos.

What changed for you in practice: during setup the plant screen now offers the food list, because we have not asked yet. Search for anything you like — the whole plant database is behind that box. Answer the question afterwards and the app puts your kind of thing first from then on.

Why does the sky change as I go through setup?

Because it is the same drawn sky as the home screen, and it walks through the day as you walk through the five screens. Where you garden is drawn at sunrise, your growing days in the morning, your plant at midday, the spot at golden hour, and the screen that shows what the app knows at night. Nothing about it is a photograph. The first screen opens on a painted vegetable garden, and the three kinds of spot are paintings too — those are the only pictures, and none of them pretends to be your garden. The one thing on those screens that is yours is the numbers.

Why does it want my address before it wants anything else?

Because almost every date in the app is worked out from your frost dates, and until it knows where you are it cannot work them out for you — it falls back to a typical zone 6b, which is a regional average wearing the costume of a real answer. It tells you when it is doing that. What it does with an address is find the frost record for a small patch of ground around your garden, from 26 years of daily records. That is deliberately much smaller than a ZIP: a ZIP center can sit four miles from your garden, eight in the country, and in hilly ground four miles is weeks of difference. We keep the coordinates and the dates, not the address.

I skipped it. Can I get it back?

Yes, any time. Profile has a card called Setup walkthrough with a link that runs the same five screens, whatever state your garden is in — skipped, half-done, or years old with two hundred plants in it. It deletes nothing. It updates your frost dates if you give it a location, adds a plant if you name one, and leaves everything else exactly where it was; if you want to actually clear your garden, that is the Start over section at the bottom of the same page and it says so much more loudly. When you finish, it puts you back on Profile where you started rather than dropping you on the home screen.

Will I get the setup again if I start my garden over?

Yes, and that is deliberate. Restarting your garden from Profile with Clear everything puts you back where a brand-new gardener starts — no plants, no frost dates — so the walkthrough runs again from the first screen. Keep my location does not, and should not: it leaves your frost dates in place, so setup has nothing left to ask and stays out of your way. That is the same distinction the restart screen itself draws. Skipping the walkthrough once does not block it from running after a future restart either — a skip in March is not a decision about a garden you start over in July.

Can I skip the setup?

Yes, all of it. There is an X in the top-left of every screen and it will not come back on its own — the only thing that brings it back is deliberately restarting your garden. Nothing is lost by skipping — you can pin your garden later from Profile, and add plants whenever you like. The only thing you give up is accuracy: skip the first screen and every date in the app stays a regional guess until you set it. The app keeps saying so rather than quietly pretending otherwise — Today carries a line offering to pin your garden and saying every date is a guess until you do, and it stays there until you have.

Why does it show me other places near me?

Because that is the whole point of working your dates out for your own spot rather than your region. The second screen shows your last frost in the middle and the same figure five miles north, south, east and west of you, with the difference in days. In hilly ground those numbers are startling — on one Utah address, five miles west is 11 days earlier and five miles east is 34 days later, a month and a half of spread inside a ten-mile box. A ZIP code would have handed all of those gardeners the same date. A neighbor inside two days of you says same week rather than leaving a hole in the picture, and if your ground is genuinely even for miles the screen says that instead and does not invent a difference.

What is a growing day, and where did my number come from?

It is the stretch between your last spring frost and your first autumn one — the part of the year you can grow tender things outdoors without covering them. The second screen shows yours as a single number because that is the fact people actually want, and the two dates underneath it because that is the fact people need. Both move if you change your answer to When do you like to plant? on that same screen.

When do you like to plant — what does that change?

Every date in the app, and it is the honest way to hold a number that is really a range. Your last frost is an average, and one spot can vary by more than a month between an early year and a late one — on the Utah address above, the same patch runs from early April to early May depending on the year. Printing the midpoint and saying nothing hides that. So the second screen offers three: Play it safe uses the date the frost is finished by nine years out of ten, which costs you a couple of weeks of season. The usual date is the date most seed packets mean, an even chance either way, and it is what you get if you never touch it. Chance it early uses the early end — plant then and most years you will be covering things at least once, which is worth it if you own the covers. Pick one and the growing-day count and both dates move while you watch. Nothing is hidden behind it: the app just counts against the dates you chose.

Why do I only get two choices instead of three?

Because where you garden, some years have no spring frost at all. Across the Gulf Coast, coastal California and the southern tier there are winters that simply never freeze, so there is no meaningful early date to offer — the records cannot produce one. Rather than show a third button that quietly gives you the same date as the middle one, the app shows two and says why. Houston is the clean example: it has a cautious date and a middle date and no early chance to take.

It only let me add one plant. Where is the rest of my garden?

Setup asks for one on purpose. The point of the first run is to get the app right about your dates and show you one plant working, not to make you type in a whole garden before you have seen anything happen. Everything else goes in from the Garden tab whenever suits — and Today will keep a standing line reminding you, because Today is only as useful as the garden it knows about.

It did not ask whether I sowed it or bought it. Does that matter?

