Gardening takes patience, software does too.

“Which label was that again?”

The honest version: how lost labels, forgotten fertiliser and open pruning questions turned into garden software.

Spring 2022, took over an allotment in Berlin. Planted berry bushes, two young fruit trees, prepared the first beds. Already in the first summer the variety labels on trees and shrubs vanish in the rain, and with them the knowledge of what is actually growing there.

In the second year the next questions show up. Which bed had the heavy feeders last year? Which plants get along next to each other, which ones better not? Did the berry bushes already get fertiliser, or am I mixing that up with last week? And when do I prune which tree without losing the next harvest?

It was not the garden that overwhelmed me. It was everything that nobody writes down.

Every one of these questions I had already answered once, in my head, in a spreadsheet, in a photo album. I just could never find the answer again. From exactly these gaps grew the list that is Gartenkern today:

• Labels that do not fade: every planting with photo, variety and location, stored for good.
• Crop rotation and companion planting in view: what grew where and what grows well side by side.
• Never forget fertilising and care: reminders at the right time, for the right bed.
• A pruning window for every tree: when which cut is due, variety by variety.

When that works, even in ten years you still know which apple variety stands on the west side, when the currants were last pruned and which bed the tomatoes have no business in this year.

One season after another. One bed after another.