Changelog

Every meaningful update to this site, in reverse chronological order. Content is maintained — not just published once and abandoned.

Every meaningful update to OutdoorPlantCare.com is logged here. Google ranks freshness, but more importantly: a site that's never updated is a site you can't trust. This page exists so you can see when a guide was last touched and what changed.

2026-06-12 — Phase 16

• 30 more articles: 10 native plants by region (NE, SE, MW, CA, PNW, SW, Mountain West, Mid-Atlantic, New England, Great Plains), 10 diagnostic guides (white spots, red spots, brown tips, sticky residue, webbing, silver leaves, leaves falling, plants not growing, flowers not blooming, stunted vegetables), 10 care techniques (soil pH test, fix compacted soil, divide perennials, deadhead, prune flowering shrubs, overwinter tender perennials, plus rain/pollinator/cutting/deer-resistant garden start guides). Per-region Extension sourcing on natives.
• 121 internal cross-links added pointing to the new Phase 16 articles. How-to-test-soil-ph-at-home alone gets 41 incoming links from existing articles.
• Wired /api/subscribe to a Google Sheets capture pipeline (Apps Script Web App). New signups now write to a private spreadsheet AND send a realtime notification to thomas@outdoorplantcare.com.
• Switched /api/ask from Resend to MailerSend. SPF, DKIM, and Return-Path records verified on the domain. Reader-question form is end-to-end live.
• Consolidated all site email references to thomas@outdoorplantcare.com as the single business contact.

2026-06-12 — Phase 15

• 46 new species care guides closing high-volume coverage gaps. Vegetables: watermelon, pumpkin, eggplant, spinach, cauliflower, arugula, peas, brussels-sprouts, celery, swiss-chard, leek, scallions. Ornamentals: azalea, magnolia, dogwood, forsythia, spirea, crepe-myrtle, juniper, jasmine, camellia, yew, willow, oak, pine-tree, pieris, privet. Annuals/perennials: begonia, geranium, petunia, sunflower, marigold, milkweed, zinnia, astilbe, pansy, bleeding-heart, poppy, cosmos, primrose, aster, hollyhock. Plus 4 hydrangea species deep-dives: paniculata, arborescens, quercifolia, macrophylla.
• 220 internal cross-links added across 147 existing articles pointing to the new species guides. Spinach-plant-care opens with 22 incoming links, eggplant-care with 20, azalea-care with 17.
• All 1,229 Amazon affiliate links across the site updated from placeholder tag to outdoorplantcare-20.
• 42 Home Depot / Lowe’s affiliate links stripped. Site is Amazon-only as of Phase 15.
• Affiliate disclosure page rewritten to reflect Amazon-only relationship.

2026-06-11 — Phase 14

• 52 articles staged for release Oct 24 2026 through Jan 23 2027 (4 per week). Mix of “Is X a perennial?” quick answers, “What to plant in [month]” seasonal anchors, diagnostic “X leaves on Y” guides, X vs Y comparison guides, and perennial listicles. Staged-release pacing infrastructure prevents bulk-index spam signal.
• Three new hub pages built: /diagnose-by-symptom/ (visual decision tree, 6 symptom routes), /plant-now/ (zone-aware tool with ZIP code detection and localStorage), /site-map-visual/ (D3 force-directed graph of all 695 articles colored by hub).
• 30 more bottom-quartile articles tightened with Extension citations, binomials, and “What I’d do differently” sections (90 total polished).
• 387 image alt-text entries upgraded from weak/missing to 50–92 char descriptive (mean length 40.4 → 73.4 chars). Accessibility and image-search ranking lift.
• 11 citation gaps closed in flagship articles (blueberry chill hours, peony graft depth attribution, dahlia zones + pH, zucchini SVB taxonomy, plus 7 more).

2026-06-11 — Phase 13

• 50 keyword-gap articles staged for release Jun 25 through Oct 17 2026. Covered companion-planting deep-dives, species expansion, color-flower listicles, and gap-filling tier-1 keywords.
• Two new tools: /tools/seed-saving-calendar/ (when to harvest seeds + drying + storage by species) and /tools/garden-cost-calculator/ (startup cost by sqft with affiliate links).
• Two new hubs: /care/companion-planting/ linking all crop-specific companion-planting articles, and /plants/flowers-by-color/ + 7 sub-articles by color.
• API hardening: /api/ask and /api/subscribe received per-IP rate limiting (8/min), CORS, honeypot fields, and a new /api/health endpoint reporting which ESPs are configured.
• /methodology-stats/ transparency dashboard built: live count of sources, citations per article, words written, average quality score.
• 21 tools made embeddable at /tools/{slug}/embed/ with postMessage auto-resize. Third-party sites can now embed any OPC tool.
• 57 new PDF cheat sheets added (40 → 97). Covers all curated fruit trees, berry shrubs, and herbs.
• /recently-updated/ page + JSON feed: freshness signal for crawlers, machine-readable feed for tooling.

