I'm a hobby gardener in the UK, and I got tired of garden planners telling me to plant tomatoes in March (when it's still freezing). Every app I found used generic USDA zones or assumed you lived in California.

So I built Leaftide - a garden planner that actually knows your local climate.

*What makes it different:*

- *Real frost dates* - Uses NOAA climate data for your exact location, not coarse hardiness zones - *Growing Degree Days* - Calculates when plants will actually mature based on accumulated heat - *Permanent plant tracking* - Track fruit trees, berry bushes, perennials across multiple years (this is what converts users to paid) - *Visual plot designer* - SVG-based drag-and-drop for planning beds and spacing

*Tech stack:* Django + HTMX + vanilla JavaScript (for the plot designer) + PostgreSQL

Launched in October 2024. Currently 6 paid users (all from Reddit, not Product Hunt). £5/month or £45/year.

The surprising lesson: I thought climate-aware scheduling would be the killer feature, but permanent plant tracking is what people actually pay for. Turns out people want ongoing tracking tools, not one-time lookups.

*Try it:* https://leaftide.com

Happy to answer questions about the climate calculations, the HTMX/JS hybrid approach, or the journey from side project to (tiny) business.