An Almanac Garden Planner alternative that lives on your phone
The Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner is a genuinely capable piece of software — and it is a subscription web tool designed for a desktop screen. If what you want is a free app you can open standing next to the bed, here is an honest comparison.
Choose the Almanac Garden Planner if you want the most complete desktop planning tool — 200+ garden objects, crop-rotation warnings across years, planting schedules drawn from 5,000+ weather stations, and a very large plant database — and you don't mind paying a subscription and planning at a computer.
Choose Niwa if you plan on your phone, want it free with no account, and need it to work at an allotment with no signal. It does less, on purpose, and it does it on a 6-inch screen.
One thing worth knowing first
The Almanac Garden Planner, GrowVeg and the Mother Earth News Grow Planner are the same underlying software, built by Growing Interactive and licensed to each publisher. If you have trialled one and it wasn't right, trialling another will feel very familiar — the plant database and branding differ, the planner itself does not.
Feature comparison
| Niwa | Almanac Garden Planner | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free to download, optional in-app purchases | 7-day free trial, then subscription |
| Platform | Native iPhone app (iOS 18+) | Web, plus PC/Mac planner |
| Works offline | Yes, fully | No |
| Account required | No | Yes |
| Square foot grid | Yes, with auto plant counts | Yes |
| Companion conflicts shown while placing | Yes — dots on the grid | Via plant info and rotation warnings |
| Planting dates | From your location's frost dates | From 5,000+ weather stations |
| Plant database | 200+ plants | 250+ plants, with supplier varieties |
| Multi-year crop rotation warnings | No | Yes |
| Garden objects (sheds, paths, irrigation) | No | ~200 objects |
| Email planting reminders | No | Yes |
| Garden journal / diary | Yes, with photos | Yes |
| Seed inventory | Yes | Via journal |
| Android | No | Browser-based, so yes |
Where the Almanac planner is genuinely better
Being straight about this, because a comparison that says the competitor loses at everything is not worth reading:
- Crop rotation across seasons. It remembers what grew where in previous years and warns you when you repeat a family. Niwa has no multi-year memory.
- Whole-garden design. Paths, sheds, fences, irrigation, greenhouses. If you are designing a plot rather than planning beds, this matters.
- Weather-station data. Frost dates from 5,000+ stations is a more granular source than a location lookup.
- Any device. It runs in a browser, so Android and Windows users are not excluded — Niwa flatly is iPhone-only.
- Supplier seed varieties. Useful if you order from specific catalogues.
Where Niwa wins
- It's free and there's no clock. No 7-day trial to forget to cancel.
- It works with no signal. The full plant library is on the device — which matters at an allotment or a rural plot.
- It was drawn for a phone. Dragging plants onto a grid with a thumb is a different design problem from doing it with a mouse, and desktop planners squeezed into a mobile browser tend to feel cramped.
- Companion conflicts appear as you plant. A red dot on the border between two squares at the moment you place the second one is more useful than a warning you have to go looking for.
- No account, no cloud. Nothing to sign up for, nothing stored on a server.
They are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of gardeners design the plot once in a desktop planner and then use a phone app for the season's bed-by-bed layout and timing. Niwa is free, so trying it costs you nothing but the download.
Which should you pick?
| If you… | Pick |
|---|---|
| Plan at a desk and want maximum control over the whole plot | Almanac Garden Planner |
| Need multi-year crop rotation tracking | Almanac Garden Planner |
| Use Android or Windows | Almanac Garden Planner (or Seed to Spoon) |
| Plan on your phone, in the garden | Niwa |
| Have no signal where you garden | Niwa |
| Don't want a subscription or an account | Niwa |
| Mostly plan raised beds on a square foot grid | Niwa |
Other alternatives worth a look
- GrowVeg — the same engine as the Almanac planner, $35/year
- From Seed to Spoon — free, iOS, Android and web, 1M+ downloads
- Planter — polished Apple-platform app with a free tier
Try the free one first.
No trial clock, no card, no account. If it doesn't suit you, delete it.
Questions gardeners ask
Is the Almanac Garden Planner free?
No. The Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner offers a 7-day free trial and then requires a paid subscription. It is the same underlying software as GrowVeg, built by Growing Interactive, which lists $35 per year for an auto-renewing annual plan.
Compare with GrowVeg tooIs there a free alternative to the Almanac Garden Planner?
Yes, several. Niwa is free on iPhone and works offline with no account. From Seed to Spoon is free on iOS, Android and web. Planter has a free tier on Apple platforms. Each covers less ground than the Almanac planner's 200+ garden objects and crop-rotation warnings, but all three handle bed layout, plant spacing and location-based planting dates without a subscription.
Compare the free optionsIs Niwa free to use?
Yes. Niwa is free to download from the App Store, and the core planner — the garden grid, the plant library and the planting calendar — works without paying. Optional in-app purchases unlock additional features.
See it on the App StoreHow many plants fit in one square foot?
It depends on the crop's spacing requirement. A plant needing 3 inches fits 16 per square foot, 4 inches fits 9, 6 inches fits 4, and 12 inches fits 1. Large plants such as vining tomatoes or zucchini need more than one square each. Niwa works this out for you and prints the count straight onto the grid cell.
Plants per square foot calculatorCan Niwa plan a raised bed of any size?
Yes. You set the bed dimensions — 4×4, 4×8, 2×8 or a custom size — and Niwa draws the square foot grid to match. You can keep several beds and several gardens in the app at once and switch between them.
Raised bed plannerHow does Niwa know when I should plant?
Niwa uses your location to find your average last spring frost and first autumn frost, then works backwards from those dates for every crop in your bed. Each plant gets its own sow-indoors, transplant and harvest window on a month-by-month timeline, so the dates are yours rather than a generic zone table.
How the planting calendar worksDoes Niwa warn me about bad companion plants?
Yes. As you place plants on the grid, Niwa puts a green dot between neighbouring squares that benefit each other and a red dot between squares that are better kept apart, so you see the conflict while you are still planning.
Companion planting in NiwaHow much soil do I need to fill a raised bed?
Multiply length × width × depth in feet to get cubic feet, then divide by 27 for cubic yards. A 4×8 bed at 12 inches deep needs 32 cubic feet, roughly 1.2 cubic yards or sixteen 2-cubic-foot bags.
Raised bed soil calculatorDoes Niwa work offline, and do I need an account?
The whole plant library and all your layouts are stored on the device, so the app works with no signal — useful on an allotment. There is no account to create and your garden data is never uploaded to a server.
See what's includedWhich growing zones and countries does Niwa support?
Niwa works worldwide. It recognises USDA hardiness zones in the United States and derives frost dates from your location elsewhere, including the UK, Canada, Australia and Europe.
Find your frost dates and zoneHow is Niwa different from other garden planner apps?
Three things: it is a native iPhone app rather than a desktop planner viewed in a mobile browser, it shows companion-planting conflicts on the grid as you place plants instead of in a separate chart, and it works fully offline with no account.
Compare Niwa with other plannersIs Niwa available on Android?
Not yet. Niwa is a native iPhone app and needs iOS 18.0 or later. An Android version is not currently available.
Read the gardening guides in the meantime