VegPlotter vs Leaftide: Which garden planner fits your garden?
Both planners offer a free tier and help you organise your veg patch. But if your garden includes fruit trees, perennials, or you want GDD-based harvest predictions, here's how they stack up.
VegPlotter is a free, UK-based garden planner with a straightforward visual bed layout tool and companion planting guides. Leaftide is also built in the UK but takes a different approach: climate-aware scheduling, permanent plant tracking, and harvest predictions that respond to your actual growing season.
At a glance
What they share
- ✓ Visual drag-and-drop garden layout
- ✓ Personalised planting calendars based on location
- ✓ Companion planting suggestions
- ✓ Free tier available
Where Leaftide differs
- 🌳 Tracks fruit trees, shrubs, and permanent plants
- 📍 Climate data specific to your exact location, not just frost dates
- 📊 GDD-based harvest predictions that adapt to your season
- 🪴 Dedicated container planner mode
Feature comparison
| Feature | VegPlotter | Leaftide |
|---|---|---|
| Visual bed planner | ✓ | ✓ |
| Planting calendar | ✓ | ✓ |
| Companion planting suggestions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Crop rotation warnings | ✓ | Coming soon |
| Month-by-month planning | ✓ | ✓ |
| Square Foot Gardening mode | ✓ | ✗ |
| Permanent plants (fruit trees, shrubs) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Pruning and care routines | ✗ | ✓ |
| Harvest predictions (GDD-based) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Container planner | ✗ | Dedicated mode |
| Climate data | Frost dates | Your specific location |
| Free tier | 20 plantings/year | Free forever |
| Keep data if you cancel | View only | ✓ |
Pricing: VegPlotter is free for layouts, paid plans from ~$22/year for unlimited plantings. Leaftide is free forever, or £5/month / £99 lifetime for the full plan.
Full-season planning with GDD predictions and perennial tracking
Free for up to 30 plants. No credit card required.
Key differences explained
🌳 More than just vegetables
VegPlotter is built around annual vegetables and does that well. But if your garden also has fruit trees, berry bushes, or ornamental shrubs, there's no way to track them. Leaftide handles permanent plants as first-class citizens, with pruning schedules, age tracking, and care routines alongside your veg.
In practice, this means you can log when your apple tree flowered, track its pruning history across years, and get reminders for seasonal care tasks like winter washes or summer thinning. VegPlotter's strength is plotting out your annual beds; Leaftide lets you manage the whole garden as a single, connected system that carries over year to year.
📊 Harvest predictions that adapt to your weather
VegPlotter uses frost dates and average temperatures to suggest planting windows. Leaftide goes further with Growing Degree Day (GDD) calculations that use climate data specific to your exact location. This means your harvest predictions adjust based on how your actual season is progressing, not just historical averages.
For example, a cold spring in Yorkshire will push your tomato harvest date back automatically in Leaftide, while VegPlotter's calendar stays static regardless of conditions. This matters most for heat-loving crops like sweetcorn, peppers, and aubergines where a few degrees make the difference between a good harvest and a disappointing one.
🆓 Both free, but different limits
VegPlotter's free tier gives you unlimited garden layouts and up to 20 plantings per year. That's generous for a small patch. Leaftide's free tier has no time limit and your data stays fully accessible even if you downgrade from a paid plan. Both approaches are fair. It depends on whether you value more plantings or more features.
Worth noting: VegPlotter's paid plan unlocks unlimited plantings and extra features like journal entries. Leaftide's free tier already includes harvest predictions and permanent plant tracking for up to 30 plants; the paid plan removes that cap and adds advanced features like care routines. Neither app locks you out of your existing data if you stop paying.
Harvest predictions that adapt to your actual weather
Free for up to 30 plants. No credit card required.
⚖️ Where VegPlotter does better
- VegPlotter has crop rotation warnings built in, flagging when you plant the same family in the same bed as last year. This is on our roadmap but not yet in Leaftide.
- Its interface is deliberately simple and approachable. If you're a beginner who only grows annual veg, VegPlotter's learning curve is very gentle.
- VegPlotter supports Square Foot Gardening with dedicated bed layouts and spacing, which Leaftide does not currently offer.
- It's completely free for garden layouts with no account limits on bed design, making it a solid choice if you just want to sketch out your plot.
Choose VegPlotter if you...
- Want a completely free planner with no features behind a paywall
- Only need a visual bed layout tool to sketch your plot
- Grow annual vegetables and don't need to track perennials
- Prefer a very simple interface with a gentle learning curve
- Want crop rotation warnings (not yet available in Leaftide)
- Use Square Foot Gardening and want dedicated spacing support
Choose Leaftide if you...
- Want climate-aware scheduling that adapts to your actual season
- Track fruit trees, berry bushes, or ornamental shrubs alongside veg
- Want GDD-based harvest predictions for heat-loving crops
- Need ongoing season tracking with care reminders and routines
- Grow in containers and want a dedicated container planner
- Value active development with regular new features
The bottom line
VegPlotter is a genuinely good free option if your garden is purely annual vegetables and you want a simple bed planner. If your garden has grown beyond that (fruit trees, perennials, containers) or you want scheduling that responds to your actual weather rather than static averages, Leaftide picks up where VegPlotter leaves off. Both are built in the UK, both have honest free tiers, and switching is straightforward since Leaftide lets you start fresh without losing anything.
Want harvest predictions and perennial tracking too?
Leaftide adds GDD-based predictions and fruit tree management to your garden planning. Free for up to 30 plants.
Plan your garden freeNo credit card required
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Last updated: July 2026