Older changes

That’s much of southern California, Florida and Arizona. They used to wait until after the last frost. Answers and the Calendar give the same day.

The Calendar, the bed card and Home now agree: there’s still time, and in the window’s last two weeks the job says the day it closes (“Still time, until Oct 26”). A trellis or other support follows its plant team’s window.

Glasgow has more than six months between frosts, but no month there averages the 18 °C (65 °F) or so that okra, tomatoes and peppers grow in. Where frost sets your season and too few months are warm enough for a crop, What grows here now lists it as fitting with care, and the Calendar, your bed’s card and its plant team say why: no month is warm enough, or only July and August are. They suggest cover, an early start or a quick variety. Planting dates stay as they were. Where no month is warm enough, the Calendar no longer promises a picking date, and where only a few are, that date is marked approximate. Later in the season, once a new planting would ripen in months cooler than a warm crop likes, its planting job and your bed’s card say so, even while there’s still time before the frost: in Santiago, tomatoes from January 30. The site’s Can I still sow this? tool now says the same beside each crop. Where frost is rare and you’ve given your own last frost date, your plans still follow each month’s warmth, and only frost-tender crops wait for your date. And where we can’t check a place’s monthly temperatures, What grows here no longer counts luffa, basil and other warm crops with no temperature range on record as fitting.

The app and the site now name that day (“from March to October 11”), and the month charts fill the last month only up to it.

Riyadh’s frost turns out to be rare and Amritsar’s comes in some winters, so their frost words and their planting windows follow. Frost dates still come from the weather model, and the climate card names the station and how far away it is.

Looking up your ZIP code or town on Answers, on Can I still sow this? or on the frost odds now sets them too. A garden you’ve placed always has the last word.

A day’s notice now tells you once, on the day the window opens, and once more a week before a window closes. Your week still lists every sowing open that week, as the Calendar’s week does.

So in a mild autumn the Calendar, the Plan and Answers keep cabbage, kale, lettuce and their kin open longer, where every crop’s window used to close at the first frost. Cauliflower keeps the first frost, since its head can’t take one. And a bed the Plan keeps for spring names the crop that holds the team back.

So when you enter a lab’s pH on the soil card, it asks which pH your report gives. A pH in water is checked against your plants. A pH in calcium chloride or another salt solution is saved and shown with how it was measured, and no plant is checked against it, because the gap between the two changes from one soil to the next. A lab pH you saved before this change waits for your answer, and a home kit reading is checked just as it was. The soil cautions read in Spanish in the Spanish app, the soil-test guide’s title and opening and the soil card’s ladder drop their prices, and logging compost leaves your pH reading standing.

Wherever you garden, a plan made after its planting day counts its harvest from the day it could still go in, never from a day already past. Four-digit postcodes find your town on the Plan, the bed cards count a crop you have only planned as planned, and the last day of a picking window says the picking ends. On a station’s page where frost is rare, the month chart’s key names all three ways a month can read, and the page says which crops it leaves out and why.

Where a place’s temperatures aren’t shown, What grows here no longer counts a warm-weather crop as fitting, since it can’t check.

The Tools list at the foot of each page now offers Can I still sow this?, and How Milpa compares sits under About.

Each door says what it gives you, and three are new. “What can I plant now?” shows what can go in this week where you live, and what has time to finish before the first frost. “Something wrong in the garden?” matches what you see to its likely cause, from rules a person has checked against their sources. “Keep a garden diary” opens the Log, kept on your device with no account needed.

Older ones move to an archive, month by month, so nothing drops off the site. The changes from late September and early October that had already left this page are back there too.

Tell us” opens an email to us in your own mail app, with the dates you see and where they come from already written in. From Answers it also carries the ZIP code or town you gave there, if any; from the Calendar, no address. Nothing is sent until you send it.

The Calendar opens on the month you’re in. Each entry on the Log shows its year, and the Edit button beside it lets you change it or delete it, with Undo if you change your mind. A date in the future is refused. Entries that went under the wrong year before this change have moved to their own year, and anything dated in the future is shown to you to fix, delete or keep.

