Every crop that is actually in its planting window this month, for your part of Australia, sits on one page at gardenbuddy.au/plant-now/. No app, no signup to read it. Here is what it shows and how to use it.
A minute on what Plant Now shows and how to read it.
What Plant Now actually shows
The page opens with a “your location” box. It defaults to Dayboro, Queensland, where the GardenBuddy.au team is based, and says so plainly rather than pretending that is your forecast. Enter your own postcode or town and every crop list, heatmap and guide link on the page switches to your zone, and that choice is remembered site wide from then on.
Underneath, seven climate zone cards cover the whole country: Tropical, Subtropical, Warm Temperate, Mediterranean, Cool Temperate, Cold or Highland, and Arid or Semi-Arid. Pick a zone, or let the page guess one from your postcode, and a result panel lists every crop in its optimal planting window for that zone this month, drawn from a lookup file the site rebuilds daily. Each crop is a link straight through to its full growing guide for your zone: soil temperature, companion plants, days to harvest, the lot.
If nothing suits the current month in your zone, the panel says so instead of padding the list, and points you at a “coming up in the next month or two” section for crops about to enter their window. Under that sits a twelve month heatmap for your zone, darker green where more crops are plantable, with the current month outlined so you can see where you sit in the year at a glance.
Why bother with a zone specific list
A single national planting calendar cannot work in Australia. Subtropical Brisbane plants garlic in April while cold highland Canberra is already looking at snow, and a generic “what to plant in autumn” list written for one climate is wrong for most readers who click it. Plant Now exists because “this month” only means something once you have said where “here” is.
How to use it
- First visit: enter your postcode or town in the location box at the top, then pick your zone from the seven cards if the page has not already guessed it correctly.
- Reading the result: scan the crop chips for this month, click any one for the full growing guide, then check the “coming up” list so you know what to order seed for next.
- Planning the year: use the twelve month heatmap under the result to see which months are busy and which are quiet in your zone, useful for spacing out sowings rather than doing everything at once.
- Printing it: the page also links to a one page, A4 printable planting calendar for your zone, rebuilt weekly with the build date on the sheet, for the shed wall.
- Turning it into a plan: if you are not yet a member, the page offers to turn the current month’s list into a sized starter patch through Build My First Garden. If you already have an account, the same spot links straight to My Garden instead.
Where the data comes from
The crop list is not hand typed per zone. The page fetches a shared lookup file, rebuilt daily at 10am AEST, that maps every crop in GardenBuddy.au’s growing guides to the months it suits in each of the seven zones. That is the same daily rebuild the site’s other zone based pages read from, so a change to one crop’s sowing window shows up everywhere at once rather than needing separate edits.
Frequently asked questions
Does Plant Now know where I live automatically? It defaults to Dayboro, Queensland and says so on the page. Enter your own postcode or town once and every page on the site, not just this one, switches to your zone from then on.
Do I need an account to use it? No. The zone picker, the crop list, the heatmap and the printable calendar are all open to everyone. A free GardenBuddy.au account is only needed to turn the list into a sized garden plan or to track your own crops.
What if nothing is plantable this month in my zone? The panel tells you plainly rather than showing an empty page, and points at the “coming up in the next month or two” list so you know what is close.
How current is the list? The underlying data rebuilds daily at 10am AEST, and the page shows today’s date so you can see it is current rather than a cached page from last month.
Related features
Plant Now works best alongside a few of GardenBuddy.au’s other guides.
- Australian Grow Zone Map: not sure which of the seven zones you are in, this finds it from your location.
- Veggie growing guides: the full guide behind every crop chip on the Plant Now page, for every zone.
- Farmers Almanac: the same zone based planting logic laid out month by month across the whole year, for a longer view than “this month”.
- Moon Calendar: once you know what to plant this month, this helps pick the day.
- Build My First Garden: turns the current month’s crop list into a starter patch sized for your actual space and sun.
Try it now
Head to Plant Now, set your postcode, and see exactly what goes in the ground this month where you actually live.
