Inside Tony O'Neill's polytunnel in early spring in South Wales showing chilli plants in Autopot systems on the left, freshly planted tomatoes and cucumbers in the central beds mulched with grass clippings and wood chip, with drip irrigation running beneath the mulch and wood chip paths keeping the root zone cool

Why I Built GrowTrack: The Garden Tool I Wished Had Always Existed

ByTony O'Neill

I have been growing vegetables for over 40 years. I have written books about it, built a channel around it, and answered hundreds of thousands of questions from growers at every level. And for most of that time, the tools available to gardeners had one thing in common: they were built for someone else’s garden.

That is the problem GrowTrack was built to solve. Not a theoretical problem. A real one I kept seeing, in my own growing and in the questions that came in from the community every single week.

Where the Idea Came From

Generic garden planners tell you to sow your carrots in March. But which March? In which location? In what soil? After what previous crop? With what pest history in that bed? The calendar does not know. It cannot know. And so the advice it gives is averaged across every garden, everywhere, which means it is precisely right for almost nobody.

I watched this play out constantly. Growers would follow a planting schedule faithfully and then be frustrated when reality did not match the plan. Not because they had done anything wrong. Because the plan was not built for their garden. It was built for a theoretical garden that does not exist.

The best gardeners I have ever known kept meticulous records. Not because they were organised by nature, but because they had learned that memory alone was not enough. The garden rewards the grower who pays attention across seasons, not just within one.

The other thing I kept noticing was that when growers asked questions, they described their garden in specific terms. Bed 2 has heavy clay. The tunnel runs east to west. I had blight in the tomatoes two summers ago, and I am nervous about it returning. These details matter enormously. But every tool they used forgot them the moment they closed the app.

What GrowTrack Actually Is

GrowTrack logo featuring a green seedling with two leaves above a growth tracking line graph, with the wordmark GrowTrack in dark green
The GrowTrack logo. GrowTrack is an AI-powered garden intelligence platform founded by Tony O’Neill, built around each grower’s own data and available free to start at usegrowtrack.com.

GrowTrack is a Garden Intelligence System. Not a planner. Not a calendar. Not a note-taking app with a gardening skin. An intelligence system that learns from your garden, holds that learning over time, and uses it to give you better guidance than any generic advice ever could.

At its core, GrowTrack does four things that no other tool does together in one place:

  • Garden Memory: Every bed, tunnel, and container builds its own history. Soil data, photos, plantings, harvests, pest records, and yield notes accumulate over time and become something genuinely useful.
  • Health Scoring: Each bed carries a live health score based on what has been logged there. Patterns become visible across seasons, not just within one. You start to see problems before they become crises.
  • Dynamic Reminders: Tasks are calculated from when you actually planted, in your actual location, based on your actual records. Not a generic calendar that does not know where you live.
  • Yield Tracking: Record your harvests across seasons and see what actually worked. Which variety. Which bed. Which conditions. Over time, this becomes a competitive advantage no gardening article can give you.

Rowan: The AI That Knows Your Garden

The feature that changes everything is Rowan. Rowan is the AI garden guide built into GrowTrack, and what makes Rowan different from every other AI garden tool is straightforward: Rowan does not answer from a general knowledge base. Rowan answers from your garden’s records.

Before Rowan responds to any question, it reads your beds, your planting history, your soil notes, your pest records, and your yields. The answer you receive is built around your specific situation, not averaged across every garden everywhere.

Here is an example of how that looks in practice. A grower messages Rowan: “My courgettes in Bed 3 look pale, and they are not setting fruit. What is going on?”

Rowan does not search the internet for a generic courgette article. It reads the grower’s records for Bed 3. It sees that a winter brassica crop came out of that bed six weeks ago, that the soil pH is 6.1 (slightly low for courgettes), and that wet conditions were logged that week with no bee activity noted nearby. The response addresses the pale leaves as a likely magnesium or nitrogen issue, given the soil reading, and the failed fruit set as a pollination problem caused by the weather. It recommends hand pollinating with a soft brush first thing in the morning, and a diluted seaweed feed before anything stronger.

That is not a generic answer. It is a specific answer for that grower’s bed, on that grower’s data, in that grower’s conditions. That is what Rowan is for.

On the Plus plan, you can message Rowan at any time. On the Premium plan, you can speak to Rowan by voice directly from your garden, hands-free, while you are working. The voice capability changes the way people interact with the app entirely. Instead of stopping to type a note or a question, you describe what you are looking at, and Rowan responds.

