Zone Garden Planting Plan
For the first-year home gardener staring at a 4x8 raised bed, a bag of seed packets, and a Zone 6a phone forecast, wondering what actually goes in this month and what is already too late. Paste your USDA zone, the month you are planning for, one to four beds or containers (with dimensions and sun hours), what you actually want to eat, an effort dial, and any microclimate notes. Get back a per-bed planting layout with square-foot-gardening spacing, position hints (taller crops on the shade-casting edge), sow-vs-buy-starts-vs-transplant instructions, and per-entry companion-planting warnings so you do not accidentally plant tomatoes next to potatoes or fennel next to anything. Every crop carries a timing verdict (on-time / buy-starts / too-late-this-year). When a crop is too late, the plan surfaces a fall alternative that is actually in-window for your zone and month plus a one-line why that names the frost math (days-to-maturity vs remaining growing days). A three-slot check-ins list (this-week / +30 days / +60 days) gives you the specific bed-scoped actions the plan expects you to take: sow now, thin later, side-dress in three weeks, scout for aphids, sow the succession round, harvest window opens. The honesty rule is a hard refusal to fake confidence: when the notes push toward planting something the frost math will not support, the plan does not recommend it, either buys starts, direct sows a shorter-days-to-maturity variety, or holds for fall. Every fake-confidence refusal, every zone-ambiguity flag, every unspecified variety, every microclimate disclaimer is surfaced in honesty_flags so a first-year gardener can see the tradeoffs. Deep tier adds the full four-bed x eight-crop layout, full companion-planting warnings on every crop entry, and the full three-slot check-ins schedule. Quick tier caps at two beds x six crops with terse warnings and check-ins. Matches produde's defensive-writer stack, one structured llm_call pass, refunds cleanly if the model fails.
