I've Been Keeping a Secret... (It's Finally Here)

I've been keeping a huge secret from you all the entire year and I'm finally ready to come clean about it. I made a 2027 planting calendar. Around this time last year I was sitting in my garden and I was thinking I really want to be a more organized gardener in 2026 because I am not an organized person at all. I am very type B. I'm flying by the seat of my pants always and I have always craved to kind of be a more organized person, but I needed to figure out how to be organized in the way that my brain works. And I think that one of the biggest challenges when you are a beginner gardener, and even when you're a seasoned gardener, is not necessarily knowing what to plant, but it's knowing when to plant it. It's like, I know what I want to grow, when do I plant it at the right time? Because timing is everything with gardening. And even though I've been gardening for all of these years, I still need reminders myself of what should I be planting this week? When is the next kind of planting period coming up for which crop? I need those reminders and I need them visually and I need them laid out in a very certain way. I had looked at all kinds of different planting calendars throughout the years and none of them seemed helpful to me. None of them just itched my brain the way I needed it to be and I just couldn't follow along. And so I was like, okay, I need to solve my own problem here. And I designed my calendar, my 2026 calendar, and I made this for myself in the beginning. And then I was like, I actually think that this could help a lot of people, especially if their brain works the same way that mine does. And so I launched it and I started with zone eight, which is my growing zone. And that's like what I was most familiar with and a lot of you really wanted me to make them for other zones and this one calendar took me so long to make there was no way that I was going to come out with all these other zones in that short amount of time and so this past year I have had this one that has been a general guide for zones seven and eight and then I did make one that was general for zones five and six and that was like the best i could do for 2026 i am sorry but i am happy to announce that in 2027 i went a little crazy and i have one for zones three through ten and not only is it per growing zone it is per region so there are multiple regions within the same growing zone that grow very differently for instance my zone 8 here in north carolina is so totally different from the Zone 8 up in the PNW. And so zones necessarily aren't the best when we're talking about microclimates. Zones really only tell you how cold your winters get. They don't really tell you how to grow efficiently throughout the summer. And so this year I've been working so hard on getting these zones out to you guys because you guys have been requesting them. And so many of you bought the calendars last year and it actually blew my mind like hundreds and hundreds of you bought this calendar and um just reading the reviews and reading the comments and everything has just like had such a smile plastered to my face every time I look at my calendar and I use it myself so let's get into the 2027 calendar because it's not just the calendar my friends I have been working on so many other things to accompany this calendar and you guys are going to freak out you're really gonna freak out the way that I'm freaking out so the 2027 calendar is still set up like the 2026 calendar up top we have our gardening task and by the way this is my prototype the design for the tops of these calendars are going to be very different this is just my first draft but again like I said I'm type b and I'm also kind of a bit of a perfectionist and so I've changed the design for this but the information is still going to be the same we have garden tasks to keep you on task every month and then we have what to plant. I have a little thing for notes and I even decided to add in a Meg's pick. Some of you requested that I put some of my favorite varieties in here and so each month is going to have a Meg's pick and that's just one of my favorite varieties that I grow in my garden. On the bottom it's pretty similar to the 2026 calendar and that everything is color coded and the color is going to indicate whether you start these seeds indoors whether you direct sow them or whether you're transplanting them whether you are succession sowing them and then each crop is going to have a window it's going to have a beginning of the window to plant and then it's going to have an end and so this whole calendar operates in windows. The dates are not deadlines. And even though I made a calendar for every region that I could possibly think of, it still may not be specific down to the very dates according to your microclimate. And so that's why on the front, I have somewhere for you to write down your last frost date and your first frost date. And there are directions all throughout the calendar to guide you on how to shift those dates around there is also a frost countdown on every month and that's just going to tell you how many weeks you have until your last frost and so this calendar is just what my brain needed and then i found out that a lot of you your brain works the same way and you need something visual you need something physical and you need something that is going to tell you exactly what to plant and when so you never have to question that if you do question you can just look at your calendar and say you know it doesn't say that I'm transplanting out my tomatoes in March so I'm not doing that yet or if you are like well do I still have enough time to sow my leafy greens or is it too late you can look at the window and you can see the beginning and the end of each planting period and so it's just really really helpful so that's the first thing is the calendar