HA Homestead brings vegetable and orchard to Home Assistant with diary, calendar and weather alerts

HA Homestead brings vegetable, orchard and garden management directly to Home Assistant. The customized integration, already included in the default HACS list, allows you to organize crops on a map, record interventions and plan activities based on the weather. The project also brings together tools for seeds, harvests and seasonal analysis, avoiding separating the garden diary from home automations. It is also available in Italian and can use the meteorological sensors already present in the system.Source:Share your Projects.

How HA Homestead works in Home Assistant

The integration adds a side panel called Garden, with a satellite map on which to draw flowerbeds and cultivation areas and place plants and trees. The representation of the terrainallowsto associate activities with different areas of the garden or orchard, instead of managing all crops as a single list.

The diary records sowing, transplanting, pruning, treatments and harvests. For each period considered, the system also automatically stores the moon phase and the weather conditions of the week: useful information when you return to consult the interventions carried out.

Seeds, calendar and weather alerts

HA Homestead includes seed, seedling and germination management. It offers suggestions on crop rotation and a calendar adapted to local frost dates; the catalog covers approximately 1,350 species. The availability of these functions allows you to plan your work taking into account the plants actually grown and the conditions of the area.

There are plant-specific frost and heat wave warnings. For scheduled tasks, there are reminders on your phone, a Home Assistant to-do list, and calendar integration.

Crops, compost and other garden activities

Management is not limited to planting. Analyzes over several years allow you to consult the yield per plant, a seasonal index and observations collected from the experience of previous seasons. In this way the diary can also become a history to compare the results of cultivations over time.

The project also includes functions for compost, the chicken coop with recording of eggs and cost per egg, firewood supplies and houseplant watering shifts. They are distinct areas, but accessible from the same management environment.

Installation via HACS and requirements

The installation follows the path indicated by the author: open HACS, search for HA Homestead, select Download and restart Home Assistant. Next you need to go to Settings, Devices and Services, choose Add integration and select HA Homestead. The integration is already present in the default HACS list, so you are not required to manually add a custom repository.

For meteorological data you can use your own sensors or Open-Meteo, indicated as free and usable without an account. The project supports English, Italian, French, German, Spanish and Dutch. According to the developer's presentation, the integration does not create Home Assistant areas, adds very few entities, and removes its own items upon uninstallation. The developer invites suggestions and reports via the project discussion or GitHub.