Best Free Planting Calendar App: 5 Free Tiers Tested (Zero Paywalls)
Most 'free' planting calendars are demos with a padlock. We tested only the free tiers of 5 apps — no trials, no paid features — to find the one still worth having on your phone in July.
Let's be honest about how the "free planting calendar app" search usually ends.
You type it in around late February, riding a wave of seed-catalogue optimism. You download something. You tap "Get Started." And then — surprise — the actual calendar is behind a paywall, the free tier lets you add exactly one tomato before a cheerful little padlock appears, and a banner informs you that Premium is "only $84/year."
You close the app. You buy seeds anyway. You write sowing dates on the back of an envelope, lose the envelope, and plant everything three weeks too late.
Been there. Repeatedly.
So this isn't a listicle about the app with the most features. It's about a much narrower, much more useful question: if you refuse to pay a single penny, which planting calendar is actually still worth having on your phone in July?
We put the free tiers through their paces — no trials, no "unlock this to continue," no evaluating paid features and pretending that counts.
Just the version you get for $0, used the way a real gardener uses it: in a hurry, with dirt under the fingernails, trying to remember whether it's too late to direct-sow beans.
The rule we made ourselves follow
One rule, and it was strict: we only judged what the free version can do. Not "the free tier plus a 7-day trial." Not "well, the paid version is amazing."
If a feature lived behind a paywall, it didn't count — full stop.
A free planting calendar that quietly stops being a planting calendar after two plants is not a free planting calendar. It's a demo.
That single rule knocked out more apps than you'd think. Two of the biggest names in garden planning — GrowVeg and Smart Gardener — don't have an ongoing free tier at all.
GrowVeg gives you a 7-day trial and then locks the door; Smart Gardener asks for a credit card before you've seen the inside of the house. Great tools, possibly.
But in a conversation about free, they don't get a seat at the table.
Here's what a planting calendar actually needs to do to earn the word "calendar":
| What we actually tested (free tier only) | Why it matters in July, not just March |
|---|---|
| Zone-aware timing | Does it calculate sow/transplant/harvest dates from your zone and frost dates — or just show a generic national schedule? |
| It nags you | A calendar you have to remember to open is a diary. A calendar that pushes you a reminder is a calendar. |
| Enough capacity to be real | Can you plan an actual garden, or does the free tier tap out after one bed / a handful of plants? |
| Still useful mid-season | Harvest tracking, weather awareness, analytics — the stuff that matters after everything's already in the ground. |
The free-tier scoreboard
Only apps with a genuine, ongoing free tier made the list. Everything below is what you get for zero dollars — nothing that requires a trial or an upgrade.
| App (free tier) | Real planting calendar? | Zone-aware timing | Reminders | Free capacity | Still useful mid-season? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EdenVatika | ✅ Planting calendar | ✅ Zone + frost-date tracking | ✅ Push notifications | 2 beds · 10 plantings/mo | ✅ Water-today weather call, harvest & fertilizer logging, analytics |
| Seedtime | ✅ Deep & flexible | ✅ Zone / frost-date driven | ✅ Task lists | 1 calendar · unlimited schedules & tasks | ✅ Unlimited journal |
| Planter | ✅ Regional calendar | ✅ By region | ❌ No push | 1 garden | ⚠️ Planning-focused |
| Seed to Spoon | ✅ Color-coded calendar | ✅ Personalized to location | ✅ Planting reminders | 10 plants · 150+ guides | ⚠️ Basic tracking + AI chatbot (3 Q/day) |
| GiddyCarrot | ⚠️ Tracker, not a calendar | ❌ | ❌ (email is Pro) | 100 items total | ✅ Variety analytics |
| GrowVeg | No free tier — 7-day trial only. Disqualified. | ||||
| Smart Gardener | No free tier, no free trial. Disqualified. | ||||
The free tiers, one at a time
Seedtime — the most generous free calendar, full stop
Credit where it's due: if we're ranking free tiers purely on calendar depth, Seedtime is ridiculously generous — and it's free forever, no trial clock ticking.
For $0 you get one full calendar with built-in crop categories and varieties, unlimited planting schedules, unlimited tasks, an unlimited journal, worldwide zone support, a masterclass video series, and 10 monthly AI credits that suggest the next best seeding date for a crop.
On raw scheduling volume, nothing else here comes close for free.
The catch (free-tier only): the good stuff that isn't a bare calendar is paywalled. Seedtime Layout — the visual garden map — is not in the free version (it starts at the $84/yr Basic plan).
Companion-planting suggestions are paid too. Custom crop categories, custom varieties, and custom perennials? Paid. And Seedtime Weather is still a "future release," so there's no live weather anywhere — free or paid.
