Crunchy Garden: What's Growing

Two Platforms

We split Crunchy Garden into two URLs to preserve the initial design and allow room for experimentation.

You can see each version at different links:

• crunchy.garden: Our initial exploration—a community-driven platform focused on sharing gardening knowledge, connecting enthusiasts, and helping with plant identification
• crunchygarden.com: The next step in our experimental learning path, exploring what happens when you combine community features with practical gardening tools, interactive experiences, and data-driven insights

What We're Experimenting With at crunchygarden.com

At crunchygarden.com, we're exploring several directions:

1. Interactive 2D Multiplayer World

We're experimenting with a real-time multiplayer 2D world to see if a gamified experience makes gardening more engaging. This includes:

• A location-based world system where users can explore
• Real-time interaction with other gardeners
• Access to all platform features from within the 2D world context
• Guest mode support for trying the experience without signing up

The world server runs on WebSocket technology and is hosted separately (on Fly.io), creating a seamless integration between the web application and the interactive world experience.

2. Weather-Based Garden Scheduler

We're testing whether data-driven planting recommendations can actually help gardeners succeed. This experimental system includes:

• Weather Data Collection: Integration with COAGMET (Colorado Agricultural Meteorological Network) and USDA SCAN (Soil Climate Analysis Network) to collect actual soil temperature data at multiple depths
• Planting Schedule Calculations: Algorithms that determine optimal planting dates based on location, hardiness zones, and weather forecasts
• Email Alerts: Automated notifications for critical planting windows (e.g., "Plant your allium bulbs before ground freezes!")
• Garden Mapping: Image-based garden mapping with annotation capabilities to track where plants are located

3. Comprehensive Garden Planner

We're exploring whether a full lifecycle tracking system helps gardeners stay organized. This experimental feature allows users to:

• Track plants through multiple statuses: dream, want, have, seeds, planted, growing, flowering, fruiting, harvested
• Manage seed purchases with vendor tracking and affiliate links
• Integrate with seed starter areas in the 2D world
• Receive email notifications for flowering and fruiting windows
• Create custom products and track planting schedules

4. Enhanced Community Features

Building on the community foundation from crunchy.garden, we're experimenting with:

• Forum System: Thread discussions with tagging, replies, and voting
• AI Features: Integration of AI capabilities to help with gardening questions
• Kickstarter Platform: A dual-voting system where members get monthly votes and others can purchase votes via Stripe, with revenue supporting feature development
• Product Ratings: 5-star rating system for gardening products with notes
• User Profiles: Enhanced profiles showing gardening interests and connections

5. Technical Architecture Experiments

Behind the scenes, we're exploring a sophisticated multi-repository system:

• Shared Prisma Schema: A dedicated package (crunchy-garden-prisma-schema) serves as the single source of truth for database schema, with local copies synced to both web and world repositories
• Separate Services: The web application (hosted on Vercel) and game server (hosted on Fly.io) share the same PostgreSQL database and JWT authentication
• Stripe Integration: Membership system with paid features and vote purchasing
• Image Storage: S3 integration for garden maps and user-uploaded images

Both platforms share the same core philosophy:

• Caring: We want to save people time and energy
• Non-Maximum Minimal Margin: We charge as little as we need to, not as much as we can
• Chill Vibe: Creating a fun, exciting work environment while providing value

The mission to "make it super easy and fun to go green and garden" remains at the heart of everything.

What We're Learning

This experimental approach is teaching us:

• How users respond to gamified experiences vs. traditional community forums
• Whether data-driven planting recommendations actually help gardeners
• If comprehensive planning tools reduce friction or add complexity
• How different community features affect engagement
• What technical architectures work best for multi-service platforms

We'd love any feedback (good, bad, whatever) at [email protected].