I have a surprise for you guys because also a lot of you requested a journal to go along with the calendar so this is the garden journal there's going to be one for each and every zone and region it's meant to pair along with your calendar in the journal got a little cute little note from me there's our first page this journal belongs to everything about your garden what your goals are for the year we're going to write those down there's a page for your soil test results because that's going to remind you that you need to test your soil varieties you want to try notes there's a garden map where you can draw out your beds we've got seed inventory pages where you can go through all of your seeds that you have and then you can make a seed wish list as well so that you can tick those off and you won't forget anything there's a section for your year at a glance where it's going to have all of the planting dates that match your calendar and this is kind of like your year at a glance it's going have each and every crop and the planting dates for that crop and so you can use the journal as a standalone you don't necessarily need the calendar with it because it does have all the dates in there as well so if you're more of a journal person and not a calendar person then this will be for you but i like to use them in tandem with each other the calendar is going to be what's going to tell you what to plant and then the journal is where you're going to write down what actually happened in your garden and you can reflect back on the next year so each month is going to have what you're planting goals for the month it's going to have a weather watch where you're going to write down your frost nights that you had your total rain and then your high and low for the month and then that's really good information to look back on when you're planning your next year garden you can look back and be like okay well what what did what happened last year because we are living in an age where climate change is a real thing. I mean the climate is changing right before our very eyes and so it's really good information to have. There's notes for you to write down. There's a planting log, everything you planted that month, a harvest log, everything harvested, wins for the month, pests and problems that you ran into and then it says next year I will. It's okay these were the problems that I ran into and this is going to be the solution for next year. So this is really gonna be a good tool I think for everyone. So each month is going to get a page like that. In the back we have crop records and this is where you can write down every variety that you planted of every crop. This is the page for broccoli and then it's gonna have growing notes. What beds did you plant them in? Did you use support or cover for them? How much did you space them when did you feed them what was your first and last harvest star of the season or varieties that you'll skip next year pest problems and then there's like a little reflective question at the bottom that I just think is really fun so we have crop records for like everything there's a lot of pages of crop records because I just wanted to be like thorough and allow you room to actually record everything that you planted then we have some reflective pages like looking back and we have a garden to table section where you can write down recipes that you may have made from things that you grew or how much you canned of a certain thing we have a seed saving section you can write down the seeds that you saved from your garden that way you don't forget anything and then we've just got a notes section and i left some blank pages in the back so that you guys can do whatever you want. Maybe you can write more or you can press flowers in it. That's what I'm going to be doing with mine and just have fun with it. Or you can draw artwork or, or whatever you want. So I really hope that you guys like the journal. This next thing is going to bring everything full circle. And I've been working so, so, so hard on it. And it's literally my brain child. I made an app you guys. I made an app and this is not your average planting app because I know that there are a lot of planting apps out there. It is like really saturated and I've used all of them because I like the idea of a physical journal. I like the idea of physical things but I also like the idea of an app because yes I do use my phone and your phones are really easy to use while you're out in the garden and you're physically gardening and you don't want to forget something it's really easy to just like whip out your phone and document it and then you can go back later and write it down in your journal when you have some peace and quiet and like a tea or something but i am so excited about this app because again it's it's like my brain child i did the same thing that i did with the calendar i was like okay how does my brain work what do i need as a gardener and i'm gonna put it in an app and i have logged so many hours into creating this I've essentially learned how to code never knew how to do any of that before and I have just been like so engulfed in creating this and I'm so excited about it that I could burst because it's I can't wait to tell you about it when you download the app it is going to first give you a tutorial of how to use the app then it's going to ask you for your zip code and this is going to be so that it can tailor planting dates and your weather. It's going to give you the weather rundown of the week. And this is on your front page. Like this is the, the homepage it's called this week. It's giving you like a rundown of the week. So first of all, there's a little like scene at the top and it changes with the weather. So if it's raining outside, the little scene is going to be raining and you can customize this scene at the top so i have mine set on a little farm because