What shipped
Newest first. Short entries — what you can now do, and whether it fully works yet. The longer stories about how any of it went live on the blog, and the how-does-this-work pages are in help.
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A bed says its losses once
On the Garden screen, a bed where everything has finished used to say what it lost twice: “0 plants · 2 lost” and then “2 lost” again under it. Now the count says the losses, and the line under it says what is true there today: “nothing growing now.”
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A plant carried in for winter is not told to harden off
Bring a potted orange in for the winter and Today used to say “Hardening off · day 1 of 10 · Put the orange out”. A tree grown from seed in a pot read as a seed tray that had never gone outside. Hardening off is for a seedling’s first time out, so now a plant is past it once it was a year old or more when it went in, once you have marked it brought inside or moved back outside, or once it was sown more than a year ago, and its own yearly jobs come back. In spring, Move it back outside now says how: start it in part shade and work up to full sun over one to two weeks, because straight into full sun its leaves sunburn. That is University of Wisconsin–Madison Extension’s advice for citrus.
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A pot brought inside goes to the house
Tap Brought it in on a potted orange or lemon, and its pot is now filed under a zone called Indoors instead of staying on the porch. If you have no Indoors zone, the app makes one, and if your yard map shows your house, it stands on the house. Rain does not count for anything in it. In spring, Moved it outside puts the pot back in the zone it came from, and Undo on Today puts it back too.
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A pot you brought inside isn’t asked if it rained
Bring a pot into the house and its watering card asks only “Still damp” or “Watered”. Rain can’t reach it indoors, so “It rained” is gone from its card and from the plant’s own page. A pot on a covered porch still has it, because blown rain can reach a porch.
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A row crop’s extra plants show in gold
Ask Rafe “How many spinach fit?” under a bed and he counts how many more would fit, drawn in gold on the bed. A crop sown in a row, like spinach or carrots, puts the extras in the row already there, and until now nothing turned gold for it. Now the whole row turns gold, and Rafe says so: “8 more fit in the row already there, so 24 in all. The row is drawn in gold.” Nothing changes until you tap Use this.
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A saved recap keeps what you lost
If you tell your Season Recap “planted two apricots but one died,” saving it to your garden now keeps both. 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 both plants with no number. The count after you save counts that plant once. And a tree, or anything else that comes back each year, comes in still growing if it lived. Plants that finish each fall end with the season.
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A tree planted this fall is not in its harvest window
Plant an apple in October and your walk could come back saying the calendar had it in its harvest window. The stage a walk expects for each plant came from the crop’s calendar and never asked how old the plant was. It now asks the same way your daily list does, so a tree planted this fall reads as settling in, and your journal says so too. A tree you bought older had a second version of this: told it was two years old, the app counted this fall’s harvest as its own, though the fruit season began before the tree went in. A fruit window that opened before a tree was planted no longer counts for it; next year’s does. The numbers are sourced: an apple bears 2 to 8 years after planting, a dwarf tree in 2 to 3 (University of Minnesota Extension).
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A walk stops at every plant and tree
On a garden walk, each plant or tree is now its own stop, so every one gets its own photo. A space with more than one plant also gets a last stop for the whole space, for your journal. The live camera now opens at every stop, even your first visit, with the space drawn lightly over it. If it can’t open, the stop tells you why and the shutter opens your phone’s camera. A lone plant in a pot also lines up with last week’s photo of the pot.
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After the frost, the app knows you had a season
Once everything you grew has finished, Today says “Nothing in the ground right now” and points you to last season in your journal. Before, it said “Nothing planted yet” and asked you to add the first thing in your garden, the words it shows someone who just signed up. On the Garden screen, a bed or pot that grew something reads “nothing growing now,” even months after its last plant came out, and only one nothing has grown in yet reads “nothing in it yet.”
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Beds are laid out nearly twice as fast
The Garden Planner now lays out a bed in a little over half the time it took before. On a phone, the ready-made bed card under a bed shows about a second sooner. Every bed is drawn exactly as before: the same plants, in the same spots.
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Beds with a plan stay in the Garden Planner
If you asked for garlic, next season in the Garden Planner called your other beds “Full until frost”, even with next spring’s crops planned in them. With more than three, it folded them out of sight under one line, like “4 more places: full until frost”. Garlic goes in one bed, and the app counted every other bed as having no room for it. Now each bed shows with its own plan, and only a place that gets nothing all season says why.
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Each crop is spaced evenly along its row
When the Garden Planner draws a bed, a crop that fits in one row is now spaced evenly along it, the way you would plant it. Two tomatoes in an 8 ft bed stand 24 in from each end; three stand 16 in from the ends, with one in the middle. Before, the first plant took the middle of the bed and the next one went wherever was left. If spacing a row out would leave another plant without room, the bed is laid out the old way.
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Last season closes in one step
The first time you open GardenTrack after a season ends, the plants from its plan that never went in are closed out together, not one at a time. On a phone, the Garden Planner now settles in about a second and a half where it used to keep redrawing for nearly four. Each of those plants still gets its note: “The season ended before you said it went in.”
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Next season’s draft keeps your own picks first
When the Garden Planner drafts next season from a plan setup made, the crops you picked go in first. A crop setup added only goes in if it costs none of yours. Before, a 4 × 8 ft bed could come back with bush beans and summer squash in place of the tomatoes and peppers you chose. And a crop the draft can’t plan is never dropped quietly: it’s named after Left out, with why, like “Beans, the bed went to your other crops.”
