Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about MyVeggieGarden — how it works, what it tracks, and how it helps you grow a better garden each year.
Everything you need to know about using MyVeggieGarden to track your vegetable garden.
General
What is MyVeggieGarden?
MyVeggieGarden is a vegetable garden journal and season planner. It tracks your plants at the cultivar level — not just "tomato" but "Cherokee Purple Tomato" — logs milestones throughout the season, and helps you plan next year based on what actually happened in your garden, not generic internet advice.
How is MyVeggieGarden different from other garden apps?
Most garden apps are either layout planners (where to put plants) or reference tools (generic planting dates). MyVeggieGarden connects the full loop: plan your season, log what happens, review your results variety by variety, and use that to plan a better garden next year. The journal is the core product, not an afterthought.
Who is MyVeggieGarden for?
Home vegetable gardeners who have been at it a few seasons and want each year to build on the last. The kind of person who keeps a notebook — even messy one-line notes — and wants to remember what worked, what didn't, and why.
What platforms is MyVeggieGarden available on?
MyVeggieGarden is available on the web at myveggiegarden.app and as an iOS app for iPhone and iPad.
Plants & Plantings
What is the difference between a plant and a planting?
A Plant is a reusable variety template — "Cherokee Purple Tomato" exists once in your library. A Planting is one attempt to grow that plant in a specific zone and season. Growing Cherokee Purple in 2025 and again in 2026 creates two plantings of the same plant.
Do I need to manage My Plants directly?
No. Plants come into existence naturally when you plan a planting, add a plant to a zone, or create one from the catalog. My Plants is where you go to see what you've accumulated across seasons — a lookbook of your garden history.
What is the plant catalog?
The catalog is a built-in database of common vegetable varieties. When you search for a plant, the catalog surfaces matching varieties with pre-filled information. Manual plants are first-class — you can always create a plant by just typing a name without a catalog match.
Why does the app show full variety names?
Plants always show "Cherokee Purple Tomato", never just "Tomato". When you're growing multiple varieties of the same type, the variety name is the data that matters — it's what makes your journal useful year over year.
Milestones & Tasks
What are milestones?
Milestones are lifecycle phases a plant goes through: Started Indoors, Germinated, First True Leaves, Hardened Off, Transplanted, Flowering, First Fruit, Harvesting, Removed, and Winterized. They track what stage a plant is in — separate from status, which tracks how healthy it is.
What is the difference between milestones and status?
Milestone = what lifecycle stage (e.g., Flowering). Status = how healthy (Good, Fair, or Poor). A plant can be at "Flowering" milestone with "Poor" status — it's flowering but struggling. Both can be recorded in the same log entry.
How do tasks get generated?
Tasks are auto-generated from the intersection of milestones, your approved plants, and your local frost date. Each action milestone with a frost offset creates a task at the right time. "Start seeds indoors" might be frost minus 42 days; "Transplant outdoors" might be frost plus 14 days.
What happens when I complete a task?
Task completion and logging are the same action. When you complete a task, the app prompts for notes and creates a planting log tagged to that milestone. It also works in reverse — creating a log that matches a pending task automatically completes it.
What are frost date offsets?
Frost date offsets determine when action-based milestones should happen relative to your last frost date. For example, "Start seeds indoors" at -42 days (6 weeks before frost), "Transplant outdoors" at +14 days (2 weeks after frost).
Zones & Layout
How do zones work?
Zones are physical garden spaces — raised beds, planters, in-ground rows, patio pots. Each zone tracks sun exposure, soil type, constraints, and all plantings in that space. Assign plants to zones during planning to track what's where each season.
What are zone constraints?
Constraints are notes about known problems or rules for a zone, like "squash borers 2024" or "too shady for peppers." They help you avoid repeating mistakes when planning next season's layout.
Season Planning
How does season planning work?
The planning page has three acts: Reflect (review last season, make grow-again decisions for each plant), Plan (assign plants to zones, set quantities, add supports), and Act (review your auto-generated task timeline). AI suggests decisions based on your logs, but you always make the final call.
What are grow-again decisions?
For each plant you grew, you choose: Yes (grow it again the same way), Try Differently (grow it again but change something), or No (skip it next year). These decisions are stored per-season with notes and inform next year's planning.
When should I do my season planning?
Most gardeners plan in late January through March, depending on climate zone. The app works on your timeline — start whenever you're ready. The key is to plan while last season's memories are still fresh.
Logging & AI
What should I write in garden journal entries?
Write for future-you. Include conditions, measurements, and context: "Transplanted 6 seedlings, 8 inches tall, soil temp 62F." Log at moments that matter: planting, problems, harvests, weather events. Include quantities ("4 lbs" not "some"). The AI reads these to generate suggestions.
How does the AI use my garden logs?
The AI reads your actual notes to surface recurring problems, suggest grow-again decisions, inform timing predictions, and generate context-aware recommendations. It's not generic gardening advice — it's specific to what you grew and what you wrote about it.
What is the Ask feature?
In the planting drawer, you can ask questions about any planting — "How did this compare to last year?" or "What went wrong in July?" — and get answers grounded in your own log data and history.
Perennials
Can I track perennials across years?
Yes. Mark a plant as perennial, then use the Winterized milestone at end of season. This automatically creates a linked planting for next year, carrying the full history forward. View multi-year progress for establishment crops like asparagus and fruit bushes.
What does the Winterized milestone do?
Winterized is a protected milestone that marks a planting as dormant. For perennials, it triggers automatic creation of a linked planting for the next season. The new planting inherits the same zone, plant, and support assignments.
Supports
What garden supports can I track?
Trellises, cages, stakes, arches, and fences. Each can have a color for visual identification — "the red cage" is faster than "the cage on Cherokee Purple in zone 3."
What is the difference between fixed and portable supports?
Fixed supports are permanently attached to a zone (built-in trellis, permanent fence) and stay across seasons. Portable supports (cages, stakes) are movable inventory assigned to specific plantings and can be reassigned each season.
Getting Started
How do I set my frost date?
Go to Settings and enter your zip code — the app suggests a last frost date based on USDA data. You can adjust it manually if you know your microclimate differs from the regional average. Your frost date drives all task timing.
When should I start seeds indoors?
It depends on the plant and your frost date. The app calculates this automatically: tomatoes and peppers typically need 6-8 weeks before last frost, squash and cucumbers 3-4 weeks. Set your frost date and the app generates start-time tasks for each plant.