i think it's really cute but i also added cottage garden backyard beds i even added a balcony garden because i realized that not everybody you know has a farm or a backyard and this is the most fun part i was obsessed with a game called Stardew Valley growing up and i know that a lot of you probably experienced the same thing i still play Stardew Valley in the winter time it's like i'm missing my garden so much that I have to have a virtual one and Stardew Valley just like really itched my brain in a way that I loved and so there are two modes two looks that you can choose for your app the first one is a watercolor so it's you know it's like the basic but then there's a cozy farm mode that is inspired by Stardew Valley and so the whole app gives Stardew Valley and that was like the most exciting thing that I wanted to do because I just love Stardew Valley. It really like shaped me as a gardener and I feel like it really inspired me from a young age to want to garden one day and so that's just kind of like my little ode to Stardew Valley. So I'm gonna switch it back to watercolor for now just to show you guys the the basic look. So like I was saying on the front page when you're looking at the week we have the weather and it gives you a full rundown. For instance now I have lows of 42 to 64 degrees Fahrenheit and that's important to know as a gardener especially as we're coming up on frost. It also tells me I have three weeks until my first frost. Then it even gives you watering tips based off of your weather for the week. So it says it's dry and warm this week with no real rain in your forecast so give your beds a deep soak early in the morning and mulch to hold it in. Very sound watering advice and I wanted to make sure that that was in there because that's probably one of the biggest questions that i get i think in my comments and of course as i was developing this i had all of you guys's comments in mind i took all of the questions that i usually get and i was like this needs to be answered in this app this needs to be answered in everything that i'm creating for you because i want to make gardening easier so i think that that's going to be really useful like how you should be watering your garden based off of the weather. Then you're going to have some advice that is based off of your garden log and we are going to come back to the garden log in a minute. After the advice from your garden log you are going to have a section called open now and that is everything that you can plant right now in your garden. That means that the window is open and again this is tying back to the calendar and the planting window. So that means we are in the window right now. Like for instance fall flowers, cover crops hardy annuals garlic spring bulbs perennials those are all fair game for me to plant right now because we're in the window and then it's gonna have a coming up in the next three weeks because I know that you know we all lead really busy lives and we kind of need like we need a foreshadowing we need to know what to prepare for and we need to know do we need to buy these seeds because this window is opening in the next month because seeds sometimes sell out so it's it's just giving you like a little heads up hey the next three weeks we're gonna have frost or the next three weeks you can plant radishes or the next three weeks you you know sweet potatoes opens up or whatever so then there is a calendar page and this is exactly kind of like the journal as in you can use the app standalone you don't necessarily need the calendar or the journal in order to use it because it has your year at a glance and it has all of the planting windows for all of the different crops to grow and it tells you whether to direct sow them whether to start them indoors whether to transplant them and so it's all right there all of the information that's in the calendar is right here i just added this in case you are the kind of person that can look at a year at a glance thing and it clicks for you personally that's not what works for me i'm more of like i need the calendar to visually map it out but it's there the information is there in case you are out in the garden and you don't have your calendar with you you can look it up on the app so what i'm kind of planning on doing with me is i'm going to have the calendar hanging on my fridge or in my office so that way i can have a look at it in the morning when i'm having you my coffee I can just kind of glance it over I'm going to keep my gardening journal in the greenhouse and that way I can use that as reflections during downtime and then when I'm physically out gardening and I just need like a quick look at something then I have my app so now we're going to go over to the garden log and this is where you can log your plantings and not only are you logging your plantings but the app is going to keep track of the days and it's going to tell you when you are going to be able to harvest that thing. For instance, I planted pumpkins around April 22nd. There is a progress bar and the progress bar is all the way full, meaning it's time to harvest my pumpkins. And lo and behold, my pumpkins are ready. So back on my main page, it's telling me, hey, your pumpkins are ready. And it's also telling me that my sweet potatoes are ready because it's been a hundred days since I've planted them. I just sowed some radishes and it says that I sowed these outside on October 6th and so the bar is part of the way through and it says my first harvest is in about two weeks and so that's a really nice way to visually see the progress of everything we've planted and I know that especially for beginner gardeners one of their main questions is like when should I be harvesting this stuff and obviously there's gonna be visual cues and hands-on cues and an app could be wrong just depending on the microclimate but like it should be pretty