Add a plant to your bed
Each plant is one crop in one bed. Kale in your front raised bed is one plant record; kale in the pots is another. The system tracks them separately so you can see which positions perform best.
The form
“Plant” in Garden Buddy means one crop in one bed. Kale in your front raised bed is one plant record; kale in the pots is another. The system tracks them separately so you can see which positions perform best.
- Open /my-garden/. Scroll to “Add a plant” (third section).
- Select a vegetable. Dropdown of 104 crops. Start typing to filter — “kale” narrows to kale.
- Enter variety (free text). “Tuscan Black”, “Calabrese”, “Oregon sugar pod”, “Cherry”, “Roma”. Helps later when deciding what did well.
- Select a garden bed. Dropdown populated from the beds you’ve already created.
- Set planting date. Defaults to today. Change if you planted last week but are logging now.
- Enter quantity. Number of plants / seeds in the ground. For seed crops, approximate is fine.
- (Optional) Add notes. Seed source, cost, variety notes — this content becomes the plant’s story in My Plants.
- Click Add Plant. The plant appears in “What you’re growing” immediately.
What happens next
- The plant appears in “What you’re growing” with growth stage (seedling / growing / flowering / harvest).
- The system calculates an expected harvest date from the crop’s typical days-to-harvest (broccoli 90, radish 30, garlic 210, etc.).
- You can now log care events and harvests against this plant.
- Care events appear in the main care log but also get linked specifically to this plant for filtering.
For the system, no — set the planting date to the day you put it in the ground either way. For growth-stage math, if you transplanted seedlings, the crop starts later but matures at the same point. If you direct-sowed seeds, add 7–14 days for germination before the internal clock starts.
Recording seed source
Use the Notes field to capture where the seed came from and what it cost. Three reasons:
- Seed cost feeds into ROI. If broccoli seed cost $4.50 and the plant produced 2 kg worth $11.60 of heads, your ROI calculation is $11.60 − $4.50 = $7.10 net.
- You can track variety performance. “Diggers Club Calabrese” produced well; “Bunnings generic” didn’t. After 2 seasons you know which suppliers are worth buying from.
- You can reorder easily. No more rummaging through old packets trying to remember what worked.
Examples from our demo garden
- “The Diggers Club — Heirloom Calabrese broccoli, 100 seeds for $4.50”
- “Green Harvest — Tuscan Black kale (Italian heirloom), 50 seeds $3.90”
- “Saved seed from last year’s broad bean harvest — 40 beans, $0”
- “Mr Fothergills packet from Bunnings — $3.99”
- “Eden Seeds — Fordhook Giant silverbeet, 200 seeds $3.20”
Australian seed suppliers worth knowing
| Supplier | Strengths | Typical price |
|---|---|---|
| The Diggers Club | Heirloom varieties, membership model, strong quality control | $3.50–$5.50 per packet |
| Green Harvest | Organic / heirloom focus, subtropical-specific, Queensland-based | $2.80–$4.50 per packet |
| Eden Seeds | Biodynamic and organic, very large range | $3.00–$4.50 per packet |
| Mr Fothergills (Bunnings) | Wide availability, reliable germination, less varietal range | $2.99–$4.99 per packet |
| Yates (supermarkets) | Convenience, basic varieties, fine for common crops | $2.50–$4.00 per packet |
| Seed savers (community) | Free swap schemes, local adaptation | $0 |
Troubleshooting
Plant doesn’t appear after clicking Add Plant
Refresh the page. The form uses AJAX and occasionally needs a reload to show new entries. If still missing after refresh, check that the vegetable dropdown registered — sometimes it loses selection and the form rejects submission silently.
“Plant name is empty” error
The vegetable dropdown didn’t register a selection. Click out of the field, click back in, pick the vegetable again. On Safari, this sometimes happens if you select via the keyboard — try clicking instead.
You want to plant something not in the dropdown
Our catalogue has 104 crops covering most Australian home-garden staples. If your crop isn’t listed (pepino, yacon, achocha, warrigal greens), email us — we add crops on request, usually within a week.
Archiving plants when they’re done
When a plant is finished (pulled out, gone to seed, died), mark it as “archived” rather than deleting it. Archived plants stop appearing in your active list, but their harvest history stays in your record. Delete only duplicates or genuine mistakes.