It does, and it is asked later rather than never. Setup asks only what is growing and what kind of spot it lives in, because those two are cheap to answer and enough to start. How it started, which variety, how many, and when it went in all change what the app tells you — a variety can move a harvest date by weeks — so the plant's own page asks for them once the plant exists and has a name. Questions about a thing that is already there read as interest; the same questions before it exists read as a form.

Do I need an account to do any of this?

Yes, you need an account, and it can be free. You make it at the end of the first interview, with your email and a code we send. Everything in the app is behind it: your garden, the journal, walks and Talk. The only things that work without an account are Add to my garden on our plant pages and the free Season Recap, both on the website.

There are three ways in. You can start on GardenTrack Free. While there are places, you can join the beta by filling in the short form at gardentrack.app/beta. And if you were sent a beta invite code, you can use that. None of them asks for a card.

Once you are signed in you stay signed in, including with no signal. The app does not check the network to let you in, so a garden at the end of a lane with one bar still opens. Signing out is the only thing that closes it.

I made a Season Recap on the website. Where does it go?

Into your garden, as past plantings — from 29 September 2026. When you save your recap to your GardenTrack account, each plant in it comes in as a 2026 plant that has finished for the year (a tree, or anything else that comes back each year, comes in still growing), in the first bed you made (or a new one called My garden if you have none). Its note, your idea for next year and whether you would grow it again go into that plant's journal.

Past plantings do not count toward the free plan's 10 plants. Next year, when you add the same crop, its page shows what you said, like Last year you said: grow it again.

From 14 October 2026, a plant you lost only some of comes in as two plants. Say you wrote planted two apricots but one died. You get one apricot that lived and one that died, each with the number you gave. If you said both died, it is one plant that died. If you said some died but not how many, you get the two plants with no number on either. When you save, the banner counts that plant once as planted, and the dead one as lost.

If we cannot tell which crop a name means, like Sungold, or tomatoes and basil on one line, the plant still comes in under your own words, without growing guidance. If your account had no garden when you saved it, the recap comes in the next time you open the app after setup.

Do I get my Season Recap card by email?

Yes, from 30 September 2026. Give your email on the Season Recap and we email you your card, with a link to see it again. To keep the recap itself, sign up and it comes into your garden.

What is the picture on my Season Recap card?

A painted garden, made from the plants you grew, from 2 October 2026. After you check your plants and say where most of them grew (raised beds, in the ground or pots), we paint a garden with those plants for the cover. It's the kinds of plants you grew in the kind of garden you picked, not a picture of your own beds.

It takes a minute or two, so it may still be painting when you give your email. It shows up on the page when it's done, and your card email has it.

We paint up to six plants we have a picture for, and if you grew more, the ones that did best. A plant that didn't make it isn't painted, and neither is one you added or renamed on the check screen. If we can't paint it, the cover uses one of our own paper landscapes, and the page says so.

From 14 October 2026 the plant and pest pictures on the cards are flat paper cut-outs. Behind the cover are cards like your star plant, what else thrived, what the deer or the frost got, what fought you and what you said you'd do next year. You get the ones your season has something for. The wording on the cover is ours, from what you told us. If you'd rather not have it, Use a plain cover under the cards swaps it, until you give your email. Once you've given your email, Save all saves every card. Share sends them with a link to your cover; where your browser has no share sheet, it copies the link.

I got the wrong spot. Can I change it?

Yes — on the dates screen there is a Somewhere else button that takes you back to the question, and after setup the same thing lives in Profile under Where you garden, with the same address box that fills in as you type. Changing it re-does the frost dates and every date that hangs off them. If you typed a ZIP rather than a street, the app marks the result as the middle of your ZIP and says why, rather than presenting it with the same confidence as a rooftop.

Why did it not ask my hardiness zone?

Because we cannot work it out from your coordinates and we would rather not ask you for something we cannot check. Zone answers one question — whether a perennial like a rosemary, a fig or an apple tree lives through your winter — and frost dates answer nearly everything else. So setup asks for the one that does the heavy lifting, and the zone sits in Profile for when you want it. Setting it is one tap and there is an I do not know mine if you do not.

I set my location, pressed save, and nothing happened. Did I do something wrong?

No. That was our bug, and it is fixed as of 31 August 2026.

On a phone that had never saved anything yet — the app just added to your home screen, or the very first thing you did — pinning your location wrote nothing. You would see your frost dates previewed, press the button, and the screen would just sit there. No error, no explanation.

The cause: your garden is created the first time something is saved. The save code was checking whether a garden already existed and quietly giving up when it did not — which is precisely the moment it was supposed to make one.

If this happened to you, nothing was saved and nothing was corrupted — it simply never ran. Set your location again and it will stick.

Can I make the app dark?

There is no switch any more. From 6 September 2026 the app follows the sky where you garden: light by day, darker after sunset, on its own. That is what a dark mode was ever for, and it means nothing to find in a settings page.

More on this

• Your garden dates
• Places in your garden
• Joining the beta
• Backing up your garden