Upfront disclosure: I’m a solo dev with a garden planning app that has a paid tier. Not here to pitch - genuinely figuring out if an HA integration is worth building, or if this is a niche of one.
Important: This is NOT for houseplants. The existing Plant integration + OpenPlantBook handles indoor plants well. I’m talking about outdoor gardens - fruit trees, berry bushes, perennial vegetables, allotments, orchards.
The gap I’m seeing:
There’s no good way to track permanent outdoor plants over multiple years:
When did my apple tree break bud this year vs last year?
When did I last prune my fig?
Is flowering trending earlier? (climate shift patterns)
Year-over-year harvest dates and yields
“You pruned the plum on Feb 15 last year” type reminders
This is lifecycle history and multi-year patterns, not real-time sensor readings.
What this could look like in HA:
Entities per permanent plant (apple tree, blueberry bush, grape vine)
State attributes: last_pruning, last_flowering, last_harvest
Services: garden.log_event for recording lifecycle events
Sensors for predictions: “Expected harvest: August 15-25”
Calendar integration for care reminders
Questions:
Do any outdoor gardeners here actually want this in HA, or is this overkill?
Standalone add-on vs. integration with an external tracking service?
What events matter? (pruning, bud break, flowering, fruit set, harvest, pests, fertilizing…)
If there’s real interest, I’ll build it. If crickets, I’ll know to focus elsewhere. Honest feedback appreciated.
As a gardener with a fruitgarden I would totally not interested in this. Why? Well i kept some of this data in paper but it was never usefull. Each year is different with the weather in the spring, early insects, wetness, temperature. Trees are aging each year, polenating trees in the neigborhood or not. Ect, ect. You still need to touch and feel your fruit, see your plant to notice their health. That is what gardening is all about being outdoors and not data driven unless you have a heavenly controlled greenhouse. But even then…
That’s fair - and I completely agree you need to be out there touching and observing. The data doesn’t replace that.
The use case I’m thinking of is more like: “It’s mid-January, I should go check if my apple tree needs winter pruning… wait, did I prune it last year or skip it?” Or getting a reminder that says “You noticed bud break on April 3 last year - might be worth checking the orchard this week.”
It’s prompting you to go look, and remembering what you saw when you did. Not replacing the looking.
But if that’s still not useful to you, totally fair - appreciate the honest feedback.
In theory this sounds very interesting to me. But I can say right away I would not pay for this.
I suspect in practice I would keep forgetting to enter data in there. But then again, if I would remember, it could be interesting to study for example what fertilizers I used when for which plants. And then track and analyse the results, together with some weather data. That could be interesting.
The forgetting-to-log problem is real - that’s actually one of the reasons an HA integration could help. Imagine a notification when you’re already in HA “Last year you fertilized the apple tree around this time” or a dashboard card reminding you spring pruning window is open.
The fertilizer + weather + results analysis angle is interesting - tracking what you did alongside conditions to spot what actually worked.
And fwiw, the free tier covers 10 permanent plants - enough for most backyard orchards. The paid tier is mainly for people with bigger collections or wanting unlimited custom varieties.
What would make you more likely to actually log something? Quick-tap from a dashboard? Voice command?
I honestly don’t know. I can just imagine that I would simply forget to open HA and now down what I did when I was doing it, and later I would forget the details. I also imagine it can be a chore and while initially I might be diligent, after some time I might start to forget it more and more. Not sure there’s much that can be done about it from the integration point of view.
Having said that, if I would get a reminder on a sunny weekend that it’s a nice weather and would I like to work in my garden, that would be nice - that could then follow up later asking me what I did.
As for the free plan, that’s great to hear. But I wanted to be clear, as you came here to see the potential interest, and you need this to sell to justify the work, I’m unlikely to be a buyer.
Thanks to everyone who took a look.
Since there hasn’t been much noise on this , I’ll take it as a sign that it’s a bit too niche for a dedicated Home Assistant integration right now.
I’m glad I asked before diving into the build! I’ll be focusing my efforts on other parts of the project for now.
That said, if anyone is still interested in the outdoor plant tracking project I mentioned or wants to see how I’m handling multi-year lifecycle data, feel free to shoot me a DM.
I’m happy to share more details privately to keep things within forum guidelines.
Happy gardening!