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On planting day, a bed’s page opens on the bed
On the day plants in a bed are due to go in, the bed’s page now opens on the bed itself, right under its name. The line under the name says “planting day”, and All here is a full button under the bed. Before, the bed sat below the photo, the tabs and the Ask row, and All here was a small button beside it. Tap a dashed plant and its card offers It’s here; a quick tap used to open the plant’s page instead. After All here the line counts what went in, like “May 9 · 9 planted”, and a plant not due yet says why it stays dashed: “The basil isn’t due till May 23, so it stays dashed and says when.” The next day the page opens on the bed’s photo again.
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Rafe docks under the bed you are asking about
On a bed’s own page in the Garden Planner, Rafe’s sheet now opens just under the page’s drawing of the bed, headed with the season it is planning, like “Rafe · planning next May”, with Fold to tuck it away. Before, the sheet drew a second, smaller copy of the bed over the first one. Ask how many basil fit and the extra plants show in gold on the page’s own bed, until you tap Use this. Rafe’s suggestions also count crops the way a gardener says them: “How many basil fit?”, not “basils”.
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Rafe says “the kale is”, not “kale are”
When Rafe moves plants in a bed, his note says what moved. For crops you name without an s, like kale, basil, spinach and head lettuce, it used to read “Kale are on the left now.” Now it reads “The kale is on the left now.”, and his question buttons say “Why is the kale there?”. Tomatoes and peppers read as before.
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Recap pictures are paper cut-outs
The plant and pest pictures on your Season Recap cards are now flat paper cut-outs, with crisp edges and one small shadow. They replace the older rounded look. The plant pictures in the app use the same new set. The painted cover is a separate picture and isn’t part of this change.
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Remove a crop setup added
When your picks leave room in a bed, setup fills it with a crop or two you didn’t pick. On your plan’s By fall and in the Garden Planner, those crops now say added, with a Remove button. Tap it and the crop comes off your plan everywhere at once: the drawing, By fall and What to buy. The room stays open, and Undo puts it back for a few seconds. Next season’s draft leaves it out and says so after Left out. Star the crop and it’s back.
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Save my plan stays in reach
On the Garden Planner’s draft of next season, Save my plan used to sit at the very bottom, four screens down on a phone. Now it rides in a bar just above the tabs, with Save for later beside it, so you can save the moment the plan looks right.
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Rafe counts a nursery tree’s age, as Today does
Tell us how old a tree was when you planted it and Today counts those years when it decides whether the tree can crop. Rafe’s answer to “when will it be ready” only counted the seasons it had been in your ground, so a four-year-old apricot planted in April was called too young while Today offered its harvest. Rafe now counts the same years, and says when it went in and how old it was then.
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Each bed opens on its own page
Tap a bed's name on the Garden Planner, or Why here? on the garden map, and that bed opens on a page of its own. You see its size, the goal it was laid out for, every plant drawn where it goes, and a short line for each crop saying why it stands there. Use this layout saves the plan, and Arrange it lets you lift a plant and move it.
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The app draws your yard, and you fix what the maps got wrong
At the garden map's Yard stop, Draw your yard finds your house from free public maps and draws your yard to scale, north up: your house, your neighbors' houses and your trees sized to their spread, dashed until you say they are right. Fix the map changes the rest: drag a tree's edge to size it, pick Short, Medium or Tall, add a tree, a fence or a shed, or slide your house onto where it stands. The shading under the yard shows where the sun falls from April to September, and redraws after each change. Your address is used once to find the maps and not saved.
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Next season's bed says when it is close to a ready-made bed
When most of a bed in next season's draft is already one of the ready-made beds, its drawing says so: Close to a pizza bed. Pick Simple or Most food and the bed redraws at that version's counts and spacing, with Undo. Save my plan keeps the version you picked.
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A walk photo marks what it shows as planted
When a photo on your garden walk shows plants growing where your plan put them, the walk opens with a Found card: the bed drawn with them ringed, and one tap to mark them planted. Not yet moves on, and nothing is marked until you tap.
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Ask Rafe to arrange a bed, and see what moved
On next season's draft, tap Ask Rafe about this bed and say it plainly: tomatoes at the back, six lettuce, keep the basil where it is. Rafe reports what you asked, and the app places every plant. Each change says what moved, whether anything else had to make room, and has one Undo. How many fit, Why there and Make it 12 are worked out on your phone, cost nothing, and work offline. Typing to Rafe is on a paid plan.
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Garlic goes in only when you ask for it
A fresh plan for next season used to put garlic in every bed, even when you had never asked for it. Now garlic goes in only if you starred it, in one bed, and its row shows the day it is ready to dig. Before, a garlic row never said when it would come out, so the plan treated it as standing in the bed all year.
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Lettuce gets a tomato's afternoon shade
Next season's plan now puts a cool crop like lettuce or spinach in a taller plant's afternoon shade when it grows through the hottest weeks, worked out from your garden's latitude, the date and which side of the bed faces north. Spring lettuce and warm crops stay in the sun. Lift a plant and the bed shows where each tall plant's shadow falls.
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Lift a plant and see where it does best
On next season's draft, hold a plant still and it lifts. The bed glows green where it would do best, and a label above your finger says what a spot breaks, like crowding the pepper by about 3 in. You can still drop it anywhere. Only that plant moves, and the move has one Undo.
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Onions and beans can share a bed now
Every companion chart says to keep onions and garlic away from beans and peas. Trials do not back it. Garlic grown with faba beans raised the bean harvest, and an onion and bean trial found only mild crowding. So the Garden Planner no longer keeps them apart. The same goes for the cabbage family beside strawberries and pole beans. The plant pages stopped listing these as pairs to avoid, so they match the companion chart.