🌡 Science used by professional growers — now for your garden

Stop guessing.
Start growing by the numbers.

Sow Now uses your garden's own sensors and Growing Degree Day science to tell you exactly when to plant, water, and harvest — every morning, on your phone.

From £199 one-off · £4.99/month · No gateway required · Works with Ecowitt sensors

Today
Thursday, 15 May · Hub online ●
312
Garden GDD
396
Greenhouse GDD
💡 3 things for today
1. Harden off tomatoes — move outside 2hrs this afternoon. Temp is 17°C.
2. Water Bed 2 (courgettes) — soil moisture at 28%, below threshold.
3. Sow French beans Saturday — soil temp hits 15°C threshold Thursday.
🌡 Right now · 14.3°C · Humidity 71%
💧 Bed 1: 52% · Bed 2: 28% ⚠ · Bed 3: 47%

Garden to phone in under 10 minutes

No command lines, no config files, no engineer required. Your kit arrives ready to go.

1

Plug in the hub

Connect the USB-C cable. The hub creates its own Wi-Fi hotspot called SowNow-XXXX. Connect your phone to it and enter your home Wi-Fi password — takes 60 seconds.

2

Download the app & scan

Scan the QR card in the box. The app links the hub to your account in one tap.

3

Place your sensors

Push soil probes into your beds, mount the weather station outside, clip the greenhouse sensor to a frame. Fully wireless — batteries last 12+ months.

4

Next morning: advice

At 7am you get a notification. Three specific things to do today, based on your actual garden's data.

Everything big farms use.
Sized for your garden.

🌡

Your weather, not a postcode guess

The Ecowitt WS69 station reads the temperature, humidity, wind, rain and UV your plants actually experience — not an average from a station 10 miles away.

💧

Per-bed soil moisture

A wireless capacitive probe in each bed tells you exactly which one needs watering — not a general garden average. No wasted water, no stressed plants.

🏡

Greenhouse tracked separately

Your greenhouse can be running 80+ GDD ahead of the garden. Sow Now tracks both zones independently so you know when seedlings are truly ready to move out.

📅

Harvest date predictions

Based on accumulated GDD and your crop's target, we tell you when to expect your first harvest — updated daily as conditions change.

❄️

Frost risk alerts

When your sensor reads below 2°C, you get an alert before it happens — not after. Enough time to cover vulnerable plants.

📡

No Ecowitt cloud dependency

The Sow Now hub receives your sensor data directly over radio — your readings go straight to your account. Ecowitt's servers are never in the loop.

Four sensors. Everything covered.

Each sensor has one job and one place. Here's where everything goes and what it tells you.

Greenhouse Bed 1 Bed 2 HUB WS WS69 WH51 WH51 WH31 WH31 868 MHz wireless Sow Now Hub WS69 weather station WH51 soil sensor WH31 temp/humidity
  • 🌤

    Ecowitt WS69 — outdoor weather station

    Mount outside on a post or fence, clear of walls and overhangs. Reads air temperature, humidity, wind speed, rain, and UV. This drives your garden GDD calculation.

    Garden zone
  • 💧

    Ecowitt WH51 — soil moisture sensor

    Push the probe 8–10 cm into the soil of each bed. Reads soil moisture and temperature. One per bed — the app tells you which specific bed needs watering.

    Per bed
  • 🏡

    Ecowitt WH31 ch.1 — greenhouse

    Hang inside your greenhouse, out of direct sunlight. Reads air temperature and humidity. Tracks greenhouse GDD separately — your greenhouse is often 3–6 weeks ahead of the garden.

    Greenhouse zone
  • 🪴

    Ecowitt WH31 ch.2 — indoors (optional)

    The WH31 supports multiple channels. A second channel on a south-facing windowsill or propagator shelf tracks your seedlings' actual environment — warmer and different from the greenhouse.

    Indoor zone
  • 📡

    Sow Now Hub — on a windowsill

    Place on any windowsill facing the garden, plugged into USB-C. The built-in radio receives all sensors simultaneously at 868 MHz — no wires, no gateway, up to 60 m range.

    Receives all zones

Your season, tracked day by day

Sow Now keeps a running diary for every crop — logging each milestone against real GDD data from your garden. No more guessing whether your timing was right.

