Picking a crop tracking app feels like it should be simple. Open the App Store, search "garden planner," tap install. Then reality hits: half the apps want a $90/year subscription before you log a single tomato, half were built for 500-acre row crop operations, and the rest stopped getting updates two years ago. If you grow vegetables — whether that's a 4x8 raised bed or a half-acre market plot — you need something that fits the scale of your work without burying you in features built for someone else.

We spent the 2026 spring season testing the apps growers actually mention in forums, Reddit threads, and farmers' market conversations. Below is an honest ranking based on how well each tool serves small-scale vegetable growers and market farmers — not corn-and-soy operations, not pure landscape design tools. Pricing is current as of May 2026.

1. CropsBook — Best Free Option

CropsBook is our top pick because it does the boring, useful work without asking for a credit card, an account, or a cloud sync handshake. You install it, you start logging plantings, harvests, and bed rotations. That's it. The app is built around the reality that most vegetable growers track the same handful of things repeatedly: what got planted where, when it went in, when it came out, and what should follow it next season.

Strengths:

  • Genuinely free. No trial, no premium tier hiding the useful features. Every function ships with the download.
  • Works offline. Logging a harvest in a high tunnel with no signal works exactly the same as logging from your kitchen.
  • No account required. Data lives on your device. Nothing gets uploaded, nothing gets sold, nothing breaks when the company pivots.
  • Built for vegetables, not commodities. Crop rotation tracking, succession planting reminders, bed-level records — the things a market gardener actually uses.

Weaknesses:

  • iOS only. Android users are out of luck for now.
  • No multi-user sync. If you and a farm partner both want access on separate devices, this isn't the tool.
  • Reporting is light. You won't pull profit-per-bed dashboards out of it — it's a logbook, not a business intelligence suite.

Pricing: Free. Permanently.

Best for: Backyard gardeners, raised-bed growers, small market gardens, and anyone who wants a digital field notebook without a subscription.

CropsBook is free to download. Download CropsBook on the App Store — no account needed, works offline.

2. FarmLogs — Best for Row Crop Operations

FarmLogs (now part of Bushel) is a legacy name in farm software, and it earned that reputation by serving row crop growers well. If you're rotating corn, soybeans, and wheat across hundreds of acres, FarmLogs has field mapping, rainfall tracking by GPS coordinate, and scouting features that justify its existence.

Strengths:

  • Strong field boundary mapping and satellite imagery.
  • Rainfall and growing degree day data pulled automatically by location.
  • Solid scouting and pest notes workflow.

Weaknesses:

  • Built for commodity crops. Logging mixed-vegetable plantings on a quarter-acre feels like using a combine to harvest lettuce.
  • Free tier has shrunk significantly. The genuinely useful features now sit behind paid plans.
  • Crop variety selection skews toward grain and oilseed.

Pricing: Free basic tier with limited features. Paid plans start around $400/year per operation depending on acreage and add-ons.

Best for: Conventional row crop farms over 100 acres.

3. Bushel Farm — Best for Mid-Scale Diversified Farms

Bushel Farm (the platform FarmLogs rolled into) is the bigger sibling. It targets the operation that has grown past spreadsheets but isn't ready for enterprise farm management software. If you're running 20 to 200 acres with a mix of crops, employees, and equipment, Bushel Farm has the structure to handle it.

Strengths:

  • Inventory tracking across grain bins, storage, and contracts.
  • Profit-and-loss breakdowns at the field level.
  • Integration with grain marketing tools (it's owned by a grain logistics company).

Weaknesses:

  • Overkill for backyard or small market garden use. The UI assumes you're thinking in acres, not beds.
  • Pricing isn't transparent — you have to talk to a sales rep for most tiers.
  • Onboarding takes real time. This isn't a tool you open and use the same afternoon.

Pricing: Limited free tier. Paid plans are quote-based, typically $500 to $2,000+ per year.

Best for: Diversified farms 20+ acres that also sell grain or commodities.

4. Seedsheet — Best for Absolute Beginners

Seedsheet started as a physical product — pre-seeded weed-barrier sheets you roll out over a raised bed — and has expanded into a planning app that complements the kits. The app focuses on garden layout for new growers who don't know what to plant next to what.

Strengths:

  • Beautiful, visual garden planner with drag-and-drop layout.
  • Companion planting suggestions built in.
  • Strong educational content for first-year gardeners.

Weaknesses:

  • More garden planner than crop tracker — ongoing season records are limited.
  • App pushes you toward buying Seedsheet products throughout.
  • Not designed for anyone past a couple of raised beds.