2026-06-10 — Phase 12

• OG images rendered for all 695 articles. Every article now has its own 1200×630 social-share image.
• 423 commercial-intent internal links added via the recommendation-callout system. Most-trafficked articles route to the gear/buyer pages they implicitly reference.
• Plants-database sharded into per-letter chunks for parallel client-side loading. 666 KB warehouse split into 27 smaller files averaging 4.5 KB.
• Ahrefs keyword gap analysis run against 28 priority terms. Identified the next batch of keyword targets.
• 20 evergreen newsletter emails drafted covering monthly garden tasks (above and beyond the 30-day onboarding series).
• /lighthouse-audit/ public performance dashboard launched. Live perf numbers, no hidden bottlenecks.

2026-06-10 — Phase 11

• Added 300 new long-form articles across cultivars, herbs, fruit trees, lawn, advanced techniques, problem-by-host cross-refs, and how-to-identify guides. Site now has 695+ guides.
• Launched 3 new tools: rain garden sizing calculator (EPA/Wisconsin DNR method), garden light meter (uses phone Ambient Light Sensor API), and garden bed designer (drag-and-drop at scale).
• All article pages now include an author bio block (E-E-A-T signal) and JSON-LD `Person` schema with `sameAs` link to IndoorPlantCare.
• Image `srcset` and `sizes` attributes for responsive serving of Unsplash hero images.
• Skip-to-content link sitewide for screen reader accessibility.
• `/api/subscribe.js` now supports ConvertKit, Beehiiv, Buttondown, and Mailchimp via env vars.
• Added `/blog/feed.xml` RSS feed for the field-notes blog.

2026-06-10 — Phase 10

• Visually audited all PDF cheat sheets. Fixed 10 issues: title duplication, height bug (X\u2013X ft), incorrect zone/sun on 4 plants, broken markdown rendering, URL parameter garbage in descriptions.
• Cheat sheet count expanded from 19 to 40, covering every well-documented plant species in the warehouse.
• Curated structured plant data for the 14 remaining plants missing zones/scientific names.
• Hero image backfill complete: all 395 articles now have hero images via Unsplash hotlink, each with photographer attribution.
• Launched the `/blog/` section with 3 dated field notes.
• Expanded `/about/` with a "By the numbers" section.
• Added `humans.txt`, `security.txt`, and `llms.txt`.
• Built `/glossary/` with 120 gardening terms, alphabetical jump nav, and `DefinedTermSet` schema.
• Added Recipe schema to the compost calculator (`recipeIngredient` and `recipeInstructions`).

2026-06-10 — Phase 9

• Wrote 160 new articles: 25 cultivar deep-dives, 24 monthly task guides, 15 comparison guides, 16 problem-by-host cross-refs, 25 best-plants-for-X lists, 20 regional deep-dives, 20 how-to deep-dives, 15 diagnostic expansions.
• Built `whats-blooming` widget powered by the warehouse.
• Built `problem-photo-gallery` for visual diagnosis matching.
• Added reader Q&A block + `/api/ask` backend to every article. Submits to email via Resend when configured.
• Generated 19 printable PDF cheat sheets for the top plants.
• Added 12 monthly seasonal nurture emails ("This week in the garden") on top of the 30-day onboarding series.
• Built the canonical plants-db.json warehouse (53 plants with scientific names, 73 with USDA zones, 39 with deer ratings).
• Refactored every interactive tool to load from the warehouse via `window.__opcMatchPlant()`.

2026-06-09 — Phase 8

• 65 new articles: 30 deep topics (tree care, soil prep, propagation, irrigation), 15 buyer guides for missing product categories, 20 state-specific articles.
• Built 4 more interactive tools: lawn area calculator, soil amendment calculator, harvest calendar, leaf ID key.
• Added the remaining 18 states to the crop-state matrix \u2014 500 pages total (50 states \u00d7 10 crops).
• Generated image-sitemap.xml for Google Image indexing.
• Backfilled 93 missing hero images via second-pass Unsplash search.
• Wired HowTo schema to all tool pages.

Earlier phases

The site launched 2026-06-10 with 235 long-form guides, 19 interactive tools, 50 state planting calendars, 33 buyer guides, a 30-day onboarding email sequence, and the editorial standards still in force today: cited Extension sources, first-person voice only where firsthand, zero AI-generated filler.

How updates work

• Substantive content updates trigger a new `updated:` date in the frontmatter and a new entry here.
• Typo fixes and link cleanups happen silently.
• New articles are listed in the relevant hub page on launch day; this page is the consolidated record.