🍅 Tomato — Gardener's Delight
● Live
648 GDD accumulated 54% · harvest ~Aug 12
Seeds sown indoors
14 Mar · 0 GDD · 🪴 South windowsill, 19°C
Indoor GDD tracking started
Germination confirmed
22 Mar · 72 GDD indoors · 8 days
Moved to greenhouse
18 Apr · 210 GDD · Greenhouse temp 16°C
🏡 GDD tracking switched to greenhouse zone
Hardening off started
12 May · 410 GDD · Sow Now advised
Transplanted to Bed 2
3 Jun · 648 GDD · Today
First harvest expected
~12 Aug · 1,200 GDD target
💡 Today's advice
1. Water Bed 2 — soil moisture at 26%, below the 35% threshold for tomatoes.
2. Stake plants now — they've put on ~15 cm since transplant and wind today is 4.2 m/s.
3. Remove side shoots below first truss — plant is at the right GDD stage.
  • 📅

    Every milestone, timestamped in GDD

    When you tap "Germination confirmed" or "Moved to greenhouse", Sow Now logs the date and the exact GDD your garden had accumulated. Next season you'll know exactly what conditions produced your best results.

  • 🏡

    Greenhouse vs garden — tracked separately

    Your greenhouse accumulates heat faster than the open garden. Sow Now tracks both and tells you when your greenhouse-grown seedlings have actually hit the GDD threshold to move outside safely — not just a calendar date.

  • 💡

    Advice triggered by your data, not a schedule

    Today's three actions are generated from your live sensor readings — soil moisture, accumulated GDD, wind speed, and what stage your crops are at. Not a generic growing calendar.

  • 🎯

    Harvest date that updates daily

    Based on GDD accumulated so far and your crop's target, the predicted harvest date adjusts every day as your weather changes. A cold spell pushes it out. A warm week pulls it in.

Plants don't care what month it is.
They care how warm it's been.

A tomato sown on 1st March doesn't know it's March. It knows how many warm hours it's experienced. That's what Growing Degree Days measure — accumulated warmth above the temperature at which a plant starts growing. Two gardens 400 miles apart can have completely different growing seasons, even if they plant on the same date.

Estimated season GDD (base 10°C) by region — 2025 growing season (Apr–Sep)

Surrey / London

South East England
1,380
GDD Apr–Sep 2025

Bristol / Somerset

South West England
1,240
GDD Apr–Sep 2025

Birmingham

Midlands
1,100
GDD Apr–Sep 2025

Cumbria / Lakes

North West England
910
GDD Apr–Sep 2025

Aberdeen

North East Scotland
720
GDD Apr–Sep 2025
What this means for your tomatoes (Gardener's Delight, base 10°C, target 1,200 GDD)

Surrey grower — comfortable harvest

At 1,380 GDD for the season, a Surrey garden comfortably hits the 1,200 GDD target by mid-August. Sow indoors in March, transplant in May, pick from late July.

Cumbria grower — tight but possible

At 910 GDD outdoors, hitting 1,200 GDD in the garden alone is borderline. But a greenhouse in Cumbria might add 300+ GDD. Sow Now tells you exactly when your greenhouse has reached the threshold — not a calendar guess.

Aberdeen grower — greenhouse essential

720 GDD outdoors won't ripen most tomatoes. But a decent south-facing greenhouse in Aberdeen can accumulate 1,100–1,300 GDD. Sow Now tracks your actual greenhouse, not an average — and adjusts the harvest prediction as the season unfolds.

The postcode forecast problem

Even in the same postcode, a south-facing walled garden can accumulate 200+ more GDD than a north-facing plot. The only way to know is to measure. That's what the WS69 is for.

These are regional estimates, not your garden. The whole point of Sow Now is that your sensors measure your microclimate — the south-facing wall, the sheltered raised bed, the greenhouse that traps heat differently to your neighbour's. Regional averages are where you start. Your sensors are where you finish.

Growing Degree Days — what farms have used for decades

Professional growers have used GDD to predict crop development since the 1950s. It's the accumulated heat energy above a crop's base temperature — a far more accurate predictor of plant development than a calendar date.

The difference is that Sow Now uses your actual sensor readings — not a weather forecast API. Your south-facing greenhouse wall might be accumulating GDD twice as fast as your garden. No weather service can tell you that.

