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Your first garden

This guide walks you through setting up GardenOS from scratch. By the end you will have a garden with at least one growing space, your first planting, and a task to work from.

Step 1 — Create your garden

When you sign in for the first time, GardenOS creates a garden for you automatically. You can rename it and set its type from the garden settings page.

To update your garden:

  1. Open the sidebar and tap Garden settings (the gear icon, or through the More menu on mobile).
  2. Set the name — something like “Backyard” or “Front raised beds.”
  3. Set the type — Raised beds, Container garden, In-ground, or Mixed.
  4. Set your growing zone — GardenOS uses this for seasonal suggestions. If you are in the US, this is your USDA hardiness zone (e.g. 7a).

Save, and your garden is ready.

Step 2 — Add your growing spaces (assets)

An asset is a physical growing space: a raised bed, a grow bag, a vertical stalk, a pot, or any other container. GardenOS tracks plantings and tasks at the asset level, so adding your spaces first makes everything else easier.

To add an asset:

  1. Go to Assets in the sidebar.
  2. Tap New asset.
  3. Give it a name (e.g. “Bed 1”, “South bags”).
  4. Set the type — Raised bed, Grow bag, Vertical stalk, Perennial, or Other.
  5. Add dimensions if you know them — width and length in feet.
  6. Save.

Repeat for each growing space. You can always add more later.

Tip: Use names you will recognise quickly — “3×8 North bed” is more useful than “Bed 4” when you are standing in the garden.

Step 3 — Record your plantings

A planting is a crop in a specific growing space. Once you have at least one asset, you can start recording what is growing.

To add a planting:

  1. Go to Plantings in the sidebar.
  2. Tap New planting.
  3. Search for the variety — type the crop name (e.g. “tomato”, “kale”) to search the catalog of 445+ varieties.
  4. Select the asset it is growing in.
  5. Set the planting date — the date you sowed or transplanted.
  6. Set the status — Seeded, Germinated, Transplanted, Growing, or Producing.
  7. Save.

GardenOS will use the variety’s days-to-maturity data to estimate when the crop will be ready to harvest.

Step 4 — Log your first observation

An observation is a note tied to a planting or asset — what you saw, a problem you noticed, something you want to remember. It is how you build a record of what actually happens season to season.

Tap Capture (microphone icon) in the nav, type or dictate what you noticed, and GardenOS will parse it into a structured observation for you to confirm.

Or go to Observations → New observation to log it manually.

What to do next

  • Set up your map — go to Map to place your assets on a canvas. Useful once you have more than a couple of growing spaces.
  • Add tasks — go to Tasks to log what needs doing, or let the AI propose tasks based on what is growing.
  • Check Today — Today is your daily view. Once you have tasks with due dates, this is where you will start every session.