close it's just a good way to like kind of keep track of everything that you're planting it's also gonna have a harvest tally because you can log a harvest as well and if you're somebody that likes to weigh things to see how many pounds that you get. It also keeps track of how many pounds. So I harvested my pumpkins and I weighed all of these pumpkins here and it turned out to be 27 pounds of pumpkins. I forgot to mention one of the best features and that is when you are in the garden log or the seeds or anything like that you can click on something. So I just clicked on my pumpkins and it will give you planting information and planting advice. It'll tell you what sun they need, it'll tell you spacing requirements, it's going to tell you days to harvest, your planting depth, everything. It will also give you some companion planting advice like some good neighbors that you maybe should consider planting near it and then it also just gives you advice in general like it says good to know harvest when the rind is too hard to dent with a fingernail then cure it somewhere warm for one to two weeks so that it keeps for months. I also wanted it to have kind of a fun aspect to it and like I said I'm a Stardew Valley fan and I like having achievements and things to work towards almost like a game and so I added badges. So there's different badges that you can collect and there's different levels of gardener that you can become. Right now I'm a level four gardener it's called bloom and the very very top level so if you were to max your levels it's master gardener it also tells you how close you are to getting these badges and all the different badges and there's 51 badges right now but i am cooking some more badges up in my brain to add and then at the end of the year you can share your season kind of like a Spotify Wrapped but a garden wrapped i think that that's so cute and so fun because i love Spotify Wrapped i love seeing that like seeing you know everything that i listened to throughout the year how long i listened to it and i was like how cool would it be to have a garden wrapped so it'll make you a garden wrapped tell you how many badges you got how many crops you grew how many plantings you did and how many pounds that you harvested over the year and i cannot wait until 2027 to see my garden wrapped so that's pretty much the planting side of the garden log then we have a tab called pantry and you can keep track of how many jars of things that you preserved or how many bags that you have in the freezer or how many herbs that you dried it's essentially a preservation tab that you can keep track of everything that you preserved for the year so it's it's kind of like a journal and the fact that you can look back on what you did for the year. And then I did actually add a journal tab as well where you can write an entry. It's not quite as detailed as the actual journal but you can write an entry. You can write down like how the garden's doing. You can add photos in this journal and that way you can look back on your season later. And you can even ask it to remind you each week on this day for you to write a journal entry. So if you want to reflect back on your gardening week then it'll prompt you to do that so that's the garden log which is really cool then we have a my beds tab this is where you can log and you can design your beds which i used to never do because i'm i am very chaotic with my beds and i'm honestly not sure how much i will use this personally but i know that a lot of you love to do this and i do think that it is really cool to see how other people design their beds and so essentially you can design your bed you can not only design your bed it has an option for containers as well so you can keep track of all of your containers the next tab is called seeds and this is where you can keep track of your seed stash so you can log all of the seeds that you planted and you can even rate them so that you never accidentally rebuy something that you didn't like you can look back and be like oh yeah i actually didn't like the yellow pear tomato me i hate the yellow pear tomato it's just a really good place to keep your seed stash virtually and you can you know look it up and make sure that you're not buying too of anything and then there's a shopping list tab so you can add what is on your shopping list for the year and then in the shopping list tab it'll actually remind you of things that you need to order soon you know if if lettuce season is coming up it'll say actually you need to order lettuce seeds soon because that's coming up so that's a really cool reminder so that way I am never not reminded of what I need to be buying and ahead of time and then I also have a seed shop so you can browse Meg's seed shop and it looks like a little general store which is so cool and you can shop seeds i'm putting my favorite seeds in here because also you guys are always asking me about varieties and all of my favorite varieties are going to be here i'm still building this out because it's taking me a really long time to go through every single variety that i love and put it in here but i do have a few up now but by the planting season i'll i'll have it fully finished so that's really cool it even has a tab called plant these soon so it'll take you to the things that you should be planting soon and again all this is based off of your zip code so it's very personalized to you nothing is generalized in this app so going back to the seed tab this is the one thing one of the many things actually that i struggled with in the garden and it's soil blocking i have discovered that i love soil blocking but i hate that you cannot put a plant tag and so what i've been doing is i've been having to physically draw out my seed trays and label them and like this past year I lost a page I lost one of the pages and I had no idea what some of the varieties