I'm Amanda. Full-time accountant, wife, biological and foster mom, and the person who built GrowSmart because I genuinely needed it.
My husband and I manage a full household with six kids and a serious garden. Vegetables, herbs, berries, an orchard, and flower gardens for the pollinators. We garden in Zone 5b Ontario. I knew what I wanted to grow, but I had no way to keep it organized on top of everything else.
So I built something that would do that for us.
We grow with intention. Most of what comes out of our garden gets preserved: jams, sauces, pickles, frozen harvests, with the goal of stocking our pantry for the full year. In a time when grocery bills keep climbing, growing and preserving your own food isn't just satisfying. It's one of the most practical things a family can do.
GrowSmart tells you exactly what to do and when, for every plant in your garden, all season long. Spring, summer, and fall. 195 crops. Works across Canada, the US, UK, and Ireland.
It's free to start and you don't need an account to try it. If you grow vegetables and you're tired of trying to hold it all in your head, this was built for you.
What I grow
Our garden in Foxboro, Ontario (Zone 5b) is a mix of raised beds, a young orchard, perennials, and herbs. The orchard has one peach tree and four apples already in the ground, with two cherries planned. We grow the usual vegetable staples plus a lot of berries and cut flowers for the pollinators. Everything we grow is tracked in GrowSmart, which is why the app handles orchards, perennials, and herbs as seriously as it handles tomatoes.
Why I built GrowSmart
I kept losing crops to late frosts I should have seen coming, and I couldn't find a planner that understood my actual city rather than a zone average. "Zone 5" is a ten-degree range. Two cities in the same zone can have last-frost dates three weeks apart, and in gardening three weeks is the difference between a harvest and a loss. I wanted a tool that would give me my dates, not the dates of someone who happens to share my zone.
I also wanted a gardening expert I could ask at 10 PM without feeling like I was bothering anyone, which is why Sage exists. And I made the free tier real because nobody should have to pay to find out whether a tool works for them.
How to reach me
Email me at amanda@getgrowsmart.com. I read everything that comes in, and I reply to as much of it as I can between accounting work, kids, and the garden. Feedback, bug reports, plant requests, or just a note to say what's working. It all helps.
Amanda Holt, founder of GrowSmart