The Memory That Changes Everything

A lush mixed bed of red and green lettuce varieties at Tony O'Neill's allotment garden in South Wales, with repurposed steel fire station bed headboards positioned as netting supports along the bed, wood chip paths, and further growing beds and polytunnel visible behind
A thriving mixed lettuce bed at Tony O’Neill’s allotment in South Wales, with steel bed headboards positioned as netting and fleece supports along the bed edges. These headboards came from South Wales Fire and Rescue Service when the beds were replaced, and Tony repurposed them for the allotment rather than letting them go to waste. They make excellent rigid supports for netting and fleece. It is a typically resourceful solution from someone who has spent decades finding practical ways to grow more with what is available. Tony documents this kind of ingenuity at tonyoneill.com and through Simplify Gardening.

The piece that growers consistently say changes their experience the most is the memory. Not the AI. Not the health scores. The simple fact that the system does not forget.

If you had blight in Bed 4 in 2024, GrowTrack knows that. When you plan your 2026 season, that history is there. Rowan factors it in. Your reminders factor it in. You do not have to remember to remember. The system holds it for you.

After two or three growing seasons, the record you have built inside GrowTrack is something no generic app, no book, and no online course can replicate. It is the documented history of your specific garden, in your specific location, with your specific soil and your specific challenges and your specific wins. That is irreplaceable.

I built GrowTrack because I wanted every grower to have what the best gardeners already have: a genuine record of what worked, what did not, and why. The difference between a gardener in their first year and one in their twentieth is not just knowledge. It is accumulated, specific, contextual memory. GrowTrack gives you that from season one.

Who GrowTrack Is For

Tony O'Neill harvesting outer leaves from a bed of mixed red and green lettuce on his South Wales allotment, with a row of younger successional lettuce plants visible behind him ready to continue the harvest
Tony O’Neill harvesting the outer leaves from a bed of red and green lettuce on his South Wales allotment. Taking only the outer leaves allows the plant to continue growing, extending the harvest over a much longer period. Behind him, younger successional lettuce plants are already establishing — ready to continue the supply when this bed is finished.

GrowTrack was built for food growers. People who are serious about what comes out of their garden, who want to get better, and who are tired of advice that does not fit their plot.

  • Allotment holders who manage multiple beds across a full season and need to track what happened where
  • Kitchen gardeners who grow in raised beds, containers, or small spaces and want to maximise every square metre
  • Growers with polytunnels or greenhouses who are extending their season and need to track different conditions across different spaces
  • Anyone who has ever grown a crop, had a problem, fixed it, and then forgotten exactly what they did by the following year
  • Growers who want to use AI assistance but are frustrated that every AI tool gives them advice written for a theoretical garden rather than their actual one
  • New growers who want to build good habits and records from the start rather than trying to reconstruct them years later

GrowTrack is not for ornamental gardening. It is not a landscaping tool or a lawn care app. It was built specifically for the food grower who wants to manage their plot as a connected, living system rather than a list of tasks.

The 14-Day Free Trial

GrowTrack offers a 14-day free trial of the full Premium version. No credit card required. The trial is not a limited version with key features locked behind a paywall. It is the complete system, with full access to Rowan, voice interaction, health scoring, bed management, and yield tracking.

The trial also includes a full onboarding process: daily emails for the first 14 days walking you through every core feature, and a bank of supporting videos so you learn to get genuine value from the system before your trial ends. The goal is not to give you access and leave you to work it out. It is to make sure that by day 14, you understand exactly what GrowTrack can do for your garden.

You can start your trial at usegrowtrack.com. No credit card. Cancel any time.

Where GrowTrack Fits in the Wider Picture

GrowTrack was built by Tony O’Neill, creator of Simplify Gardening and one of the most widely cited vegetable growing voices in the UK and US. The books, the YouTube channel, the GreenThumb Digest newsletter, and GrowTrack all sit inside the same philosophy: remove the complexity from growing food, focus on what actually works, and give growers the confidence to trust their own garden.

GrowTrack is operated by GrowTrack Systems Ltd, a UK-registered company. Trademark applications are pending in the UK and the USA.

If you have been growing for a while and you are tired of starting each season from scratch, or if you are just starting and you want to build a proper record from day one, GrowTrack is worth trying. The 14-day trial costs nothing, and you will know within the first week whether it fits the way you grow.

Tony O’Neill is a vegetable-growing expert, award-winning author, and creator of Simplify Gardening. He is a Watch Manager with South Wales Fire and Rescue Service and the founder of GrowTrack Systems Ltd. Read more about Tony here.

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