Grove vs GrowVeg
GrowVeg (the engine behind the Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner) is one of the most established vegetable garden planners around - but it's a web app built in a different era. The mobile experience is genuinely poor, the subscription costs up to $50 per year, and most shockingly: GrowVeg deletes your garden data when you cancel. Grove is mobile-first, free at its core, and your data is always yours.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Grove | GrowVeg |
|---|---|---|
| Free core plan | Yes | No |
| iPhone app (mobile-first) | Yes | No |
| Visual bed planner | Yes | Yes |
| Frost-zone planting calendar | Yes | Yes |
| Weather-aware reminders | Yes | No |
| Harvest value tracker | Yes | No |
| Local community feed | Yes | No |
| Seed & seedling marketplace | Yes | No |
| Garden journal | Yes | Basic notes only |
| Your data kept if you cancel | Yes | No |
| Works in Canada & internationally | Yes | Yes |
Why Grove
Where Grove pulls ahead
A real iPhone app, not a website squeezed onto a phone
GrowVeg is a web application - it was designed for desktop browsers and the phone experience shows it. Pinching to zoom a garden layout, fighting with small tap targets, losing your session - it's the kind of friction that makes you put the phone down and forget to update your garden. Grove is built for iPhone from the ground up. Planning your beds, logging a harvest, or checking a watering reminder all take seconds.
Your garden data is yours - forever
This is GrowVeg's most alarming limitation: if you cancel your subscription, your garden data is deleted. Years of layout history, journal notes, and growing records - gone. Grove doesn't hold your data hostage. Everything you log stays accessible whether you're on a free plan or Grove+, for as long as you want it.
Free core tools with no subscription required
GrowVeg charges $29–$50 per year after a 7-day free trial. Grove's bed planner, planting calendar, journal, watering reminders, community feed, and marketplace are free with no time limit. The premium Grove+ tier adds harvest analytics and fertilizer tracking - but the fundamentals cost nothing.
Local community, not a solo experience
GrowVeg is a planning tool with no social layer. You plan your beds and that's it. Grove connects you to the gardeners nearby - see what neighbours are growing, trade seedlings you have too many of, and ask questions to people dealing with the same frost dates and soil type.
Where GrowVeg falls short
Data deleted when you cancel
GrowVeg's subscription model deletes your garden data when you stop paying. For a tool where the value is your accumulated planting history and layout records, this is a significant risk. Users who've gardened with GrowVeg for years can lose everything if they skip a payment.
Web-only with a poor mobile experience
GrowVeg has no dedicated iPhone or Android app. The web interface was designed for large screens and resists being used on a phone. In an era where most people manage their lives from a pocket, this is a hard limitation to work around.
High annual subscription with no free tier
After the 7-day trial, access to the planner costs between $29 and $50 per year depending on the plan - with no free option to fall back on. If you stop paying, you lose access to planning tools and your data along with it.
The verdict
GrowVeg's planning depth is real, and it earns its reputation among serious vegetable gardeners. But a web-only interface, a $29–$50/year price tag, and the data-deletion policy are hard to justify in 2026. Grove matches the planning core with a native iPhone app, free pricing, and the assurance that your garden history is always safe.
Try Grove free - see the difference.
Join the waitlist and your first month of Grove+ is on us. No credit card needed.