From Complete Beginner to My Fourth Growing Season: How I Built an App for My Vegetable Garden
Three seasons in, now starting my fourth — tracking my plants has completely changed the way I garden
Three years ago, I decided to take a break from work. After years of the 9-5 grind, I wanted a few months off to chill and reset — something that rarely happens in life. At the time, I had never grown a single plant in my life.
What started as a simple break quickly turned into a real passion. Along with taking up tennis, gardening became one of the most enjoyable parts of my life. I mainly grow vegetables, but I’ve also started growing flowers after discovering how beneficial they are.
Living in England has its challenges — the unpredictable weather and a fairly short growing season — but we’re lucky to have the fantastic Allotment system.
Over the past three growing seasons, my goals have gradually changed:
Growing Season 1: Just get something — anything — to actually grow and produce a harvest.
Growing Season 2: Grow enough to feel like I had a decent harvest.
Growing Season 3: Focus on quality — grow vegetables and flowers that taste and look noticeably better than what I could buy.
Growing Season 4 (now): Keep improving — better planning, better varieties, and learning from every season.
We’re now in April, and my fourth growing season has just begun. After three full seasons, one thing has become very clear: my memory alone wasn’t enough.
I started casually documenting what I planted, when I planted it, how many seeds, where I placed everything, and what the final results were. I also began taking photos at different stages to track the growth visually.
This simple habit of tracking my plants has taught me more than I ever expected.
That’s exactly why I created My Veg Garden.
My Veg Garden is a simple, lightweight app that helps home gardeners and allotment holders track their vegetables, herbs, and flowers from seed all the way to harvest or full bloom. You can create your own plant cards, log planting dates, record locations (raised beds, pots, greenhouse), track growth stages, add notes, and include dated photos.
The app is very flexible — you can use it a lot when you’re motivated, or just lightly when life gets busy.
If you’re growing vegetables, flowers, or herbs and want an easy way to track your progress, I’d love for you to try My Veg Garden. It’s free for light use and completely ad-free.
You can download it on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store:
Happy gardening, and I look forward to sharing more updates as my fourth season progresses.