Oct 21, 2026 · @Jeremy Anderson
It lays out your beds, times every planting to your own frost dates, and tracks what you harvest and preserve. It runs in the browser, installs like an app, works offline and never asks for an account.
I built it as a showcase for my agency, and a garden app turned out to be a demanding test. People act on what it says. If it says no frost tonight, the tomatoes stay uncovered. If it says a jar can go in a water bath, that is what goes on the stove.
What does FloraHearth do?
FloraHearth follows a garden through the whole year, from bed plan to pantry shelf. Most garden tools stop at planting or start at harvest. Here the same record carries through every stage.
- Plan. The Bed Designer lays out square-foot beds from a library of 137 crop guides, with companion planting and soil notes alongside.
- Schedule. Each bed turns into dated tasks: start seeds indoors, transplant, direct sow, harvest. Re-syncing a bed updates those dates rather than piling up duplicates.
- Grow. A dashboard shows what can go in the ground this week, next to the local forecast and frost outlook.
- Preserve. Harvests flow into a pantry log, with canning, freezing, drying and pickling guidance matched to each crop.
- Reflect. A journal with photos and a simple return-on-investment view closes the season out.
Every tab has its own address, so a link can open straight to the planner, the crop guides or the calendar. That matters when FloraHearth is linked from somewhere else, such as a garden club newsletter or another tool.
How FloraHearth keeps its garden advice accurate
The hardest part of FloraHearth was not the interface. It was making sure the advice holds up. Three areas got the most attention.
Planting dates based on your own frost dates
Every planting window counts from your last spring frost and first fall frost, not a generic national calendar. Each crop gets the next season it can still be planted in, so garlic gets a fall plan and tomatoes wait for spring. Harvest windows count from the day you planted, and dates use your local time zone, so an evening in California never shows tomorrow’s tasks.
Weather that says where it came from
Forecasts come from Open-Meteo, a free weather service. When the app is offline, it labels the numbers as a saved forecast and shows when it was fetched. If it cannot reach the service at all, it shows seasonal estimates under a clear banner and refuses to call a frost risk it cannot see.
Home canning guidance from tested sources
Home canning is where a wrong answer can make someone sick. The preservation guidance follows the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning and the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Low-acid vegetables point to a pressure canner, never a water bath. Crops that are only safe as tested pickles are labelled that way, and gauge pressure adjusts for altitude.
None of this is visible in a screenshot. It is the part I would want a client to ask me about.
Is FloraHearth private and does it work offline?
Yes. FloraHearth keeps your garden on your device and works without a signal. There is no sign-up, no analytics and no server holding your data.
It is a progressive web app (PWA): a website you can install to your phone’s home screen. After the first visit, the whole app is stored on the device, so it opens in the backyard with no reception. Updates arrive when you are back online, and the app tells you when a new version is ready.
Beds, tasks and pantry records live in the browser’s own storage, and journal photos sit in a local database beside them. One button exports everything, photos included, to a single backup file you can restore anywhere. If you want your garden on two devices, there is an optional sync service you host yourself on Cloudflare’s free tier.
The whole app is a static site on GitHub Pages. That keeps it free to run, and it means there is no back end to breach. I used the same offline-first approach for God’s Eye Lite, a live world map that also runs entirely in the browser.
Accessibility and performance, measured
I hold my own projects to the standard I would promise a client, and I check it with tests rather than by eye. FloraHearth targets WCAG 2.2 AA, the accessibility level most public-sector and enterprise contracts ask for.
Accessibility testing
An automated audit of 132 views, in light and dark themes and including hover states, found no violations. Cards are real buttons, every tab has its own page heading, and focus moves to it when you switch tabs. People who turn off motion get a calm alternative, not a frozen spinner.
Phones and large text
The layout holds at 320 pixels wide and at 200% text size with no sideways scrolling. On touch screens, every tap target is at least 44 pixels, so nothing needs a precise fingertip.
Page speed on a budget phone
I measured on a phone-sized screen with the processor slowed four times to stand in for a budget handset. These are the numbers before and after the performance pass.
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint (first content on screen) | 1.41 s | 0.60 s |
| Largest Contentful Paint (largest content on screen) | 2.11 s | 0.60 s |
| Total Blocking Time | 1,624 ms | 308 ms |
| Longest single task | 739 ms | 187 ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0.061 | 0.001 |
FloraHearth lab measurements on a mobile viewport with 4× CPU throttling.
The biggest single fix was the planting calculator, which went from 108 ms to under 4 ms by caching work it was repeating. The rest came from loading each section only when it is opened and trimming expensive blur effects. This is the same process I use in performance optimization work for clients.
What FloraHearth shows about how I build client projects
FloraHearth is a garden app, but the habits behind it are the ones I bring to client work. Your project is probably a booking page, a member portal or a product catalog, not a planting calendar. The same questions still apply.
- Is the information right? I go to the primary source and build the rules into the code, so the site cannot drift from the guidance.
- Does it say what it does not know? Fallbacks are labelled, and nothing pretends to be live when it is not.
- Can everyone use it? Accessibility is tested on every view, in both themes, on small screens and with large text.
- Is it fast on a cheap phone? I measure on a slowed-down handset, and I report before-and-after numbers rather than impressions.
- Does it respect people’s data? I collect only what the job needs and keep the running costs low.
FloraHearth FAQ
Is FloraHearth free?
Yes. FloraHearth is free to use, needs no account and has no ads or analytics. It runs as a static site on GitHub Pages, so there are no server costs to pass on.
Does FloraHearth work without internet?
Yes. After the first visit, the whole app is stored on your device, so it opens and works with no signal. Forecasts shown offline are labelled as saved, with the time they were fetched.
How does FloraHearth decide when to plant?
It counts every planting window from your own last spring frost and first fall frost dates, not a national calendar. Each crop gets the next season it can still be planted in.
Is FloraHearth’s canning advice safe?
The preservation guidance follows the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning and the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Low-acid vegetables always point to a pressure canner, and pressure adjusts for altitude.
Where is my garden data stored?
On your own device, in the browser’s storage. You can export everything, photos included, to one backup file, or sync two devices through an optional service you host yourself on Cloudflare.
Try FloraHearth, or talk to me about your project
FloraHearth installs to your phone’s home screen and works offline from the first visit on. The full source code is on GitHub.
If you run a small business or a growing organization and want a site or tool built this way, see my services and pricing or get in touch. I would be glad to talk through what you need.
See the project
The FloraHearth project page has the features, tech stack and links in one place.
Working on something like this? See full-stack and custom development, or book a free 30-minute call.