were and this was a pumpkin actually it was the pumpkins and so I know what they are now that I've harvested them but the whole time I had no clue what kind of pumpkin they were because I had lost my seed thing so this is me solving my own problem you can log your seed trays so you can add a seed tray and then you can even add things from your seed stash into your virtual tray so that you know exactly what is planted in your seed tray and then you can whip this out when you're in the garden or when you're in the greenhouse or whatever and you will know exactly what everything is since you can't physically put a tag in soil blocks okay this is my favorite part I wanted this app to be community based because I love interacting with you guys and I think that there's a lot to learn from each other like the knowledge is invaluable and so there's a club tab you can design your own little avatar and you can post things to the club wall so for instance someone that already has the app they let everyone know that they planted onions and they put the variety of onion. And then you can go and comment on people's things that they post to the club wall. I added a photo of my pumpkin harvest and how many pounds it was to the club wall. Someone added what they made from their garden harvest. This looks amazing. It's garlic cream soup in an acorn squash. Amazing. So these are all the things that we can share with each other you can even share your bed designs which I thought was really cool because I would love to see other people's bed designs to get inspiration so someone shared their bed layout and I looked at this and I was like huh that's a good idea I really like this bed layout so we can all learn from each other and what we're doing in our gardens we can see what each other's doing and we can see what each other's planting and you can even share seeds like a seed review so I posted my Seminole pumpkin and I reviewed it and I said that I loved it so I think that this is going to be a really great way for us to learn from each other and in the club there's also an ask the club tab where you can ask a specific question to the club and then we can all answer it this app is going to be moderated just so you guys know it's going to be moderated just to make sure that everyone is being friendly and everything but I think that that's going to be also a really useful tool there's going to be a place where you can ask a specific gardening question to a community of gardeners and we can all answer each other's questions and we can talk and I just think it's going to be really a good thing then there's a tab called this month it's just an overall view of the club this season it's how many pounds we picked as a club all together so I'm going to create a goal for 2027 of how many pounds we can harvest as a club and I think that's going to be really cool that we can all work towards that goal it says how many plantings have been logged and then how many members we have and then it also says planted this week so it is showing you what other club members are planting and everyone's going to live in different zones so it's not like it's not going to be catered to you specifically it's just if you're wondering what everyone else is planting it's going to show you what people are planting this week and yeah that is pretty much the gist of the app my goal with that is to answer everyone's common questions and I have been doing this thing on social media for years now and so I know what everyone struggles with and all the questions that you guys have and I've taken all of that into consideration and I've made this planting ecosystem that I am like so so so excited about and I hope that you guys are too let me know in the comments if you have any questions concerns if you have constructive criticism if you used the calendar last year what you thought of it I'm always looking for things that I could do to make it better these are available for pre-order right now because I am still kind of making little tweaks so I would like to hear what you have to say so I because I still have some time to make tweaks before they ship out everything is going ship out by November 15th so if you're pre-ordering the calendar and the journal and there's different bundles that you can get online those are gonna not ship until the 15th but if you buy the app you are able to download that immediately and start using it it's actually on sale as a pre-order because I am also still making very fine little tweaks to the app up until the 15th so it's on sale if you get it like kind of like as an early bird kind of thing and then it's gonna go up in price after the 15th yeah i'm very very excited about all this i hope that you guys are too thank you guys for watching and letting me explain all of this to you i hope that everything is helpful and i'm so excited for the year of 2027 i think that it's going to be a really great gardening year for all of us everything is going to be available on my website which is mygrossplants.com you just go to the shop tab and it'll take you to my shop. In my shop if you are questioning which calendar should I get which region is for me don't worry there is a helpful little widget there where you can type in your zip code and it will recommend the exact calendar that you need and then you can either get things standalone or there are a couple of bundle options on there you can do the calendar and the journal bundle or you can bundle the calendar journal and the app and save a little bit of money or you can get things standalone and based off of what you need as a gardener so i i'm very excited about this thank you guys so much for watching this video you can find me on all the things i'm also on substack and i also have a podcast called the garden girls podcast and we put out new episodes every single week and i'll see you guys in the next one bye