Last updated: August 25, 2026
Cultivate turns your ZIP code into a planting calendar for your actual garden: frost dates, what to sow when, bed layouts, and watering that watches the forecast. This page covers the questions that come up most, and how to reach a human.
Email: cultivate.app.support@gmail.com
We read every message. Telling us your iPhone model, your iOS version, and what you were doing when something went wrong makes a fix much faster.
Cultivate needs to know where your garden is before it can tell you when to plant. On first run you can either let it use your location or type your ZIP code. Both end in the same place: a USDA hardiness zone and a pair of average frost dates, which everything else is calculated from. You can change any of it later in Settings.
If you decline the location prompt, the app carries on and asks for a ZIP code instead. The zone lookup happens entirely on your device from a dataset built into the app. Location is only used to detect your zone and to place beds on the map.
Cultivate has no accounts, no login, and no server holding your garden. Everything you enter is stored on your device.
Not in this version. Your garden lives on the device you created it on. iCloud sync is planned for a future update, and until it ships, installing Cultivate on a second device gives you an empty garden there.
Cultivate's data is included in your normal encrypted iPhone backup, whether that is iCloud Backup or a backup to a computer. Restoring the device restores the garden with it.
Deleting the app removes all of it. Because there is no account and no server, there is nothing left anywhere else and nothing for us to delete on your behalf.
Forecasts come from Open-Meteo. The app sends only a rounded latitude and longitude, never anything that identifies you. If a forecast cannot be fetched, the screen tells you it is showing older data rather than pretending it is current.
Watering advice combines the thirstiest crop in a bed with the rain forecast for that bed's map location. If a bed has not been placed on the map, there is no forecast for it, and the advice falls back to the schedule alone. Placing the bed on the map is what turns the rain-aware part on.
Notifications are optional and can be turned off at any time in Settings, or in iOS Settings under Cultivate. Mirroring tasks into Apple Reminders is a separate, also optional, setting.
Please tell us. Gardening advice varies by region and we would rather correct an entry than leave it misleading. Include the plant and what your local experience or extension service says, and we will look at it.
Plant names, identifications, and edible-or-toxic labels in the app are general reference and can be wrong. Never eat, taste, or handle a plant based on this app alone. Confirm with a local expert or your cooperative extension office first, and always read and follow the label on any pesticide or amendment.
This version is built for iPhone, running iOS 17 or later. It installs and runs on iPad in iPhone compatibility mode, and an iPad layout is planned. The app is in English.
Cultivate shows no ads, runs no analytics, and includes no tracking. The full privacy policy explains what stays on your device and the few times the app asks an outside service for something.