How GrowSomeFood works

Stages start as estimates from your planting date plus typical durations for that plant. Real gardens run early or late — open the plant and correct its stage, and the app re-anchors from there. Logging a harvest also advances a plant to its harvest stage automatically.

Your zone and frost dates decide each plant's realistic planting and harvest windows. Without a zone, features like planting windows, "plantable now", and plant ideas stay off because we'd just be guessing.

Yes — switch gardens from the picker in the top navigation, and create a new one from this page's garden menu. Each garden keeps its own plants, layouts, logs, and harvest totals.

Either from the plant's detail sheet or on the Harvest page with the Log harvest button. It counts toward your totals and appears in your journal.

From your plants. Each planting's stage timeline (watering, feeding, pruning, harvest checks…) produces tasks at the right time for your garden. Tasks you create yourself are marked as custom.

Skip it. Skipping is the app's way of remembering "don't suggest this one again." Deleting a generated task doesn't teach it anything — the stage timeline can regenerate it.

Snooze means "yes, but later" — the task moves to a new date. Skip means "not doing this one" — it leaves the list and stays gone.

The ideal time range for that task has passed. Some work is still worth doing late; some isn't — the plant guide is the best judge, so peek at it before skipping.

They depend on your growing zone. Set it from the garden page (the zone button) and both light up with windows computed for your climate.

Probably not: it only lists plants in or near their harvest window. Early in the season that's often nobody. The Season view shows when each plant's harvest is expected to arrive.

The bar is anchored to that plant's stage timeline. If the plant is actually ahead or behind, correct its stage from the garden page and the bar re-anchors.

A task is something to do; a log is something that happened. Completing a task records it, and writing a log needs no task at all — plenty of gardening is just noticing things.

Automatic highlights assembled from your photos, milestones, and harvests — a scrapbook the journal builds for you. Open one and share it as an image if you're proud of it (you should be).

Only you. Nothing from the journal is public — community sharing happens separately, and only when you post a tip yourself.

Anything with an ≈ is estimated. If you log a count ("6 peppers") without weighing it, the page converts it using that crop's own projection (about 3.2 oz per pepper, say) so your progress still moves — clearly marked ≈. Weigh a basket and the real number replaces the estimate for those picks.

It's an estimate anchored to each plant's stage. If a plant is running early or late, correct its stage from the garden page and the forecast shifts with it.

There's nothing plantable to harvest yet — this garden has no plants. Add one from the garden page first.

Plantings whose harvest window is open now (or opens within a week), plus anything you've logged harvesting in the last two weeks — across all your gardens.

Recipes are shown exactly as their authors wrote them — the way they taste best. Each one says how many it serves, so pick dinners that fit your table (leftovers are a feature).

The plan step has vegetarian / vegan / gluten-free filters and an "avoid these ingredients" list. Both stick for next time.

No — tasks, calendar, and harvest all run off your planting list alone. The layout adds the spatial layer: where things are, and how the space is used.

Yes. Create a second layout and design freely — layouts are independent maps, so a draft never disturbs the current plan.

Undo (in the editor toolbar) walks it right back. Undo history covers your editing session, so fix mistakes before you leave the studio.

Your growing zone plus today's date, matched against each plant's planting windows. No zone set means nothing to match — set it with the zone button and the list comes alive.

Not everything worth knowing is worth planting. Hazard entries like poison ivy are information-only — they exist so you can identify them. Others are marked not recommended (invasives like kudzu), where the guide teaches control instead of cultivation.

The plant's historical native range includes your state — before gardens, it grew there on its own. It's a great filter for pollinator and low-effort planting; introduced plants (even beloved ones) won't appear in it.

Tell us with the feedback button — new plants are added in waves, and requests genuinely steer which wave comes next.

Check the badge: hazard plants (poison ivy, poison hemlock…) are deliberately view-only. They're in the catalog so you can identify and handle them — not grow them.

They're typical ranges, tuned to your zone where possible. Your actual plant will drift — that's normal, and the garden page lets you correct a planting's stage whenever reality disagrees.

We want to know — the feedback button reaches a human. Guides are maintained continuously and corrections ship fast.

One per physical space works best. Pages like Tasks and the journal can show everything across gardens or filter to one, so splitting costs nothing — and layouts and harvest totals stay honest.

The zone picker helps you find it from your location, and links to the official USDA lookup if you want to double-check.

Its plants, layouts, and logs go with it — permanently. If you're retiring a season rather than a place, consider just clearing out finished plants instead.

No — and you never will just to use the app. Every feature is open on the free app, and fair-use limits are raised for free by asking a human.

Grow with it and tell us what's wrong. Honest feedback about a confusing page or a wrong planting date makes the app better for every grower — and you can watch it ship on What's new.

Review is the feature, not a delay: it's what keeps the feed free of spam and noise. Approval usually lands within a day.

Questions are welcome — "has anyone kept squash bugs off zucchini without spraying?" is exactly the kind of post other growers love to answer.

Tips attach to plant pages, so there's no home for it yet — request the plant with the feedback button first, and post once it lands.

The feedback button floats on every page of the app. Bug, idea, question, complaint — all fair game, and all read.

The surest way to know is this page. If you've opted into garden update emails, bigger releases may reach your inbox too — control that in email settings.