Compare / The best garden tracking apps in 2026
The best garden tracking apps in 2026
Grow To Eat is the app to pick if you want the record to do track your garden during the season from sowing to harvest. Logging a sowing and ticking off a harvest are both free with no cap, and what you log becomes the week’s jobs rather than sitting in a log you have to read back.
Both are worth having and almost no app does both well. A photo diary will hold five years of your garden and never once tell you the beans are due to be potted on. A planner will work the whole season forward from the day you logged a sowing and hold no photographs at all. Below is what each app records, what it lets you take away with you, and which of the two jobs it is built for.
Last updated September 2026
Start from what you want to keep
- Best overall tracker: Grow To Eat — What you log sets what happens next, and the week's jobs come out of it.
- Best for rotation history: GrowVeg / Almanac Garden Planner — Which family was in which bed, held across five years of plans.
- Best for a record of the layout: Planter — A square-foot grid that remembers what went in each square.
- Best free planting log: Gardenate — Save what you sowed, with a seed packet scanner, for nothing.
- Best analogue option: A paper notebook — No subscription, no account, and nothing to lose when an app shuts down.
#1
Grow To Eat
Gardeners who want the record to change what the app tells them to do next, rather than to look back on.
Pricing: Free with no time limit. Premium €7.49 a month or €44.99 a year.
Pros
- ✓A planting record per variety: sowing date, planned transplant, plant out, harvest, number of plants and bed
- ✓Harvest ticked off as you pick, at the start and the end of picking
- ✓Notes against a plant, free, and against a bed on Premium
- ✓Nothing in the record is capped on the free tier
- ✓Logging a late sowing moves every date that follows it
Cons
- ✗No photo journal — one image on a crop you add yourself, and that is all
- ✗No export, in any format
- ✗Harvest is a tick, not a quantity: no weights, no yield totals, no statistics
- ✗One garden per account, and no second person on it
- ✗Northern hemisphere, and edible crops only
Best for: Gardeners who want the record to change what the app tells them to do next, rather than to look back on.
A record that tells you what to do next
Log a sowing and the rest of the year follows from it. Free, and uncapped.
#2
GrowVeg / Almanac Garden Planner
Vegetable beds where the thing worth remembering is what was in them last year.
Pricing: $35 a year recurring, or $50 for a single year. 7-day trial, no card.
Pros
- ✓Rotation history held against the beds, and used rather than just stored
- ✓A visual record of what grew where, year by year
- ✓Spacing and companions worked out inside the same plan
Cons
- ✗The record ends when the subscription does
- ✗No fruit trees or other permanent plants
- ✗Notes rather than a journal, and no photographs to speak of
- ✗Browser only — nothing to log from while you are standing in the bed
Best for: Vegetable beds where the thing worth remembering is what was in them last year.
#3
Gardenate
Keeping a cheap, portable log of what went in and when, without an account or a subscription.
Pricing: Free on the web. The full app is about $2, once.
Pros
- ✓Plantings recorded with predicted harvest dates
- ✓Scan a seed packet and the variety is saved, then appears in your calendar
- ✓Dated notes with photos, and it works offline
- ✓Plantings and notes export as spreadsheet files
- ✓Free on the web, about $2 once for the app
Cons
- ✗The record does not change the calendar — the monthly list stays the same for your zone
- ✗No bed layout to hold the records against
- ✗The app has not changed much in recent years
Best for: Keeping a cheap, portable log of what went in and when, without an account or a subscription.
#4
A paper notebook
Gardeners who want a record and do not want reminders, scheduling or an account.
Pricing: The price of a notebook.
Pros
- ✓No subscription, no cap, no account, and nothing to lose in a migration
- ✓Records whatever you want, in whatever form: sketches, packet labels, weather
- ✓Pleasant to read back through, which means you actually do
Cons
- ✗Nothing reminds you of anything
- ✗Hard to search once you have a few seasons of it
- ✗One spill, one loss, and it is gone with no backup
Best for: Gardeners who want a record and do not want reminders, scheduling or an account.
