My Plants
Understand how MyVeggieGarden's plant library stores your variety templates and connects to the plant catalog.
The plant library — called My Plants — is your personal collection of every variety you've ever grown. Think of it as a lookbook of your garden history.
Plants are reusable templates
In MyVeggieGarden, a "plant" is a variety template — a record that exists once and is used across all seasons.
"Cherokee Purple Tomato" is one plant. When you grow it in 2025 and again in 2026, those are two plantings of the same plant.
This means your plant library accumulates over time. After a few seasons, you'll have a rich record of everything you've grown.
What's stored on a plant
| Field | What it captures |
|---|---|
| Name | The variety name ("Cherokee Purple") |
| Type | The plant type ("Tomato") |
| Icon | Visual identifier |
| Growing method | Default approach (Seeds Indoors, Direct Sow, Transplant) |
| Gestation days | Approximate days to maturity |
| Perennial | Whether it comes back each year |
| Purchase source | Where you got seeds or transplants |
My Plants is retrospective
You never have to visit My Plants. Plants come into existence naturally:
- When you plan a planting and search for a variety
- When you add a plant to a zone on the Plan page
- When you create a plant from the catalog
My Plants is where you go to see what you've accumulated — a way to browse your garden history across all seasons.
The plant catalog
The catalog is a built-in database of common vegetable varieties. When you search for a plant to add, the catalog surfaces matching varieties with pre-filled information.
Key points about the catalog:
- It's inline — you access it through the plant picker wherever you add plants
- Manual plants are first-class — You can always create a plant by typing a name, no catalog match required
- Volunteers, gifts, experiments — These don't need catalog links. You can optionally link them later.
- Catalog links are optional — A plant works the same whether it came from the catalog or was created manually
Plant names
Plants always show their full name — variety and type together:
- "Cherokee Purple Tomato" (not just "Tomato")
- "Sugar Snap Pea" (not just "Pea")
- "Genovese Basil" (not just "Basil")
This matters when you're growing multiple varieties of the same plant type.
Related
- Getting started — Adding your first plants
- Planting and logging — The difference between plants and plantings
- Planning your season — How plants feed into seasonal planning