"The carbon cost of asking an artificial intelligence model a single text question can be measured in grams of CO2..." writes the Washington Post. And while an individual's impact may be low, what about the collective impact of all users? "A Google search takes about 10 times less energy than a ChatGPT query, according to a 2024 analysis from Goldman Sachs — although that may change as Google makes AI responses a bigger part of search." For now, a determined user can avoid prompting Google's default AI-generated summaries by switching over to the "web" search tab, which is one of the options alongside images and news. Adding "-ai" to the end of a search query also seems to work. Other search engines, including DuckDuckGo, give you the option to turn off AI summaries.... Using AI doesn't just mean going to a chatbot and typing in a question. You're also using AI every time an algorithm organizes your social media feed, recommends a song or filters your spam email... [T]here's not much you can do about it other than using the internet less. It's up to the companies that are integrating AI into every aspect of our digital lives to find ways to do it with less energy and damage to the planet. More points from the article: Two researchers tested the performance of 14 AI language models, and found larger models gave more accurate answers, "but used several times more energy than smaller models." The data centers hosting AI models "can devour more electricity than entire cities." "Keeping those computers cool uses freshwater — about one bottle's worth for every 100 words of text ChatGPT generates."

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While gardening is a great pastime to take up if you want to unplug from all of your devices and reconnect with the natural world, there are ironically a whole host of tech tools that can make you more successful at it, from calendars and spreadsheets to countless apps. But one of the latter, Seedtime, has become the only gardening app I use, replacing all of my other digital calendars, spreadsheets, and layout tools—and even some of my non-tech tools like notebooks and journals.

While Seedtime used to be simply one gardening app among many I used to manage my outdoor tasks, it has gained so much functionality over the years (for example, this week it debuted a new inventory management feature for your seeds and other garden inputs like fertilizer) that it has become an indispensable tool for planning and managing my garden. 

Project management for my garden

Although I plant roughly the same things at roughly the same time each year, getting it all down on a calendar was never an easy task. For example, if I enter my entire seeding schedule on Google Calendar but later discovered I needed to push everything back a week because due to the weather, there’s no easy way to do so. 

Seedtime’s calendar solves for this. It is focused on what you want to grow: You input all the crops you want, detail whether you’ll be starting seeds inside or out, or planting a start, as well as whether it’s a one time planting like tomatoes or a routine planting like radishes. Seedtime crunches all that data and translates it into a calendar that will tell you when to start the seeds, when to transplant them outside, and when to harvest. The app will suggest when to start seeding, based on the last frost date in your zip code, or you can choose a start date manually. 

If you need to push back all or part of your planting, it’s easy to do so by clicking on a particular crop and changing the initial date; Seedtime takes care of the rest. The calendar is reusable year to year, so you don’t have to redo your work annually. Seedtime’s tool also allows you to easily track the yield of any particular crop—say, those radishes: You can track year to year which varieties are doing better than others (something I never remembered to do in earlier years, so I'd just end up planting the same varieties again, year after year). 

I’m bad about succession planting in summer, even though I know I need to be on top of it. Seedtime takes all the manual planning effort out of the equation, so I simply need to follow the calendar it presents. 

Auto-generated task lists

When you’re entering crops into the calendar, Seedtime translates every step of the process as a task, and places it into a straightforward to-do list, organized by date. While the calendar gives you an overview, the task list offers a simple way to see what you should be doing today and tomorrow, allowing you to stay focused. 

Setting up these tasks could be done manually, sure, but having the app do it for me is a real time saver, if only for the flexibility it gives me: If it rains or is too hot to plant, tasks are easily postponed in the app, and those changes are synced back to the calendar. 

You can add as many additional tasks as you need to, for either your overall garden or a single crop. There’s a robust filtering tool so you can choose to, say, see only seeding or planting tasks. If you’ve used common project management tools like Asana or Monday, Seedtime's tasks will feel familiar.

The app makes it easier to keep a journal

I’m a huge proponent of journaling for your garden. I’ve talked about keeping a visual photo diary, as well as a place to keep notes throughout the year. The notes allow you remember small things that you notice in the moment in your garden, but will surely forget by wintertime, when you start to plan next year’s garden. For instance, my notes often remind me which trellises need work, or to not put eggplants in a particular spot next year, or that I need more flower bulbs to fill a hole in the garden. 

But journaling is only useful if you remember to do it. Seedtime has a simple journaling feature that allows you to quickly input notes and/or photos, making it a lot more seamless. Photos are incredibly useful for being able to see when certain crops were popping last year, so you can see if you’re on track this growing season. They can also show you how the garden changes over time. Having the app at my disposal provides an excellent way to organize my thoughts, and keep them all safe and in one place—I misplaced my gardening journal last year for a month, and it paralyzed me.  Having all this data stored in the cloud means that won't happen again.

Track your inventory

As you garden, you will acquire a collection of seeds, fertilizers, and other garden ephemera. Organizing these inputs is an ongoing process, and I thought I'd developed a pretty good system. Once a year, I’d audit my seeds, which allowed me to ensure they were still good (each type of seed has its own expiration date), and count what I had before I ordered more. But though this worked, it required me to start over from scratch each year, since planting depletes my stock.

Seedtime understands that, and so its inventory system allows you to enter all your seeds, but also note when they expire, how many you have, and where they came from. Seedtime links that information to the crop elsewhere in the app, so when you note that you have planted radishes, it depletes your inventory of radish seeds. You can also tie an item in inventory to tasks or a specific garden. 

It’s not only seeds: In Seedtime, you can store information about any garden input, from fertilizers, to pest treatments, to seeding or potting mixes. I was delighted when Seedtime reminded me to order more plant tags this year, because it was able to determine I was out long before I would've realized it.

A better garden layout planner

The garden planner is the feature that might really sell you on Seedtime. If you struggle with planning out your garden beds, this app has it figured out. You start with an empty garden plan, and tell Seedtime what the dimensions of the garden are, then the dimensions each bed within your garden. 

Next, you pull crops from that list that you set up in the calendar, and drag them onto the garden layout. Each crop has a designated size requirement, which you set up in the crop section, but you can change it on the layout panel; Seedtime will sync up the data in both panels. 

You can quickly move things around and understand precisely how much room you have for additional crops, see what crops you still need to find room for, or check your progress at a glance as you’re planting. The layers tool will help you plan for succession planting and seasonal planting, too—you can see where you’d replace crops and designate when you’ll replace them, and with what.

Plan your garden on desktop or mobile

One of the best aspects of Seedtime is that I can access it on mobile and desktop. For repetitive tasks like entering inventory, or tasks where a mouse is useful, like creating a garden layout, the desktop app is invaluable. But the notifications and handiness of having everything on my phone while in the garden is necessary. Not a lot of apps offer both options. 

The app is free, but you can pay for more functionality if you need it

Seedtime has a few pricing tiers, including one that is completely free. Even on the free plan, you'll have access to calendaring, tasks, and journals, with limited data attached to each item. For $7 a month, you can store additional data, so you can add crop categories, custom tasks, and perennial crops. At that tier, you get access to the layout tool and journal. For $9 a month, you get access to the inventory tool. 

The app has recently added AI features that will suggest crops that will do well in your growing zone, suggest companion plants for what's already in your garden, or offer succession planting dates. AI tool access is based on credits, so free accounts get 10 credits, the $7 tier gets 100, and the $9 tier gets unlimited credits per month.

Seedtime is available on desktop, iOS, and Android.

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