GDD Formula (standard agricultural method)
Daily GDD = max(
  ((T_max + T_min) ÷ 2) − T_base,
  0
)

Season GDD = Σ daily GDD
                 from sow date
CropBase tempGDD to harvest
Tomato10°C1,000–1,400
French bean10°C800–1,000
Sweetcorn10°C1,400–1,600
Pea4°C1,000–1,200
Carrot7°C1,200–1,500

One-off purchase. Subscription unlocks the intelligence.

The kit is yours forever. The subscription pays for daily AI advice, push alerts, and unlimited crop tracking. Cancel anytime.

Starter Kit
£199
What's in the box
  • Sow Now Hub (pre-provisioned)
  • Ecowitt WS69 outdoor weather station
  • 1 × Ecowitt WH51 soil moisture sensor
  • 1 × Ecowitt WH31 greenhouse sensor
  • USB-C power cable + QR setup card
  • 3 months Grower free
Order now
Then £4.99/month · cancel anytime
Allotment Kit
£279
What's in the box
  • Sow Now Hub (pre-provisioned)
  • Ecowitt WS69 outdoor weather station
  • 4 × Ecowitt WH51 soil moisture sensors
  • 1 × Ecowitt WH31 greenhouse sensor
  • USB-C power cable + QR setup card
  • 3 months Grower free
Order now
Extra soil sensors £29 each · Then £4.99/month

The app that earns its keep

One missed sowing window or a wasted tray of seedlings costs more than a year's subscription. Sow Now pays for itself.

Seed
Free
forever
  • Live sensor data
  • Basic GDD counter
  • 3 crop profiles
  • Weekly advice digest
Smallholder
£12.99
per month
  • Up to 3 sites / hubs
  • All Grower features
  • Full season PDF reports
  • Open API access
  • Priority support

What beta users say

★★★★★

"I've been growing tomatoes for 20 years and always struggled to know when to move seedlings outside. This year Sow Now told me exactly when — and they were the best plants I've ever grown."

Sarah M. · Allotment holder, Bristol
★★★★★

"The soil moisture alerts alone are worth it. I used to overwater half my beds and underwater the other half. Now the app tells me which bed needs attention before I even go outside."

James T. · Kitchen garden, Yorkshire
★★★★★

"I already had the Ecowitt station. Setting up Sow Now took less than 10 minutes. The fact it doesn't use the Ecowitt app or cloud is a big deal for me — everything stays on my own system."

Pete W. · Raised bed grower, Suffolk

Your best growing season starts now.

Order before May 31st and get 6 months Grower free instead of 3. Limited first batch.

Order Garden Kit — £229 Try free first

Common questions

Do I need to buy a separate Ecowitt gateway?
No — the Sow Now hub contains a built-in radio receiver that reads your Ecowitt sensors directly over 868 MHz. No Ecowitt gateway needed, and your data never touches Ecowitt's servers.
Does it work with other weather stations?
Currently optimised for the Ecowitt WS69, WH51, and WH31 — all part of the Fine Offset sensor family. Support for additional Fine Offset compatible stations is on the roadmap.
What happens if my broadband goes down?
The Sow Now hub stores up to 30 days of sensor readings locally. When your connection returns, all readings are automatically uploaded — no data is lost. Your app will show "Hub last seen X hours ago" if the hub goes offline.
How long do the sensor batteries last?
The Ecowitt WH51 soil sensors and WH31 greenhouse sensor run on AA batteries. At a 48-second transmission interval you can expect 12–18 months of battery life. The app notifies you when a sensor drops below 15%.
How far can the sensors be from the hub?
The Ecowitt sensors transmit on 868 MHz with a quoted range of 100 m in open field. Through walls and fences real-world range is typically 30–60 m — more than enough for most gardens. Place the hub on a windowsill facing the garden for best results.
Is my data private?
Your sensor data is stored under your account only — no other user can see it. We store only your postcode prefix (e.g. "SW4") for climate zone lookup, never your full address. You can delete your account and all data instantly from the app. We do not sell data to third parties.
Can I cancel my subscription?
Yes, anytime — no contract. If you cancel, your account reverts to the free Seed tier. Your historical data and crop records are retained for 12 months in case you resubscribe.
What if the hub breaks?
Replacement hubs ship pre-provisioned. Scan the QR on the new hub, and all your settings, crop records, and historical data are restored from the cloud instantly. No re-setup needed.