Terms of service

Who can use GrowYourOwn

Accounts are for adults. You must be 18 or older to create one, and you confirm your age when you sign up.

You are responsible for what happens under your account, including keeping your sign-in details to yourself.

What GrowYourOwn is — and what it is not

We make software that helps neighbors grow food, keep track of it, cook it, and share what they have spare. We also list swap hubs hosted by local businesses.

We are not a party to anything you exchange with another member. We do not arrange, supervise, inspect, or guarantee any exchange, and we are not a food business, a delivery service, or a broker.

• Members exchange with each other directly.
• Swap hubs are hosted by independent businesses on their own premises, under their own control.
• Vendors and master gardeners are independent businesses, not our employees or agents.

The neighbor exchange: sharing, not selling

The exchange is for personal, non-commercial sharing of food you grew yourself. It is a place to give away a surplus, not a place to run a business.

There is no currency in the exchange, by design. There are no credits, tokens, points, balances, or trade values of any kind, and we never assign or display a monetary value to anything shared.

• You may not sell, offer to sell, or ask for payment for anything through the exchange.
• You may not steer other members to pay you off the platform.
• Impact statistics and reputation tiers recognize participation. They are not property, cannot be transferred or redeemed, and confer no rights.
• If you want to sell, that is what the vendor marketplace is for, with proper tax handling.

Food you share, and food you accept

Only certain categories can be listed: whole fresh fruit and vegetables, fresh culinary herbs, and whole uncracked nuts. The app enforces this — home-canned and fermented goods, baked and prepared foods, dairy, meat, juices, cut produce, eggs, and honey cannot be listed.

When you share food, you are representing that you grew it yourself, that you have described it honestly, and that you have disclosed whether it is unwashed and what treatments were applied to it.

When you accept food, you are accepting it as it is, from a private individual and not from a licensed food business. Wash produce before eating it.

• ⟦to be supplied: the food-safety disclaimer and allocation of risk, as counsel words it⟧

Meeting people in person

Exchanges happen face to face at public swap hubs during posted times. Meeting another member is your decision and your risk, and you take normal precautions as you would with any stranger.

The business hosting a hub controls its own premises. We list and promote hubs; we do not run the events, staff them, or supervise what happens at them.

• ⟦to be supplied: the assumption-of-risk and release language for in-person meetings, drafted by counsel⟧

Subscriptions, renewals, and cancelling

Some features need a paid subscription. Before you pay, we show the price, the billing period, and the renewal terms.

Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. You can cancel yourself at any time from your settings — the same number of clicks it took to subscribe, with no phone call and no retention questionnaire. Cancelling stops the next charge; access continues to the end of the period you have paid for.

Before an annual subscription renews, we email you a reminder.

• ⟦to be supplied: the refund policy, including the annual goodwill window⟧

The marketplace

Vendors sell their own products through the marketplace as independent businesses. They are responsible for their products, descriptions, and legal compliance. We take a commission on each sale, and payments are handled by Stripe — we never hold your money ourselves.

Where the law makes us responsible for collecting sales tax on marketplace sales, we do so.

Advice, guidance, and estimates

Growing guidance is horticultural information, not professional advice. Master gardeners are independent advisors; their guidance is their own, and vetting them means we checked their background, not that we supervise their answers.

Nutrition figures are estimates computed from public USDA data, not certified nutrition labeling.

Photo identification is AI-assisted and probabilistic. It offers likely matches from our curated catalogue, and it can be wrong.

• Never rely on an identification in this app to decide that any plant, fungus, or fruit is safe to eat.
• Always follow the product label when using any treatment or pesticide.

What you post

Your recipes, photos, posts, and messages stay yours. You give us permission to store, display, and adapt them so the service can work — showing your recipe to another member, resizing your photo, and so on.

You are responsible for having the right to post what you post. Do not upload other people’s photos or writing as your own.

Behaving decently

• No harassment, hate, threats, or discrimination.
• No lying about what you are sharing or who you are.
• No commercial solicitation or spam in the exchange or in messages.
• No attempts to break, overload, or probe the service.
• The community guidelines set this out in plain language and form part of these terms.

Moderation, suspension, and ending your account

Members can report content and block other members. We review reports and may remove content, suspend privileges, or close an account when these terms or the guidelines are broken, and we tell you why.

You can delete your account yourself at any time from your settings.

Disclaimers and liability

• ⟦to be supplied: warranty disclaimers and limitation of liability, drafted by counsel⟧

If we disagree

• ⟦to be supplied: the dispute-resolution clause — arbitration, class waiver, governing law, and venue — drafted by counsel⟧

Changes to these terms

If we change these terms in a way that matters, we will tell you before the change takes effect, and you can close your account if you disagree.

Contact

Write to us at hello@growyourown.com.

⟦to be supplied: the registered postal address for legal notices⟧