Kaithottam
கைத்தோட்டம்
Your seed packet says 120 days.
You have 172.
Growing advice for okra, methi and bitter gourd assumes a season that never really ends. Kaithottam works out the season you actually have — from a decade of weather at your exact coordinates — and tells you what fits in it.
Free to use. The assistant is 2 free requests, then a subscription.
Every guide to growing Indian vegetables was written for a climate with no winter. Sow in June, harvest for months, sow again. Then you try it in Ontario and the ash gourd is still green in October.
The problem is never how to grow okra. It is whether five frost-free months and 1,700 growing degree days are enough — and if so, exactly which week the seed has to go under lights.
It is the only planner that tells you no
Most apps will happily let you sow anything. Kaithottam checks two things every crop needs — enough days, and enough accumulated heat — and refuses with the numbers when they are not there.
Needs about 1650 growing degree days of summer heat; outdoors from 29 May it would get roughly 1523.
Heat budget is tight — needs 1450 degree days and the season gives about 1500. A good July works; a cool one does not.
Cannot survive a winter outdoors here — your coldest nights reach −26 °C. Keep it in a pot that summers outside and winters indoors.
Real output from the app, for a garden in LaSalle, Ontario.
Two hundred miles changes the answer
Add more than one home — a house, a cottage, a parent's garden — and each gets its own frost dates, heat budget, beds and plants.
| Crop | LaSalle1752 degree days | Bruce Peninsula1023 degree days |
|---|---|---|
| Okra | Start indoors in May | Not viable |
| Tomato | Start indoors in March | Not viable |
| Sweet corn | Sow in June | Not viable |
| Kale | Plant out in April | Start indoors |
What you get
Your own frost dates
Ten years of daily temperatures at your coordinates, turned into a last and first frost you can plan against — and a frost warning while there is still time to cover things up.
A calendar that fits
Sowing windows anchored to your season, not a generic zone. Okra goes under lights in May, not March, because that is when it can actually go out.
Jobs, not reminders
Watering that skips itself when it has rained, feeding on schedule, staking before the plant needs it, and hand-pollinating gourds — which our bees will not do for you.
Photograph a sick plant
Diagnosis that knows the crop, its age, and that there was a 3 °C night four days ago. That context is the difference between “cold damage” and a guess.
An assistant that does things
“I sowed a row of methi in the south bed today” records it. “The okra is finished” archives it. Ask whether there is time for another sowing and it counts the days for you.
54 crops, named properly
40 Indian vegetables with their Tamil and Hindi names — search “vendaikkai” or “bhindi” — and 14 northern staples that actually enjoy your winter, from parsnip to rhubarb.
What it will not do
- Promise you drumstick pods. Moringa gives you leaves in this climate, and the app says so on the crop page.
- Pretend a shoreline garden is colder than it is. The weather grid averages in nearby lake water, and that caveat is written where it matters.
- Hide a refusal to keep you engaged. If there is no time left this year, that is the answer you get.
Find out what your season will carry
Setting up takes a minute: give it a location and it works out your frost dates while you wait.
Start your gardenKaithottam · கைத்தோட்டம் — the kitchen garden