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, reads the rain and the heat, 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 dataset, 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 dataset, 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 dataset, which lives at Data/Season Calendar in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Seed box & shed dataset, which lives at Data/Garden Stores in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Seed tray dataset, which lives at Data/Sowings in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Job sheets dataset, which lives at Data/Garden Jobs in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The The growing year dashboard reads from the dataset and shows, at a glance: walk the garden · do a job step by step · needs you · how they're doing · what it gave back — pickings by crop · on the plant book · spent on the garden, on record · the shopping list · what it has cost, by kind · on the seed tray, by stage · the season · days a round happened · 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 · Marigold holds Plant trouble · Marigold holds Plot planner · Marigold holds Seed box keeper · Seed box keeper keeps Seed box & shed · Seed box keeper updates Seed tray · Marigold holds Garden how-to · Garden how-to writes to Job sheets.

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. When a plant dies, say that too — "lost the chillies to the frost" — and it stays on the book marked Lost: the book of what didn't take is worth as much next spring as the book of what did.
• Take a photo of a plant you can't name and hand it to Marigold with a word about what to look at. It says what it thinks the plant is — common name and botanical, and how sure — asks when two candidates are close, keeps the photo under that plant's own folder in your vault with the path on the row, and logs what the picture showed. A photo every few weeks gives each plant a dated picture history on the log. It will never tell you something is safe to eat from a picture; ask Plant lookup, which cites its source.
• 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 you go round with the can, press Start on Walk the garden and let the board take you through one place at a time. Tick a plant as you water it and add a line when something catches your eye. Each plant is saved to the Garden log as you go, so the next round counts it exactly as if you had said it, and what you noticed is there when you ask about that plant in August.
• Tell Marigold what you buy and what you run out of — "two bags of compost, 14", "nearly out of tomato feed", "carrot seed, sow by next March" — and the Seed box & shed keeps it. The shopping list on the board is what is still to buy; tick a thing when you have it. What the garden has cost is those prices added up, and nothing you did not say.
• Before you order seed, ask what to grow next. Plot planner starts from your own plot, what grew where last year and what you marked "not again", and gives each suggestion with the guide it came from. At the end of the season, take the ten minutes it offers to go back round what you grew: again, maybe, or not again is the single most useful thing next spring's plan can read.
• When a plant looks wrong, say what you can see and hand over a photo. Plant trouble lays out what a named guide says it is likely to be, the one check that settles it and what to try first. For a job you have not done before, ask how: Garden how-to writes it as a short sheet of steps, and Do a job step by step on the board walks you through it with room for a note you will want next year.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, datasets 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.
• What you want from the garden this year, which is what Plot planner plans towards; say so again whenever it changes.
• What you call each bed or spot, so next year's rotation reads the names you actually use.
• Whether you want feeding reminders at all, or only watering and the season.
• How much a photo is allowed to change: by default Marigold names the plant and writes the botanical name only when it is sure or you confirm, and never moves a plant to Struggling from a picture without asking.

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. Before it asks you anything, Marigold looks at what you have already told 1Presence and at any plant notes, lists or photo folders in your vault, asking your permission to look there if it needs it, and shows you what it found so you can confirm or correct it. After that it asks only for the gaps. 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 (leaving out any it has already found), 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. A photo is welcome at any point in the walk — Marigold names what it sees and keeps the picture on that plant's row — and when a plant lands that you can't name, it says once that a photo would let it help. Somewhere in the walk it asks, once and in passing, what you most want from the garden this year — food, flowers, something easy to keep, a bit of everything — because that is what the Plot planner plans towards.
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, or stop part-way, and nothing is lost. Until your plants are on the book, each with where it grows, and you have done some care that carries a date, the kit page, the board and Marigold's chat keep the offer ready, and Marigold raises it once the next time you talk. Whatever is still missing waits on the Kit page with a way back to Marigold. While the book is empty, the Monday and Thursday round leaves one card inviting you in rather than walking an empty plot. How often the pots, the windowsill and the greenhouse want water is on the page too, but it never holds the door open. Tell Marigold a part does not apply to you, or that you have finished setting up, and it stops asking.
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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