Why I’m building a grow journal app

I wanted a better way to keep track of my grows. Before building anything I went looking for what other growers say about the apps that already exist, in grower forum threads and app store reviews.

The short version: most people use a spiral notebook, a wall calendar, a spreadsheet or a forum thread. In the “what app do you use” threads I looked at, a lot of the answers were one of those four. A lot of the people who had tried an app had quit it.

Why people quit

The same reasons kept coming up.

• Logging turns into a chore, then into guilt. People described stressing about filling in every single day, then going back to a notepad. It’s a hobby. It shouldn’t feel like a job.
• Privacy. People don’t want a grow app asking for an account, their contacts and their location.
• Free tiers that shrink and subscriptions that are hard to cancel.
• Apps that disappear and take your grows with them. No export, no backup, gone.
• Rigid forms. No decimals in a dose. No way to fix a date. A day counter that doesn’t restart when you flip.

What they liked

The thing people praised most was boring: the app counts the days and weeks for you. After that, logging in a couple of taps, and being able to look back at a grow from years ago.

So here’s what I’m building

• No account. No email, no password. It will work with no signal.
• Your grows stay on your phone. The app sends them nowhere. They leave when you export them yourself.
• A grow needs a name. That’s the only thing it will ask for. Everything else is optional. There are no streaks and no “you missed a day”.
• It counts. Day and week of the grow, day and week of the phase, and how that compares with what the strain is supposed to do and what it did for you last time.
• You can get everything out. A report, your data, your photos.
• Free for one grow at a time in each of pre-veg, veg and flower. A one-time purchase removes that limit. No subscription.

I’m not an expert. I’m building the thing I want to use, and I’d rather build it in the open and get told what’s wrong with it.

It isn’t out yet. The app page says where it’s at and how testing will work.