Almanac Garden Planner vs Leaftide: Which one fits your garden?
The Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner is a trusted name with a huge plant database and decades of gardening wisdom. But if you grow fruit trees, perennials, or want climate-specific harvest predictions, here's how the two compare.
This is a thorough, honest comparison of two tools that serve different purposes: the Almanac is a reference and planning tool for annual crops, while Leaftide is an active garden management app that tracks your plants, predicts harvests, and learns from your growing history over time.
At a glance
What they share
- ✓ Visual drag-and-drop garden planning
- ✓ Personalised planting calendars
- ✓ Email reminders for sowing and planting
- ✓ Garden journal for notes and photos
Where Leaftide differs
- 🌳 Tracks fruit trees, shrubs, and permanent plants
- 📍 Climate data specific to your location, not just weather stations
- 🆓 Free tier with no time limit (not just a 7-day trial)
- 🔒 Your data stays accessible if you cancel
Feature comparison
| Feature | Almanac | Leaftide |
|---|---|---|
| Visual bed planner | ✓ | ✓ |
| Planting calendar | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email reminders | ✓ | ✓ |
| Companion planting suggestions | Evidence-based | ✓ |
| Crop rotation warnings | ✓ | Coming soon |
| Plant variety database | 21,000+ varieties | Growing |
| Garden journal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Permanent plants (fruit trees, shrubs) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Pruning and care routines | ✗ | ✓ |
| Harvest predictions (GDD-based) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Container planner | Basic objects | Dedicated mode |
| Climate data | 5,000 weather stations | Your specific location |
| Free tier | 7-day trial | Free forever |
| Keep data if you cancel | ✗ | ✓ |
Pricing: Almanac Garden Planner is $35/year (recurring) or $50 for a single year. Leaftide is £5/month or £99 lifetime.
Harvest predictions powered by your location, not weather station averages.
Free for up to 30 plants. No credit card required.
Key differences explained
🌳 Track fruit trees and perennials, not just veg
The Almanac Garden Planner is built around annual vegetables, herbs, and flowers. It has no concept of a plant that lives for decades, produces differently each year as it matures, and needs seasonal pruning on a schedule that depends on its age and variety. Leaftide lets you track permanent plants like fruit trees, berry bushes, and ornamental shrubs, with pruning schedules, age tracking, and care routines that carry over year after year. You can log observations (first blossom, fruit set, harvest weight) and Leaftide uses that history to predict next year's timeline, something a planting calendar for annuals simply cannot do.
📍 Climate data for your exact location
The Almanac planner uses a database of 5,000 weather stations to estimate your planting windows. That means your dates come from the nearest station, which might be 30 miles away at a different elevation or in a different frost pocket. Leaftide uses climate data specific to your coordinates and calculates growing degree days (GDD) to predict not just when to sow, but when you can realistically expect to harvest. This matters because two gardens in the same hardiness zone can have frost dates weeks apart depending on altitude, urban heat island effects, and proximity to water. Zone-based averages get you in the right month; GDD gets you in the right week.
🔒 Your data stays yours
With the Almanac Garden Planner, your garden plans and history are tied to your subscription. If you don't renew, you lose access to everything: layout designs, planting dates, journal entries, and years of notes. With Leaftide, your data remains accessible even on the free tier, so years of garden history are never locked away. You built that knowledge over seasons of observation; it should not disappear because you missed a renewal email.
🆓 Free tier vs 7-day trial
The Almanac planner offers a 7-day free trial with no credit card required, which is fair for getting a feel for the interface. But seven days is barely enough time to plan one bed, let alone test whether the tool fits your workflow across a full growing season. Leaftide has a free tier that lasts forever, so you can plan at your own pace without a ticking clock. Start in winter, come back in spring, add your summer crops when you are ready. No deadline, no pressure to decide before your trial expires.
GDD-based predictions, not generic planting calendars.
Free for up to 30 plants. No credit card required.
⚖️ Where the Almanac Garden Planner does better
- The Almanac planner has crop rotation warnings built in, tracking what grew where in previous years and flagging bad placements. This feature is on our roadmap but not yet available in Leaftide.
- Their plant variety database is massive: over 21,000 varieties across 400+ crops, with seed supplier integration. Leaftide's database is growing but not as extensive yet.
- The Old Farmer's Almanac brand brings over 230 years of gardening knowledge, with hundreds of expert-written grow guides, 440+ how-to videos, and a community of 500,000+ gardeners. That depth of content is hard to match.
- Their evidence-based companion planting system is well-regarded and backed by research, not just folklore.
Who should choose which
Choose Almanac if you...
- • Just need quick planting dates and don't want to create an account
- • Want access to 21,000+ plant varieties with seed supplier links
- • Garden in the US and want data from nearby weather stations
- • Value crop rotation warnings and companion planting research
- • Prefer a large community forum and hundreds of how-to videos
Choose Leaftide if you...
- • Grow fruit trees, berry bushes, or other permanent plants
- • Want harvest predictions based on your actual microclimate, not zone averages
- • Garden in the UK or Europe and need location-specific data
- • Want ongoing tracking with care routines, pruning reminders, and a garden journal that persists for free
- • Prefer a free tier you can use indefinitely rather than a 7-day trial
Bottom line
The Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner is an excellent quick-reference tool with a massive plant database and strong community resources. If all you need is a planting calendar and a drag-and-drop bed layout for annual veg, it does that well. Leaftide is for gardeners who want ongoing management: tracking permanent plants across years, getting harvest predictions tuned to their specific location, and keeping their data accessible regardless of subscription status. Many gardeners start with Almanac dates and eventually want something that grows with their garden season after season.
Keep your garden history and track fruit trees too.
Leaftide gives you location-specific predictions and permanent plant tracking with no data lock-in. Free forever.
Start your free planNo credit card required
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Last updated: July 2026