Garden & Plants

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Garden round runs mondays and thursdays · 8am and keeps the The growing year dashboard fresh. Mondays and Thursdays — works out what is genuinely due, and warns of a frost coming for something tender.
• Season plan runs first of the month · 8am and keeps the The growing year dashboard fresh. First of the month — redraws the season calendar for the plants on your book and the three months ahead.
• What is captured lands in the Plant book record, which lives at Data/Plant Book in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Garden log record, which lives at Data/Garden Log in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Season calendar record, which lives at Data/Season Calendar in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The The growing year dashboard reads from the record and shows, at a glance: needs you · on the plant book · how they're doing · the season · days a round happened · what it gave back — pickings by crop · the plant book · the garden log · how this board works.

The wiring, in one breath: Marigold holds Garden capture · Garden capture writes to Garden log · Garden log read back into Plant book · Plant book looked up by Plant lookup · Plant lookup draws the windows into Season calendar · Season calendar shown by The growing year · The growing year kept fresh by Garden round · Marigold runs Season plan.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Walk the plot with Marigold the day you install — one place at a time, with only what you know — and put the watering cadence on each plant as you go. Needs you can only list a plant whose cadence is on its row; a blank is honest, and it is never called overdue.
• Say what you did the way you'd say it over the fence — "watered everything", "fed the tomatoes", "picked 1.2kg of toms", "the fig looks sad" — and Garden capture writes the rows. With two plants that share a name, say which; if you don't, Marigold asks rather than guessing.
• Read Needs you on Monday and Thursday mornings, after the Garden round has been through the log. The days over are the honest signal: they are drawn from your own cadences and your own log, never from a guide's idea of the right interval.
• Ask Marigold what a plant wants before you guess — "what does basil want here?" — and Plant lookup writes the cadence, the light, the hardiness and the season windows on the row with the source named. It never overwrites a cadence you gave, and it never says something is safe to eat without a source.
• Look at The season on the first of the month, after the Season plan has redrawn it for your plants and your region: the sowing, planting-out and frost-protection windows are what the month is asking of you. It proposes; you decide what actually goes in.
• When a plant dies, say so — "lost the chillies to the frost" — and it stays on the book marked Lost. That is the correction that keeps the ring true, and the book of what didn't take is worth as much next spring as the book of what did.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, records and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• Each plant's water and feed cadence — yours wins over the guide's, always.
• When the round runs, or turning the twice-weekly round down to weekly outside the growing season.
• Where the garden is and whether it is sheltered, which is what the season windows and the frost watch are drawn from.
• Whether you want feeding reminders at all, or only watering and the season.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Installing ends with "Meet Marigold" — a slow walk round in conversation, not a form. Marigold asks roughly where the garden is, because sowing and frost windows go by place, then offers the places you might grow in — a windowsill, pots, beds and borders, vegetables and fruit, a greenhouse, an allotment — on one panel, so the corner you didn't think to name gets its chance. Then each place in turn: what grows there, since roughly when, how you water it, how it's doing. Each plant lands on the book as you say it; a blank stays blank.
2. Nothing in that conversation reaches outside 1Presence. Plant lookup is offered, never run unasked, and when you take it up it searches the open web for what the plant wants where you are and writes the answer on the row with its source. There is no weather service to connect: the frost watch is Marigold's own search of the forecast for your region, with the source named on the card.
3. Skip the conversation and the door quietly stays open: until a plant is on the book, the kit page, the board and Marigold's chat keep the offer ready, and the Monday and Thursday round leaves one card inviting you in rather than walking an empty plot. The first plant, however it arrives, closes it.
4. The first round with plants on the book recomputes what is due from whatever you have logged, draws the watering days and the pickings, and checks the forecast for your region if you gave one. The first Season plan, on the first of the month, draws the windows for your plants and the three months ahead — so the calendar has a shape before the first watering is ever logged. After that, most rounds in winter say nothing, which is the point.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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