Answers finds dates for any town or address, even one that isn’t on our list of cities, and the Plan keeps your place the moment you set it. Home and the Calendar now agree on what to do this week, with a frost two weeks out at the top. Adding a bed fits a phone screen, every plant team has its own Use this team button, a planned bed opens on its plan, and if you know your own frost dates you can enter them right under your place on the Plan.

In the Log, a note that says frost offers to be logged as one.

On the site, the folklore claims gain a search box and the guides fold each long shelf. Small buttons got bigger along the way, and nothing that folds is hidden: a tap shows it.

And where frost comes in some winters, as in Melbourne, the pages and the app now say so, with the day a frost-tender crop waits for.

Your Calendar, your planting dates and Answers then go by your dates, and the card shows the general estimate beside them. Where the dates come from a weather model, the card also says plainly that a model can run weeks warm in hills and inland valleys.

That covers the plants, the rules, the frost places and their countries, a country’s cities, and the numbers we’re less sure of. Type a few letters, or tap Show 12 more. The plants are compact cards, two across on a phone. In the app, the seed box finds a crop by name instead of a long dropdown, and a plant card with many rules shows five and folds the rest.

A rule’s plants, a city’s list of what grows there and the Can I still sow this? tool open with how many there are, show the first eight of each group and keep the rest a tap away; tap a group’s count to see only that group. Where frost is rare, a city’s list of what to sow when is a chart of the twelve months, with this month shaded, a switch for what goes in now, and a crop’s kinds a tap away. Every name is still on the page.

Now each crop’s months follow the warmth of each month. The Calendar sows tomatoes, lettuce and the rest in the months they grow well in, Answers says whether a crop can go in this month, and Home names what is in season now. The temperature ranges come from one extension table, so the months are a good hunch to start from. A frost-free place’s page lists what to sow when, and the Can I still sow this? tool names what is in season this month.

Each says which zones it grows in and how it takes frost, and What grows here puts it on your fruit shelf where your winters suit it. Pomegranate and feijoa can now be the tree in the fruit tree ring, and kiwifruit the vine on the kiwi arbor, planted as a male and a female. And where a plant is flagged as a weed somewhere, like the olive in South Australia or passionfruit in Florida, its page, its answer and its row in Design it yourself now say so.

Most join the plant teams that suit them, and you can add any of them in Design it yourself. Summer greens, a new team, keeps giving leaves through the heat that sends lettuce and spinach to seed, and What grows here names those greens wherever that happens. The summer legume break, also new, rests a bed with cowpeas through the hot months, ahead of your cool-season crops. Onions now get the day-length type for your latitude, north or south. In Spanish, plants also go by the names used around the Río de la Plata and in Chile, like poroto, choclo, zapallo and betarraga.

It’s on the Answers page under your climate, on each city’s frost page, and on Home when you’re just starting. In Design it yourself, a plant your winters or season can’t carry says so on its row, and you can still add it.

Where summers run that hot, bean sowings pause in spring and pick up again in late summer for a fall crop, the way lettuce and spinach already wait out the heat.

Checked against those stations, the weather model ran cool by day, most of all in the mountains, so it caught only some of the hot months: lettuce and spinach timing and hot-weather watering now follow the station wherever a town has one. Where the model reads a town on higher or lower ground, its months stand and its temperatures are left out. The climate card and each city’s page say which you’re seeing, and the coverage page counts where each reaches.

The number on it counts the ones from the last week you haven’t opened. Tap one to see it on the Calendar, or mark them all read. Which ones you’ve read stays on your device.

A heads-up comes only on the days that can’t wait: a frost date, a hot or dry stretch starting, a last call to sow. Through a hot or dry stretch, “Your week” reminds you to check your beds each week. The Calendar’s week opens with the same summary, and your calendar app’s alarms ring at most once a day.

In those months the Calendar marks the stretch and its month view says so, and your phone’s reminders and the calendar file carry it. Home, the Plan card, Answers and the climate card say the same, and a city’s page shows the months under Summer and rain. How much rain falls each month stays a US-only figure: abroad, the gauge records missed local weather stations by too much in some mountain cities.

