The Backyard Homestead, Tuned to Australia
Garden, poultry, bees, worms, compost and a full pantry. The pieces of a productive backyard, one app, one $79.
A backyard homestead is not a farm. It is a normal suburban yard doing more: a veg patch that feeds the kitchen, a few hens turning scraps into eggs, maybe a beehive for pollination and honey, and a worm farm closing the loop on food waste. Each part makes the others work better, and Planting Season is the only Australian app that runs them all together, tuned to your exact region.
The pieces
199 plants with sow calendars for 10 Australian climate regions, a drag-and-drop bed planner, and what-to-plant-now for your postcode. The heart of it.
Chickens for eggs and pest control, ducks that out-lay them through winter, or quail where councils ban hens. One app flock tracker covers all three.
Honey bees and native stingless bees, registration by state, varroa monitoring, and a hive tracker built for Australian rules. Pollination that lifts the whole garden.
Turn kitchen scraps into the richest free fertiliser there is, in a box the size of a milk crate. The loop that feeds the garden that feeds the chickens.
Where the loop begins: cold heap, hot heap, tumbler or Bokashi, turning every scrap and clipping into free soil for the garden.
The bit no other app helps with: ferment, dry, freeze and bottle a glut so the backyard feeds you all year, not just in season.
How the corners connect
- Chickens eat the pests the garden grows, and the bugs the worms cannot use.
- Worms turn scraps into castings that grow better vegetables.
- Chicken manure (aged) and worm castings are the garden's free fertiliser.
- Bees pollinate the fruiting crops, lifting yields across the whole patch.
- Garden scraps feed the chickens and the worms, cutting feed bills.
- The compost heap takes the bulk the worms cannot: prunings, weeds, aged coop bedding, returning it all to the soil.
- Preserving closes the last gap, banking the glut so the harvest feeds you long after the season ends.
That loop is why we built them as one app instead of six. Most apps do a single piece; the homestead is the connection between them.
One app for the whole backyard
Garden planner, flock tracker, hive records and worm log, tuned to your region. Free to start. Pro is A$79 once, never a subscription. The US apps charge that every year for a single corner.
Open the app free →Start where you are
New to all of it? Begin with the garden, it is the foundation and the easiest win. Already gardening and want eggs? The chicken starter guide. Want pollination and a little honey? Start beekeeping. Drowning in kitchen scraps? A worm farm or a compost bin is an afternoon's work. No room for chickens? Quai