Pocket Planter: Garden Planner

The biggest update to Pocket Planter's growing advice so far. ADVICE BUILT FROM YOUR PLANT, NOT ITS CATEGORY Every plant now tells you where to put it, how deep to sow it, how far apart to space it, and when its window opens — drawn from that plant's own data instead of a sentence shared with everything else in its category. Lettuce is told it wants morning sun, afternoon shade and eight inches of room. An apple tree is told it needs twenty feet, and to settle the position before you dig, because it will be there for years. TEMPERATE GARDENS FINALLY GET THEIR OWN ADVICE Hot and cold climates each had growing advice written for them. Zones 6 to 8 — most of the United States and most of Europe — had none at all, and fell through to a generic paragraph. Fifteen new guides now cover what a temperate garden actually grows: tomatoes and peppers started indoors against the last frost, lettuce and spinach either side of summer rather than through it, brassicas netted against cabbage whites, garlic in through autumn for the chill it needs to split a head, and bare-root fruit trees planted because your zone gives them cold that warmer ones cannot. ADVICE THAT'S ACTUALLY ABOUT YOUR PLANT Peach was being given pea advice, because "pea" is inside "peach". Pineapple was told to prune like an apple tree. Horseradish was treated as a radish, and Grape Hyacinth — a spring bulb — was told to prune like a grape vine. Grapes had lost their pruning window entirely. Around two dozen plants were quietly getting another plant's instructions. All fixed. THE THREE SISTERS WORKS Corn, beans and squash now recognise each other as companions in your beds, and the planner will suggest them. SAFE AROUND CATS AND DOGS Thirteen more plants flagged, including onions, garlic, chives, leeks and shallots, which damage red blood cells and are especially dangerous to cats — plus macadamia, rhubarb, cyclamen and lupine. Seventy-two plants now carry a warning that says how serious the risk is and what it actually does. SHARPER HARDINESS Zones are read to the half. A lemon rated 8b is no longer shown as safe in zone 8a, five degrees colder than it survives — one of sixteen tender citrus and tropical trees affected. SETTINGS THAT ACTUALLY DO WHAT THEY SAY Turning off haptics now stops the phone buzzing, not just the quiet taps. Turning off watering reminders now cancels the reminders already scheduled, instead of leaving them firing every morning with no way to stop them. Southern-hemisphere gardeners can finally turn frost alerts off — the switch had never cancelled a single one of their frost months, because it only knew about northern ones. Reduced motion is respected on loading screens. YOUR PROGRESS IS SAFER Backups now carry when each plant was saved, your harvest goal, your checklists, the dates you earned each badge and banner, your streak freezes and your pinned plants — none of which used to survive moving to a new phone. Journal photos that failed to upload are retried instead of being left on a path that can disappear. And the app can no longer overwrite a real garden with an empty one if it is interrupted while starting up. LEVELS YOU CAN ACTUALLY REACH Garden Gnome needed over two million XP, which no real gardener was going to earn. The curve now tops out somewhere a dedicated keeper can reach, and nobody loses a level they already had. ALSO FIXED · Signing out no longer leaves the previous account's plant reminders firing on the device · The Home tab no longer crashes if your postal code cannot be resolved · "Needs Water" no longer shows on almost every plant, almost always — it now follows each plant's real schedule · Streaks can no longer be inflated by a clock change or a flight west · Day counts no longer lose a day when the clocks go forward · The garden screen is dramatically faster with a lot of beds · Alerts and confirmations are now translated into all ten languages