My Garden: Your Growing Journal

My Garden is your continuous growing journal. It is not a spreadsheet of plants and not a separate app for "this year only." It is a diary that keeps the whole story in one place, then lets you slice that story by season, by variety, or by photo when you go looking.

Why it works this way

Peppers do not care about our folders. A plant can show up in two seasons, a note can mention three varieties, and last year's photo still matters next spring. So Capsi treats the entry as the basic unit: a moment with optional text, photos, date, varieties, and seasons. Everything else — Timeline, Seasons, Varieties, Gallery — is a different window on the same moments.

That is why you do not have to "register a plant" before you can write. Tag a variety on an entry (or add it on a season page) and it appears in Varieties. File an entry into a season and the season page fills in. History stays attached to the entry even if you later end the season or archive the variety.

Home — your library

Open My Garden and you land on a simple home, more like a library than a blank feed:

• Timeline — the full diary, newest first under month headers, with Day numbers when a season start is set. • Seasons — your chapters (this year, winter sowing, a trial run). • Varieties — everything you grow or track, grouped by how it connects to seasons. • Gallery — every photo from every entry in one grid.

Below that you may see a short overview, recently added varieties, and recent activity so you can jump back in without digging. Search from home when you only remember a word, a pepper name, or a season.

There is nothing you must set up first. The + button is always ready: capture the moment, done.

Writing an entry

Tap + and jot down what is happening:

1. Pick a type if you like — Note, Planted, Milestone, Issue, Pruning, or Harvest — or skip it.
2. Add a title, and as much (or as little) text as you want.
3. Attach up to six photos from your library, or take one right there.
4. Tag the varieties it is about — search the catalog, use ones already in your garden, or create a custom name if Capsi does not have it yet.
5. Optionally file it into one or more seasons, add your own private # tags (Greenhouse, Row 3, Germination test), and set the date. Backdate freely; old photos deserve their place in the story.

Entries show newest first. When an entry sits in a season with a start date, it gets a Day stamp — Day 1, Day 14, Day 60 — so a whole grow reads like a diary.

Timeline and Gallery

Timeline is the full stream. Gallery is the same garden as photos only. On both, filters and search narrow the view: a time window, seasons, varieties, your # tags, or free text (typos are fine). Active filters show as removable pills — clear one or clear all. Pull down to refresh if you have been logging on another device.

Tap a photo in an entry (or in Gallery) to open it fullscreen; swipe between shots and dismiss as you would anywhere else in Capsi.

Seasons — chapters, not folders

A season is a timeframe with a start date: "2026", "Winter sowing", whatever fits. It is a chapter of the same journal, not a separate garden.

Each season has its own page: status (upcoming, active, or ended), description, stats, varieties on the roster, and the entries filed into it. You can add a variety to a season without writing an entry, set a plant count for that variety in that season, and remove it again without deleting history.

When the grow is done, End season stamps the end date. Ended seasons stay listed so you can look back. A future start date means Upcoming — useful for planning — and becomes active on its own when the day arrives.

Make one season your default and new entries can file there automatically when you are not already inside another season. You can still change or clear the season while writing. You can keep up to five seasons; deleting one never deletes entries — they only lose that season tag.

Public and private seasons

Each season can be private (only you) or public. Public seasons appear on your profile so others can open the timeline read-only. They can also show up in Discover so growers can browse what people are sharing. Flip a season back to private and it leaves those places; your private garden stays yours either way.

Varieties — everything you grow or track

Every variety you tag or add lands on Varieties automatically. Being in your garden does not mean you "own" a catalog claim — wishlist, curiosity, and real plants all belong.

The list groups by how varieties connect to seasons: active seasons, upcoming, ended, and unassigned. Each variety has its own page: the catalog pepper when there is one, plant counts across seasons, entries that mention it, a note, and where your seeds came from. Seed sources are saved once and reused so next winter you know what to reorder.

Feeling generous? Turn on Offer seeds to list a variety in the Seed Exchange so others can reach out.

How varieties and seasons connect

Under the hood it is one simple idea: a link between a variety and a season. Tag an entry into a season and the link can appear; add a variety on a season page and that is the same kind of link, made on purpose. The link can carry that season's plant count, so an ended season still shows what ran then — even if you grow the same pepper again next year. Removing a variety from a season removes only the link; every entry stays put.

Archive and delete

Done with a variety for now? Archive it from its page. Archiving is not deleting: it moves to Archived, steps out of active and upcoming seasons, and withdraws a seed offer — but ended seasons keep the history, and old entries keep the tag with a small archived marker. Restore puts things back.

Delete is the real goodbye, offered when it is safe to do so. The app tells you what it will touch; entries keep their text and photos but lose the tag. Prefer archive when you might want the story later.

Sharing a moment to the feed

Your garden can stay private while a single moment goes public. On an entry, use Post to feed to turn that entry's text, photos, and variety tags into a normal feed post. Posted entries show a clear mark so you know what is already out there. That is different from making a whole season public — feed posts are moments; public seasons are open chapters.

Start small

A photo and two sentences is a journal. Seasons, variety pages, seed offers, and public chapters will be there when you are ready — they grow out of the entries you already wrote, not the other way around.