#5
Planter
Best for a record of the layout
Pricing: $24.99 a year, or $99.99 once. Free tier with one garden.
Pros
- ✓The free tier includes a garden, a calendar and custom plants
- ✓A square-foot grid that shows what went in each square
- ✓Companion warnings as you place crops
- ✓iPhone, Android, Fire and the web
Cons
- ✗Records the plan, not what you actually did on the day
- ✗No harvest log
- ✗No weekly task list drawn from your own sowings
- ✗Planting dates are less specific to where you are
Best for: Gardeners who want a record of which crop went in which bed.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best app for tracking a garden?
Grow To Eat is the best garden tracking app for food growers in 2026, because what you record changes what the app tells you next: log a sowing and the potting on, planting out and harvest dates are worked out from that day, and the week's jobs come out of it. Harvest tracking is on the free tier. If what you want recorded is which family was in which bed, GrowVeg holds that across years.
What should a garden tracking app record?
Sowing dates, what variety went where, when it was potted on or planted out, what you picked and when, and notes against the plant. The difference between the apps is what happens to those records afterwards: in Grow To Eat they drive the plan, and in a log they sit there until you read them.
Is there a free garden tracking app?
Grow To Eat tracks sowings and harvests on the free tier with no cap. Gardenate saves what you sowed for nothing and will scan a seed packet. Planter's free tier includes one garden, and GrowVeg has no free tier after its trial.
Can I track harvest quantities?
Grow To Eat marks a crop harvested and keeps it against the plant, which is free, but it does not total weights or yields for the season. If a running yield total is the point of tracking for you, a notebook or a spreadsheet still does it better than any of these.
What is the difference between a garden planner and a garden tracker?
A planner decides what to sow and when. A tracker records what you actually did. Grow To Eat is both in the same loop, which is the argument for it: the record is what the next set of dates is calculated from, so a late sowing moves everything after it instead of leaving the plan wrong.
Can I export my garden records?
Not from Grow To Eat — there is no export today, and if getting your data out as a file matters to you, that is a real reason to look elsewhere. A paper notebook has the same property from the other direction: nothing to export, nothing to lose.
Is a paper notebook still fine?
For records alone, yes, and it never shuts down or raises its price. What it cannot do is tell you that the leeks sown on 2 April need potting on this week. That is the whole difference between writing things down and tracking them.
Do I have to start over each season?
No. Grow To Eat keeps what you sowed and harvested against your garden, and GrowVeg keeps five years of plans and uses them for its rotation warnings. With GrowVeg the records go when the subscription does.
Grow To Eat works out the next step for every crop you sow.
Free sowing plans and full A–Z growing guides. No credit card required.
Head-to-head comparisons
Grow To Eat vs Almanac Garden PlannerA phone app for helping you grow food day by day or a desktop garden design tool — and which one fits the way you grow your food in your garden.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs GardenateGrow To Eat tells you what to sow now and what to step-by-step and advice for 120+ crops vs a free monthly garden calendar of what you can sow now.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs GardenizeGrow To Eat tells you what to sow and when — 120+ crops, free vs a journal app helping you keep track of all the plants in your garden.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs GrowVegA phone app for helping you grow food day by day or a desktop garden design tool — and which one fits the way you grow your food in your garden.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs PlantaGrow To Eat tells you what to sow and when — 120+ crops, free vs a plant care app that waters and feeds your indoor and garden plants.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs PlanterGrow To Eat has a free todo list from sowing to harvest vs a cheaper premium tier and more visual for laying out beds — but it is not as useful once the growing starts.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs Seed to SpoonSimilar-sized libraries, very different reach: US zip codes against dates built from your own location.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs SeedtimeClosely matched on features, but Grow To Eat costs about half as much with no caps on free tier features.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs VegPlotterGrow To Eat gives you a weekly plan from sowing to harvest for free. VegPlotter is cheaper to buy, but the jobs list is monthly and ticking it off is in paid tier.Read comparison →
Last updated: September 2026