So free Seedtime is a brilliant when-to-do-things engine with no where-to-put-things map, no companion warnings, and no idea what the sky is doing. If you only want a bottomless calendar and to-do list, though, the free tier alone can run your whole season.
Planter — the best-looking free calendar on a phone
Free Planter gives you one complete garden, a regional planting calendar (seed-start, transplant, harvest tuned to your area), a seed box, and a genuinely lovely square-foot grid with 1,000+ illustrated plant tiles.
It is, hands down, the nicest free tier to actually touch on a phone.
The catch (free-tier only): it's a planning tool that goes quiet once you're growing. No push reminders, no harvest tracking, no weather. It'll tell you the calendar dates beautifully — but it won't tap you on the shoulder when one arrives. You're the notification system.
Seed to Spoon — the free app that thinks about your dinner plate
Seed to Spoon (now part of Park Seed) is properly free — no trial timer, just an optional subscription if you want more.
The free version gives you a personalized, color-coded planting calendar that works out when to start each crop indoors and outdoors for your location, companion-planting info with warnings for bad pairings right in a visual garden layout, growing guides for 150+ plants, planting reminders, and even a "Growbot" AI chatbot for a few questions a day.
Its party trick is the angle no one else has: every plant comes with health-benefit notes and recipe ideas, so it's as interested in what you'll cook as in what you'll grow.
The catch (free-tier only): the free visual layout caps at 10 plants, the Growbot is limited to 3 text questions a day (photo ID and diagnosis are paid), and the "full" zone planting calendar, past-season archive, and curated garden plans are premium ($46.99/year).
There's no weather integration at all. It's a lovely, genuinely free growing guide with a health twist — just lighter on layout capacity and mid-season depth than it first appears.
GiddyCarrot — the most generous free tracker (but not really a calendar)
Free GiddyCarrot lets you log 100 items — seeds, plantings, harvests, tasks — across one garden, and it even gives you variety performance analytics for free, which is unusually kind. Lovely for record-keeping.
The catch (free-tier only): it records what you tell it; it doesn't compute a schedule for you. There's no zone-aware sowing calendar and no free reminders (email alerts are a paid feature). It answers "what did I plant?" — not "what should I plant this week?"
A cracking free logbook; not a free planting calendar.
So where does EdenVatika land — for free?
Right, the part you correctly assumed was coming. But we'll keep the same rule: free tier only. No trial features, no "but Pro does X." Here's exactly what $0 of EdenVatika gets you.
🌱 What's actually in the free "Basic" plan ($0/month)
- A real planting calendar — with hardiness-zone tracking and frost-date tracking feeding your dates, so timing is tuned to your location, not a generic national chart.
- Push notifications & reminders — it nags you on your phone. You don't have to remember to open it.
- 2 garden beds + a square-foot garden planner — an actual visual layout on the free plan, not just a schedule.
- Plant companion suggestions — get-along / keep-apart guidance while you plan, on the free plan (Seedtime charges for this).
- A live "Water today?" decision — free. Your dashboard reads current conditions (temp, humidity, wind, UV) and the next three days of rain, then just tells you: "No — it's raining now with more forecast, no watering needed." A free planting calendar that actually looks at the sky and makes the call for you is genuinely rare.
- Daylight & photoperiod tracking — sunrise, sunset, hours of daylight, and how fast they're changing, with crop-timing nudges like "last chance for long-day crops — consider short-day varieties soon." Free.
- Harvest tracking, fertilizer logging & a garden journal/timeline — the mid-season stuff most free tiers drop entirely.
- Seed inventory (up to 10 packets), advanced plant search, my-plantings tracker, and 3 months of analytics history.
Monthly free allowances: 10 plantings, 20 tasks, 15 observations, 10 photos. (A "planting" is a distinct crop added to a bed — one planting can hold as many individual plants as fit, so 10 plantings a month covers a lot more than it sounds.)
Here's the honest positioning, because pretending otherwise would insult you: on raw scheduling volume, Seedtime's free tier is deeper — unlimited planting schedules, unlimited tasks, unlimited journal. If a bottomless to-do list is all you want, go use it, genuinely.
But notice what free Seedtime doesn't give you: no visual layout, no companion suggestions, no weather. Seed to Spoon covers layout and companions for free but caps at 10 plants and has no weather at all.
On the free plan, EdenVatika is the only app in this roundup that ties the calendar to a square-foot layout, companion guidance, zone + frost-date timing, and a live water-today weather call that reads a three-day rain outlook — then keeps logging harvests, fertilizer, and analytics after everything's in the ground.
Free Planter is prettier to plan with; free Seedtime schedules in bigger volume; free Seed to Spoon has the best recipes; free GiddyCarrot is a better pure logbook.
But if you want one free tool that's still doing something useful for you on a hot Tuesday in July, this is the one that keeps showing up for work.