Pricing: Free app with optional paid product kits ($30 to $80 per seed kit).

Best for: First-year raised bed gardeners who want hand-holding on layout decisions.

5. Planter — Best for Visual Garden Layout

Planter is a clean, visual garden layout app that's earned a loyal following among home gardeners. It does one thing — let you sketch your beds and drop crops into them — and does it well.

Strengths:

  • Excellent UI for sketching bed layouts.
  • Spacing and companion planting suggestions per crop.
  • Frost date and zone-aware planting calendar.

Weaknesses:

  • Free tier limits the number of plants and beds you can save.
  • Harvest and yield tracking is minimal — this is a planner, not a logbook.
  • No real workflow for succession planting over a full season.

Pricing: Free with limits. Pro is around $8/month or $40/year.

Best for: Home gardeners who care more about the visual plan than season-long records.

6. Tend — Best for Diversified Market Gardens

Tend targets the gap CropsBook also occupies — small-scale, diversified vegetable production — but takes a more business-focused angle. If you sell at farmers' markets, run a CSA, or wholesale to restaurants, Tend has the structure to track customers, orders, and harvest planning together.

Strengths:

  • CSA and wholesale order management built in.
  • Harvest planning works backward from sales commitments.
  • Crop planning genuinely understands succession and intercropping.

Weaknesses:

  • Web-first, not a great mobile experience for in-field logging.
  • Paid only past the free trial — not free in any meaningful sense.
  • Overhead is significant for someone just tracking a home garden.

Pricing: 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at $35/month.

Best for: Market farmers selling to CSAs, restaurants, and wholesale accounts who need crop planning tied to sales.

7. Garden Journal by Smart Yields — Best Lightweight Journal

If you want something between a paper notebook and a full app, Garden Journal is a no-frills logger. Type in what you did today, tag it to a crop, move on with your day.

Strengths:

  • Dead simple. No learning curve.
  • Photo attachments per entry.
  • Works for any growing scale.

Weaknesses:

  • No structured crop rotation or bed-level data — it's a journal, not a database.
  • Limited reporting or year-over-year comparison.
  • Search and filter are weak as your journal grows.

Pricing: Free with optional $4.99 one-time unlock for unlimited entries.

Best for: Growers who want a digital diary without any structure imposed on them.

How We Picked These Apps

Our ranking is based on testing each app through a real spring planting season on a mix of raised beds and in-ground plots. We weighted four things:

  1. Fit for vegetable growers. Tools built for corn-and-soy don't earn points for having lots of features.
  2. Genuinely free vs. "free." A 14-day trial isn't free. A free tier missing the actually useful features isn't free either.
  3. Offline reliability. Field signal is unreliable. An app that demands connectivity fails the basic job.
  4. No-account friction. Apps that require an account, email verification, and onboarding survey before you can log a single planting lose points.

We did not weight visual polish heavily. Several beautiful apps charge a premium for features that simpler tools include free.

The best app is the one you'll actually open in muddy boots at 6 a.m. with one hand free. Friction kills logging habits faster than any missing feature.

Which App Is Right for You?

If you grow vegetables on iOS at any scale below a commercial farm: CropsBook. Free, offline, no account, built for the actual rhythm of vegetable growing — planting, succession, rotation, harvest.

If you run a row crop operation with hundreds of acres: FarmLogs or Bushel Farm. The vegetable-focused tools won't have the field mapping or commodity-specific workflows you need.

If you're brand new and want help deciding what goes where: Seedsheet or Planter. The visual layout tools shine when you don't yet know if tomatoes belong next to basil.

If your garden is part of a wider farm operation: Many of our readers also keep livestock and bees alongside vegetables. For livestock and ranching records, Barnsbook covers herd health, breeding cycles, and barn inventory the same way CropsBook covers crops. If you have hives, HiveBook tracks inspections, honey yields, and queen status on the same simple, offline-first model. Together they fill in the parts of a small diversified farm that pure crop apps miss.

If you sell to CSAs, restaurants, or wholesale: Tend's sales-driven planning will save you spreadsheet hours, but be prepared to pay for it.

If you just want a digital notebook: Garden Journal. Sometimes the right tool is the simplest one.

The honest answer for most home and market gardeners reading this: try CropsBook first. It's free, takes 30 seconds to install, and if it doesn't fit your workflow you've lost nothing. Every other app on this list either costs money, demands an account, or solves a problem you probably don't have.