In the months something grows, the Calendar marks the stretches that usually run hot enough to water daily or every other day, and the ones whose rain leaves nearly every drop to you, with each month’s normal rain beside what a growing garden needs in a week. Your phone’s reminders and the calendar file carry them. The Plan card, Home, the climate card, Answers and the place pages that carry rain records say the same, and the watering guide explains it.

Milpa now knows each month’s normal daytime high for every US weather station and every other place it covers worldwide, so the Calendar skips the re-sowings that would come ready in those months and starts them again for fall. The Plan card names the months, the climate card shows the summer’s daytime high, and Home, the Log, Answers and the “Can I still sow this?” tool say so too.

It used to read the one nearest the middle of its square on the map, which could be a mountain while the gardens sat in the valley. Where one station couldn’t speak for everyone, there are two. About a quarter of US ZIP codes read a nearer station. In Fort Collins, Colorado, the last spring frost moved from May 21, a mountain station’s date, to May 2, the town’s own. Station pages you may have saved still open: a page whose station retired takes you to its neighbor’s.

As on every Spanish page, the English is the version that counts.

It turns late only in the window’s last two weeks. A team’s window closes on the same day on the Calendar and on its bed’s card, and a close that falls next year names its year.

When you pick a new place far from your garden on the Plan’s Where step, it offers “Start a new garden here”: your old garden closes and is kept whole and read-only under Closed gardens on the Log, ready to reopen whenever you like.

A city that shares its name with others says its country, like Córdoba, Spain, and the Why page’s list says that a tap opens a rule’s whole page.

The Plan’s labels are easier to read in the autumn and winter colors, and the landing’s headline no longer jumps when its font arrives.

Each copy is deleted after 30 days, and the privacy page says where it is kept.

The English stays the version that counts, one tap away.

A frost-tender crop’s picking window ends at your usual first fall frost, on Home and the Calendar alike, and more crops have their Spanish names.

In the US, your ZIP code does it. When two cities share a name, it asks which one you mean.

A crop you log on a planned bed keeps its own picking window and re-sowings, and a job names the crop you swapped in.

Each Spanish page goes by the city’s Spanish name where it has one. Every page says when the last spring frost usually comes, how late it can be in a bad year, and the odds of an early fall freeze. Each page reads its own country’s weather data, and the frost tools take a city’s name as well as a ZIP code.

A garden near a border reads its own country’s weather data, a garden in Mexico gets a route to an accredited soil lab, and where no weather data reaches, three seasons of frosts you log give your garden frost dates of its own.

The gardens you made without signing in stay. Account also has “Sign out of every device”, for a password that may have leaked.

Teams of cold-hardy crops, like cabbage with herbs, are dated weeks before your last frost, and corn gets a sowing date from your frost dates and an approximate picking window.

The app also asks your browser to keep your garden’s records safe from clearing.

Every rule and folklore page has a “Report a problem with this claim” link, and a new page lists every source we read. About also has a note from the maintainer.

A rule whose sources no person has read says so beside its grade.

The Learn tab opens a short sheet of its own: search, the reading pages, and a row to check our work. On a computer, Plants sits under Learn.

Frost kills them and cool days stunt them, so the Calendar and the planting dates wait past your last frost to set them out, until the days stay warm. Their seeds still start indoors on the same day, and a plant team’s planting job says which of its crops wait.

You can open it from the plant card. Reading those pages changed some numbers. Climbing peas top out lower, fennel, fava and kohlrabi go in closer together, and corn, dill and tomatillo are ready sooner. A variety’s card now shows the source for that variety’s own numbers, and how sure we are of them. Before, it showed the whole plant’s.

It shows the day and the season, your latest photo, a note on this week, what’s ready to pick, and a chart of where you are in the year.

Parsnip and parsley go the other way, a week later. Each change follows an extension planting guide a person read, and the plant pages now show that source.

And Import under More now opens the paste box and says what to do, instead of seeming to do nothing.

Several lines changed, including what other apps now do better, and one claim we had overstated is softened. From now on the page is re-checked every two months.