Seedtime vs Leaftide: Which garden planner fits your garden?
Seedtime is a great seed starting and scheduling tool, especially for US vegetable gardeners. But if you grow fruit trees, want GDD-based predictions, or garden outside North America, here's how the two compare.
Both apps help you plan a productive garden, but they approach the problem differently. Seedtime excels at teaching you how to grow things, with rich educational content and step-by-step guides. Leaftide focuses on telling you precisely when to act, using real climate data from your specific location to generate scheduling intelligence that adapts as your season unfolds.
At a glance
What they share
- ✓ Planting calendars based on frost dates
- ✓ Auto-generated task lists
- ✓ Succession planting support
- ✓ Free tier with no time limit
Where Leaftide differs
- 🌳 Tracks fruit trees, shrubs, and permanent plants
- 🌡️ GDD-based harvest predictions, not just frost dates
- 📍 Climate data specific to your exact location
- 🌍 Works worldwide, not just US and Canada
Feature comparison
| Feature | Seedtime | Leaftide |
|---|---|---|
| Planting calendar | ✓ | ✓ |
| Task lists | ✓ | ✓ |
| Garden journal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Succession planting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Seed starting schedules | ✓ | ✓ |
| Visual bed planner | Paid only | ✓ |
| Permanent plants (fruit trees, shrubs) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Pruning and care routines | ✗ | ✓ |
| Harvest predictions (GDD-based) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Container planner | ✗ | Dedicated mode |
| Climate data | Zone / frost dates | Your specific location |
| Works outside US/Canada | ✗ | ✓ |
| Free tier | Free (1 garden, limited) | Free forever |
| Keep data if you cancel | ✗ | ✓ |
| Educational content | Videos + summits | Learn articles |
| Mobile app | iOS + Android | iOS + Android |
Pricing: Seedtime is free (limited) or $7-9/month for paid plans. Leaftide is £5/month or £99 lifetime.
Climate-smart scheduling that works outside North America
Free for up to 30 plants. No credit card required.
Key differences explained
🌳 Permanent plants, not just annuals
Seedtime is built around annual vegetables and herbs. It does a great job scheduling when to sow, transplant, and harvest those crops. But if you have fruit trees, berry bushes, or perennial shrubs, there's no way to track their age, pruning schedules, or year-over-year growth. Leaftide treats permanent plants as first-class citizens with dedicated tracking, care routines, and lifecycle predictions. You can log bud break, flowering, and fruiting dates each year, and Leaftide learns from that history to predict next season's timeline. For established gardens with a mix of annuals and perennials, this means one app covers everything rather than tracking trees in a separate spreadsheet.
🌡️ Harvest predictions based on real climate data
Seedtime estimates harvest dates using average days-to-maturity from your frost date. Leaftide goes further with Growing Degree Day (GDD) calculations using climate data specific to your exact location. This means your harvest predictions adjust to actual growing conditions rather than relying on generic zone averages. A cool spring pushes your predicted harvest back; an unusually warm May brings it forward. The practical difference is significant: generic frost-date calculations can be off by two to three weeks, which matters when you're planning succession sowings or trying to time a holiday harvest.
🌍 Works worldwide, not just North America
Seedtime is optimised for US and Canadian gardeners, using USDA hardiness zones and zip code-based frost dates. If you garden in the UK, Europe, or elsewhere, it won't have your local data. Leaftide works with location-specific climate data anywhere in the world and is available in five languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch). This isn't just a UI translation; the scheduling engine itself uses local climate stations and regional frost models, so a gardener in Yorkshire gets predictions built from Yorkshire weather, not a US zone approximation. If you've ever tried to map USDA zones onto a UK postcode and felt the answer was "roughly zone 8, maybe," you'll appreciate the difference.
🔒 Your data stays yours
With Leaftide, your garden history and plant data remain accessible even if you downgrade to the free tier. You never lose access to what you've recorded. Years of planting dates, harvest weights, and permanent plant observations stay in your account indefinitely. This matters more than it sounds: garden data becomes more valuable over time as patterns emerge, and losing that history to a cancelled subscription means starting from scratch.
GDD-based timing that adapts to your actual season
Free for up to 30 plants. No credit card required.
⚖️ Where Seedtime does better
- Seedtime's succession planting workflow is excellent. Adding successive plantings is a single click, and it warns you when cold weather would cut a planting short. If succession planting is your main concern, Seedtime makes it very intuitive.
- The educational content is a real strength. Seedtime offers masterclass videos, gardening summits, and how-to guides linked directly from your task list. If you're a beginner who wants to learn as you go, this is genuinely helpful.
- Seedtime has native iOS and Android apps, which can feel snappier than a web app when you're out in the garden checking tasks.
- With 2,650+ built-in crop varieties, Seedtime's database is large and well-maintained, so you'll rarely need to add custom entries for common vegetables.
Who should choose which
Choose Seedtime if you...
- Are a complete beginner who wants step-by-step growing guides alongside your schedule
- Garden in the US or Canada and want a zip code-based planting calendar
- Primarily grow annual vegetables and herbs with no perennials to track
- Value educational video content and community summits as part of the experience
- Want a large built-in variety database so you rarely need to add custom entries
Choose Leaftide if you...
- Already know what to grow and want accurate, location-specific timing
- Have fruit trees, berry bushes, or other permanent plants to manage
- Garden in the UK, Europe, or anywhere outside North America
- Want harvest predictions that respond to your actual season, not generic averages
- Care about long-term tracking and keeping your data regardless of subscription status
- Want pruning schedules, care routines, and lifecycle management for perennials
The bottom line
Seedtime is an excellent choice for US-based beginners who want education woven into their planning workflow. Leaftide is for gardeners who already know what they want to grow and need precision timing, permanent plant support, and worldwide coverage. If your garden includes fruit trees or you live outside North America, Leaftide fills gaps that Seedtime doesn't address.
Garden outside North America, or grow fruit trees too?
Leaftide works worldwide with location-specific climate data and perennial tracking. Free for up to 30 plants.
Get your planting scheduleNo credit card required
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Last updated: July 2026