Plantory vs From Seed to Spoon: Which Fits Europe?

If you are weighing Plantory against From Seed to Spoon, you are really comparing two different ideas of what a garden planner is for. Plantory designs your garden — the actual layout, in your actual space, with your actual climate. From Seed to Spoon answers a simpler, earlier question: what should a beginner even try to grow? Both are useful, but the right pick depends almost entirely on where you live and what you are stuck on.

This comparison looks at both apps from a European gardener's point of view in 2026, because that is where the two products diverge the most.

Quick Comparison

The Core Difference: A Layout vs a List of Recommendations

The fastest way to see these two apps clearly is to ask: what does day one look like?

From Seed to Spoon: A Recommendation Engine for Beginners

From Seed to Spoon was built around a sympathetic question — "I want to grow food but I have no idea where to start." You enter your location and a few preferences, and the app suggests what to plant, when to plant it, and what tends to do well in your area. The plant pages include companion planting tips, basic pest and disease information, and timing guidance pegged to your frost dates.

For a brand-new gardener in the US, that is genuinely good onboarding. It removes the "blank-page" problem of staring at a packet of seeds with no plan. The community angle (notes, photos, comments) reinforces that beginner-friendly tone.

The catch is what it does not really do. From Seed to Spoon does not draw your garden. There is no plot, no spatial layout, no "this bed goes here, that path goes there". It also leans on US horticultural conventions: the climate model is USDA hardiness zones tied to US ZIP codes, the variety database is built around what is widely sold in North American seed catalogues, and the language is English. None of that is wrong for the audience it was built for. It just stops being a clean fit the moment you garden somewhere outside that audience.

Plantory: A Garden That Fits Your Actual Space

Plantory starts somewhere different. You describe your plot, or upload a photo, or sketch it out. You set the sun, soil, climate. The AI then returns a full layout: where the beds go, what goes in each bed, where the paths run, which plants will support each other, where the shade-tolerant herbs sit, where the tall crops will not shadow the low ones. After the layout exists, Plantory then gives you the calendar and care piece — sowing windows, transplant timing, watering, and, on the Gardener plan, AI photo diagnosis of pests and diseases.

The trade-off is that Plantory invests heavily in the layout part. If you genuinely just want a short list of "what should I plant first" suggestions, with no interest in the spatial side, From Seed to Spoon is the lighter tool. If you want the layout solved for you in a way that uses your garden's actual location and hardiness zone, Plantory does it.

Planning Approach: Spatial Design vs Pick-and-Plant

This is the single most useful frame for choosing between them.

If you already know roughly what to plant and you just need help with the layout, Plantory does the layout for you. If you are at the earlier "I don't even know what to grow" stage and you live in the US or read English comfortably, From Seed to Spoon is a friendly first step.

Climate Intelligence: Where European Gardeners Get Burned

From Seed to Spoon's climate model is anchored to USDA hardiness zones, with a US ZIP-code-driven setup that approximates other regions. USDA zones describe winter cold — the lowest temperature a perennial will survive — which is genuinely useful in continental North America. They tell you almost nothing about whether a tomato will ripen in Manchester, Hamburg, Kraków, Bordeaux or Valencia.

European gardening needs more than a zone number. Rainfall pattern, summer continentality and growing season length matter as much as minimum winter temperature. The same USDA "8a" maps to coastal Atlantic Britain (cool wet summers, mild winters) and to parts of southern Spain (hot dry summers, mild winters). A planting calendar that treats those two as the same gives opposite advice — sometimes literally.

Plantory does not rely on a zone number alone. It works from your garden's location and hardiness zone and adds the local weather forecast for that spot. The plant encyclopedia can be filtered by hardiness zone, sun and water needs, so you can narrow it down to plants that suit your conditions.

For a gardener anywhere outside the US, this is the single biggest practical difference.

Plant Database and Variety Coverage

From Seed to Spoon's plant list is solid on vegetables and herbs, with the variety names you would expect in a North American seed catalogue. If you live there, that maps directly to what your local garden centre stocks. If you live in Europe, you will find a fair number of US-bred varieties listed that are not the best performers in your conditions, and you will often miss the local cultivar names that European seed houses use.

