by Grove
An illustrated codex of thirty-three vegetables of the kitchen garden, with a sowing and harvesting calendar for each, and a plant identifier for the things you did not plant on purpose.
Every fact was researched, one plant at a time. The sowing months, spacings, sowing depths and storage notes were read from horticultural sources and checked crop by crop. Nothing in the codex is generated, inferred or written from memory, and where a figure could not be verified the codex says so on the page rather than filling the gap with something plausible.
Most of the codex travels. A carrot is a carrot wherever it is grown: the botany, the spacings, the sowing depths, the illustrations and the identifier are the same in Ohio as in Oxfordshire. The one thing that is bound to a place is the calendar, which is verified for the British growing year — and every page that shows one says so. Timings shift by weeks between the south coast and the north of Scotland, and by as much again between one season and the next, so they are offered as a starting point to correct against your own plot rather than as instructions. Further growing years will be added the same way the first was: researched, one plant at a time.
Identification is a separate thing from the codex, and is labelled as such. A suggestion from an identification service is shown as a suggestion. Where a plant falls outside the verified thirty-three, the app draws it an illustration and labels that an artistic impression — because a picture should never be mistaken for a fact.
The same researched corpus is set as two books: The Allotment Planner, a record book for the growing year, and Grove: The Codex, an illustrated reference of the thirty-three.
The Botany Codex is in development. The codex reader is built; identification is being assembled behind it. This page will carry the store links when it is ready.
Grove — hello@botanycodex.com