Until this week, the Gardener’s Weekly Digest told you everything you could plant this month and left the “when” to you. Most people either plant the whole list on Sunday afternoon or forget about it by Wednesday. Neither is what the list was for. So the digest now splits into two blocks, this week and next week, and adds a one-tap way to mark a crop as planted once you have done it.
What was wrong with a monthly list
A month is a long window. In September a subtropical zone can plant amaranth, capsicum, avocado and carrot, and none of those want to go in the ground on the same day. A flat list does not say that. It just says “plantable in September” and trusts you to know the rest, which is exactly the knowledge a beginner gardener does not have yet.
The fix is not more data. The planting calendar already knows which crops suit which month for your zone, that part was correct. The fix is presenting it in a window small enough to act on, this week, with next week visible so you can plan ahead instead of being surprised by it.
What the email looks like now
Rather than describe it, here is a real one. We sent a test copy to a subtropical postcode, 4521, on 1 September 2026, and this is what came back, layout kept as close to the real thing as an article page allows.
The links above are dummies for this article. In a real digest each one is tied to your own account, so a tap takes you straight to a confirm screen with no login needed.
Marking a crop as planted
Tap “Mark as planted” and you land on a confirm screen, not an instant tick. That is deliberate. Email programs scan every link in an inbox before a human opens it, Outlook and Gmail both do this, and a link that writes to the database on a plain click would fill your log with plants you never put in the ground. The confirm screen only writes when you press the button on it, so the record in your log is one you actually asked for.
Every tick goes into a planting log against your account. A free account can see that log as it stands, crop name and the date you confirmed it, no cap on how many entries. A Starter or Pro account gets the log plus the analysis on top of it, how your timing compares to the zone average, and a one-click way to push a confirmed crop into the full succession tracker for bed planning. The log itself was never going to be a paid feature. It is your data, you should be able to read it back without paying for the privilege.
If you have not set a postcode yet
The week-by-week list only works once the digest knows your climate zone, which comes from your postcode. Without one, this section of the email is a short prompt asking you to set it, with a link that logs you straight in and drops you on the postcode field. No new password to remember, no separate login step.
Setting it takes one field and a few seconds, and after that every digest arrives already sorted for your zone.
Get the digest in your own inbox
A free GardenBuddy account gets you the Gardener’s Weekly Digest every week, this week and next week broken out for your postcode, the mark as planted log, and the live price comparison against the supermarket. It costs nothing and takes about a minute to set up.
Published 1 September 2026. Last updated 1 September 2026.