Plantory's public encyclopedia lists 400,000+ species across vegetables, herbs, ornamentals, shrubs and trees, and you can filter it by hardiness zone, sun and water needs. That broader coverage is also why Plantory can design an entire garden, not only a vegetable patch.

Languages and Localisation

From Seed to Spoon is English only. That is workable for the UK, Ireland and for English-fluent gardeners across northern Europe, but it is a real barrier elsewhere. Plant names, growing terms and seasonal references read very differently to a Polish, Czech, Spanish, Italian, French or German gardener planning in their own language.

Plantory is available in 8 languages: English, Czech, Slovak, German, Polish, Spanish, Italian and French. Tasks and frost alerts follow your garden's location, not the language you pick.

If your gardening household does not garden in English, this alone often decides the choice.

Disease and Pest Help

From Seed to Spoon includes pest and disease information attached to plant pages and in browseable references. If you already know roughly what is wrong with your plant, you can find treatment guidance.

Plantory adds a different layer on top: photo-based AI diagnosis on the Gardener plan. You take a picture of the chewed leaf, the brown spot, the wilting stem, and the app suggests the most likely cause and an action plan. It is not perfect — no photo diagnosis is — but it converts the hardest part of fixing a problem (correctly identifying it in the first place) into a quick photo instead of an evening of searching forums.

For a beginner, the AI diagnosis is the bigger time-saver. For an experienced gardener who already recognises the usual culprits, From Seed to Spoon's reference notes may be enough.

Pricing and Value

Both apps offer a free tier and an optional paid upgrade. From Seed to Spoon historically uses a freemium model with a paid premium subscription that unlocks deeper features and an ad-free experience; pricing is in USD and has shifted over the years. Check the current rate on their site before committing.

Plantory offers a permanent free plan with 3 gardens, 25 plants per garden, weekly tasks, frost alerts and 1 AI visualization a month. The paid plan, Gardener, costs €7 a month or €39 a year and adds unlimited gardens and plants, disease diagnosis from a photo, the full set of weather alerts and a 3D view. EUR pricing matters for European households who would otherwise be billed in USD with exchange-rate noise.

Who Should Use From Seed to Spoon?

From Seed to Spoon is a sensible choice if:

• You are a brand-new vegetable gardener and you want a tool to suggest what to plant first.
• You live in the US, or your reference climate looks broadly USDA-shaped.
• You read and garden in English.
• You like a mobile-app workflow with community notes and reminders.
• You only want a vegetable / herb planner, not a whole-garden designer.

It is friendly, beginner-oriented, and good at its core promise.

Who Should Use Plantory?

Plantory is the better fit if:

• You garden somewhere in Europe and want a tool that works from your garden's location, hardiness zone and local weather forecast, not from a US ZIP code.
• You want a complete garden, not only a vegetable patch — including flowers, herbs, shrubs and trees.
• You want the layout solved for you, fast, before you commit to a season.
• You would rather not garden in English: Czech, Slovak, German, Polish, Spanish, Italian or French.
• You want AI photo diagnosis of pest and disease problems (on the Gardener plan), not only a reference library.
• You want a permanent free tier so you can try the planning workflow before paying anything.

Plantory's European climate zones guide and the companion planting guide give you the background on climate and plant pairings, if you want to read up before signing up.

The Verdict

From Seed to Spoon is a thoughtful beginner tool for English-speaking vegetable gardeners who want a friendly hand picking what to plant. If that describes you and your climate maps cleanly onto USDA zones, it will do its job.

Plantory is the broader tool: a layout-first, climate-aware, multilingual garden planner that covers the whole European garden, not only the veg bed. For most European gardeners, the deciding factors are the location-based climate data, the native language support, and the AI layout — three areas where From Seed to Spoon is not designed to compete because they sit outside its target audience.

If you are honestly on the fence, the easiest test is to try the free tier. Generate one design for your actual space, look at the layout, then ask whether a list of recommendations alone would have given you that result.