How GardenSays Decides

Every recommendation on this site comes out of the same four-step pipeline. It's deliberately boring — that's what makes it trustworthy.

1. Real tasks only

Every page starts as evidence that real gardeners ask the question — captured search phrasings are stored with each of our 214 entries. We never generate pages from a database of keywords; no evidence, no page.

2. Verified knowledge

Facts live in a structured knowledge base. Each number carries its source — university extension services and government data (55 verified source URLs at last build), checked against the page content, not just the link. Anything we derived ourselves is labeled "our estimate" right where it appears.

3. Deterministic engines

11 calculation engines turn your inputs into recommendations with plain, inspectable code. AI never produces a number, a date or a fact on this site. The same inputs always give the same answer, and every result shows its math step by step.

4. Consistency checks

Composite outputs like the Garden Blueprint run validators before they render: plants must fit the declared space, dates must match your frost data, the shopping list must equal the calculator outputs, and every cited source must be in our verified manifest. A critical failure blocks the report — you see the reason, not a broken plan.

What we refuse to fake

No live-weather theater — we use NOAA climate normals and say so; for tonight's frost you'll be pointed at your local forecast.
No invented prices — cost tools compute quantities and multiply by prices you enter.
No fake community numbers, reviews or member counts.
No AI-written facts — explanation text is assembled from the same verified data that feeds the calculators.

Limits, honestly

Frost dates are 50%-probability climate normals, not guarantees. Extension guidance is written for typical conditions — your microclimate, variety and season shift real outcomes. Where a figure is our derivation rather than a cited number, it says our estimate next to the value. If you find a number without a source or a label, that's a bug — tell us.

Counts on this page are computed from the live registry and source manifest at build time. Last built: 2026-07-18.