The whole flow, at a glance
Eight steps from install to a garden that plans itself. Tap through them — the details for each are written out below.
Moon Phase Garden is a free, ad-free companion for growers. You don't need an account to use it, and nothing you write leaves your device unless you choose to share it. Here's the quick tour.
1. Install it and set your zone
Grab the app from Google Play — it's free, with no ads and no sign-up wall. The first thing to do is set your growing zone (the USDA hardiness zone for where you live, like 7a or 8b). Your zone is the dial that tunes everything else: planting windows, the harvest calendar, which perennials and natives make sense, and what the community shows you first. If you're not sure of your zone, the app can point you in the right direction from your general area — no precise location or tracking required.
2. See what the moon favors today
The home screen shows the current moon phase and what that phase is traditionally good for. The short version: the two weeks from the new moon to the full moon (the waxing half) favor leafy, above-ground crops and sowing; the two weeks from full back to new (the waning half) favor roots, transplanting, pruning, and tidying up. We treat this as a planning rhythm and a tradition — paired with your weather and your own results — not a magic guarantee. There's a deeper explainer in Learn → Moon-phase gardening.
3. Browse the plant guide
The plant guide is the heart of the app: a large library of vegetables, herbs, fruit, and flowers. Tap any plant to see its best moon-timed planting windows for your zone, its good and bad companions, its preferred soil pH, how hungry it is at feeding time, and — where relevant — medicinal uses with clear safety notes. It's built to answer "should I plant this now, and next to what?" at a glance.
4. Keep a journal (that stays yours)
The journal is where the app becomes your garden's story. Add an entry when you plant, water, harvest, or just notice something, and the app automatically stamps it with the moon phase and the weather at that moment, so you build a real record over time. Planted last week and only journaling now? You can adjust the moon phase and weather on the entry so it reflects when it actually happened.
5. Track your plants in "My Plants"
My Plants keeps a card for each thing you're growing, and you can add a photo when you enter one. The nice part: My Plants and your journal stay two-way in sync — add a plant in either place and it shows up in the other, so you never enter the same thing twice.
6. Plan a year-round garden
The Plan tab is your toolkit for thinking a season (or a whole year) ahead:
- Harvest every month — a zone-aware calendar of fruit and vegetables you can be picking in each month of the year, so the table never truly goes bare.
- Perennial & fruit — trees, berries, and other plant-once-harvest-for-years crops suited to your zone, with how long until they bear and whether they need a pollinator partner.
- Native plants — regional natives that feed pollinators and take care of themselves.
- Soil health — a practical pH guide, plus alerts when two plants you're growing want very different soil.
- Mushrooms — an introduction to growing edible mushrooms at home.
- Companions & rotation — what to plant together, what to keep apart, and how to move crops between beds each year to keep the soil healthy.
You can explore the same planning material on the web under Plan your garden.
7. Reminders that come to you
Rather than nagging, the app quietly reminds you of the things that are easy to forget — routine plant care and fertilizing — timed to the plants you're actually growing. You choose which reminders to turn on.
8. Dig into the Learn library
Beyond planting, the Learn section covers the wider skills of a self-reliant garden: foraging wild edibles (with the dangerous look-alikes shown plainly, never hidden), garden tools, survival nutrition, composting, and medicinal plants. Where the stakes are real, we warn clearly.
9. Share with the community (only if you want)
The community feed lets growers compare notes — "here's what I planted, in this zone, on this moon phase, and how it turned out." It's opt-in, uses handles rather than real names, and is moderated; anyone can flag a post that doesn't belong. Reading is open to everyone; posting just needs a free account.
A note on privacy
No ads, ever. No real names, no precise location, no tracking SDKs. The app works offline, your journal is yours, and anything that syncs is something you switched on. That's the whole deal — you can read the fine print any time in our privacy policy.