Legal

Terms of Service

Effective 17 April 2026. Last updated 17 April 2026.

These terms govern your use of the The Homestead Plan (the "Service"), a web-based garden planning tool operated by Urban Root. By using the Service you agree to these terms. If you don't, please don't use the Service.

1. What the Service is

The The Homestead Plan is a browser-based calculator and planning tool for home gardeners. It includes free calculators (self-sufficiency, raised-bed soil, companion planting, planting dates) and, after a one-time purchase, a paid tier that adds a personalised growing plan, a searchable crop database, a cost-savings calculator, and a preservation planner.

The Service runs in your browser. Your plans are stored in your browser's local storage on your device unless you choose to export them.

2. Licence

When you buy the paid tier, Urban Root grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the paid features on up to three devices you own or control. The licence doesn't expire and isn't tied to a subscription.

You may not resell, sublicense, or redistribute the licence key. You may not use the Service to build a competing product.

3. Fair Use Policy

The Homestead Harvest Planner is a one-time purchase that includes a fair-use allowance of AI-generated growing plans. This policy exists to keep the service available and affordable for all customers while preventing automated abuse.

Under this policy:

• Each licence key is limited to 20 plan generations per rolling 24-hour period.
• Requests beyond this limit will receive a temporary "too many requests" response and can be retried after the 24-hour window has elapsed.
• The limit is enforced per licence, not per device. A licence activated on multiple devices shares a single 24-hour allowance.
• Urban Root reserves the right to adjust fair-use limits where necessary to maintain service quality, with reasonable advance notice communicated via the product website for any material reductions.
• Automated, scripted, or bulk-generation use of the plan generator is not permitted and may result in licence deactivation without refund.

For typical use, 20 plans per day is well in excess of normal iteration — most households refine their growing plan a handful of times before settling on a final approach. If you have a genuine use case that requires a higher limit, contact support before attempting to exceed the allowance.

4. Accuracy of plans

Plant spacing, yield estimates, companion relationships, frost-date offsets, and all other numbers in the Service are based on published data from extension services, peer-reviewed research, and widely accepted gardening references. They are planning estimates, not guarantees. Your actual results will vary based on soil, weather, variety, pest pressure, and management.

Do not rely on the Service for professional agronomy or commercial farming decisions without cross-checking with local extension services and a qualified agronomist.

5. How the growing plan is generated (paid tier)

The Growing Plan tab transmits the inputs you provide (family size, hardiness zone, frost dates, garden space, sun exposure, soil type, watering method, experience level, goals, and selected crops) to Claude, a large language model operated by Anthropic, which returns a structured personalised monthly schedule. The model output is generated automatically and is therefore advisory, not authoritative. Generated plans can contain mistakes - including crop advice that does not suit your local soil, microclimate, or pest pressure. Review every plan with common sense and cross-check against local extension-service guidance before acting on it.

No personal information (name, email, address, payment details) is sent in the request. Urban Root does not train any model on your inputs or the generated output, and does not store the request or response on its own servers beyond what is necessary to return the plan to your browser. Anthropic's data-use policy governs the API call itself - see anthropic.com/legal/privacy.

If you have a regulatory requirement to disclose use of automated systems (e.g., agronomy advice for commercial operations), the Service is not appropriate for that use case.

6. Your content

Your garden plans, bed dimensions, crop selections, and any notes you add are yours. We don't claim ownership. The underlying crop database, companion-planting database, calculation methods, UI, and brand are Urban Root's intellectual property and are not licensed for reuse in other products.

7. Payment and refunds

Payments are processed by LemonSqueezy, who act as the Merchant of Record. You're paying LemonSqueezy, who then pay Urban Root. LemonSqueezy handle sales tax and VAT collection where applicable.

Refunds are governed by our refund policy.

8. Availability

We aim for the Service to be available but don't guarantee uptime. The Service runs mostly in your browser, so temporary server-side outages (licence validation, growing-plan generation) don't affect your ability to use the free calculators on a saved page.

9. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Urban Root's total liability for any claim related to the Service is limited to the amount you paid for it. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, including lost harvests, crop failures, or missed planting windows.

10. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms over time. Material changes will be announced on the main site. Continued use after a change means you accept the update.

11. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of South Africa, where Urban Root is based. Disputes that cannot be resolved by good-faith discussion will be referred to the courts of South Africa.

12. Contact

Questions about these terms? Email urbanroot.contact@gmail.com.