✅ Why the free tier holds up
- The calendar reminds you — you don't chase it. Push notifications beat a diary you forget to open.
- Companion suggestions and a live water-today weather call aren't paywalled. The features that stop mistakes are in the free plan — including the exact ones Seedtime charges for.
- It's a calendar and a layout for free. The square-foot planner and the schedule live together, so "when" and "where" aren't two different apps.
❌ Where the free tier taps out (so you know before you start)
- It's capped monthly, not unlimited. 2 beds and 10 plantings a month goes a long way — a "planting" is a whole crop in a bed, not a single seedling, so one planting can be a full row of carrots — but a big multi-bed allotment being replanted constantly can still hit the ceiling. For genuinely unlimited scheduling volume, Seedtime's free tier stretches further.
- The full 7-day forecast and smart task recommendations are paid. To be clear, the free plan already makes a water-today call from a three-day rain outlook — but the week-ahead forecast and the automatic weather-driven task suggestions sit behind the upgrade. This post isn't judging that; just don't expect the full forecast for free.
The one-line answer
If you want the deepest free schedule and don't care about layout, companion warnings, or weather → Seedtime. If you want the prettiest free planner on a phone → Planter. If you want free growing guides with recipes and health tips → Seed to Spoon. If you just want a free logbook → GiddyCarrot.
But if you want a single free app that behaves like a planting calendar should — zone- and frost-date-aware timing, reminders that find you, a square-foot layout, companion suggestions, a live water-today weather call, and harvest logging that keeps paying off through the season — EdenVatika's free plan is the most complete of the bunch, and it costs exactly nothing to find out.
Start free — no credit card, no padlocks →
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free planting calendar app?
It depends on what "calendar" means to you. For the deepest free schedule, Seedtime is hard to beat — one full calendar with unlimited planting schedules, unlimited tasks, and an unlimited journal, all free forever.
For an all-round free planting calendar that also reminds you, lays out your beds, suggests companions, and reads the weather, EdenVatika's free plan is the most complete: a zone- and frost-date-aware calendar with push notifications, a square-foot layout, companion suggestions, harvest tracking, and a live "water today?" call based on a three-day rain outlook — no card required.
Seed to Spoon is the best free pick if you also want recipes and plant health-benefit info. The trade-off is capacity: EdenVatika's free plan is capped monthly (10 plantings — meaning 10 distinct crops added to a bed, each holding as many plants as fit — plus 20 tasks), while Seedtime's schedules and tasks are unlimited.
Are any planting calendar apps genuinely free forever?
Yes. EdenVatika (2 beds), Seedtime (unlimited schedules, tasks & journal), Planter (1 garden), Seed to Spoon (10 plants + 150+ guides), and GiddyCarrot (100 items) all have ongoing free tiers you can use indefinitely. Watch out for GrowVeg (7-day trial only) and Smart Gardener (no free access at all) — despite showing up in "free garden app" searches, neither has a lasting free tier.
Do free planting calendars adjust to my location?
The good ones do. EdenVatika, Seedtime, Planter, and Seed to Spoon all calculate planting dates from your zone, region, or location on the free tier rather than showing one generic national schedule — EdenVatika adds explicit hardiness-zone and frost-date tracking on the free plan. GiddyCarrot's free tier is a tracker, so it logs your dates but doesn't compute a location-based schedule for you.
Which free planting calendar sends reminders?
On the free tier, EdenVatika sends push notifications and reminders to your phone, Seed to Spoon sends planting reminders, and Seedtime generates unlimited task lists from your calendar. Planter's free calendar shows dates but doesn't push notifications, and GiddyCarrot's email alerts are a paid feature — so with those two, you're the reminder system.
Does the free version of Seedtime include garden layout and companion planting?
No. Seedtime's free tier is calendar, tasks, and journal only. Seedtime Layout (the visual garden map) and companion-planting suggestions are paid features, starting at the $84/year Basic plan, and Seedtime Weather is still an upcoming release.
If you want a visual layout and companion guidance without paying, EdenVatika includes both a square-foot planner and companion suggestions on its free plan.
Is a free planting calendar enough, or do I need to pay?
For a lot of home gardeners, a free tier is genuinely enough for a full season — especially a patio, balcony, or small plot. Free EdenVatika (2 beds, square-foot layout, companion suggestions, harvest tracking, water-today weather call) or free Seedtime (unlimited calendar and tasks) can carry most casual growers start to finish.
You only really need to think about paying once you outgrow the free capacity — EdenVatika's monthly caps (10 plantings a month, where each planting is a whole crop, not one seedling) or Seedtime's paywalled layout and weather — and by then you'll know exactly why.
Try EdenVatika's free planting calendar — no card required →
