We live in a digital world, and this means that you'd find apps that might actually surprise you with their relevance and utility to everyday activities. There are smartphone apps for home design, apps for exercise, and even software applications for underrated activities such as gardening. In these increasingly difficult economic times, in fact, the ability to grow your own food using freshly harvested seeds by Seed Needs and similar vendors is worth its weight in gold.
To get you started, we'll take a look at a few apps that have garnered rave reviews from gardeners all over the world - beginner and advanced alike. And although there are some paid apps on the market, we prefer the free ones, so we'll stick to assessing those here.
The GrowIt app for gardeners is available in both the Google Play Store and the Apple iOS store and is geared towards the more social types. It has a slew of features that encourage community interaction, as you tend your garden and let the knowledge of people halfway across the world influence or encourage your designs.
There's a robust photo-sharing capability that is also very helpful. Members of the community are very knowledgeable, and can help you know what seeds are best for your particular location - and which ones to avoid. Members grow everything from in-house vivariums and terrariums, to breathtaking patio creations. You can also use GrowIt's search function to see what other users are cultivating, and see the harvest development images they post in the app-linked forums.
Perhaps the most useful attribute is the store of information in the GrowIt app - any plant you desire, you can simply type it in and receive the most pertinent info on it. This includes growing information and best climates. Best of all - it's free!
This one is a bit more expansive than a gardening app, as it covers general landscaping on your property. However, there's a lot of great information on the right plants to grow in your area - or, the ones that you can maintain more easily if you buy them "ready-made."
The photo section is one of the more comprehensive we've seen in any gardening/landscape app. You can see creations in all their elaborate glory, where people who've uploaded show the incredible amount of work that they've put into in full detail - from backyard home building constructions, to frontyard gardens filled with seasonal blooms.
The Landscaping Ideas app is available for both Android and iOS, and you can save the images in your personal storage for later reference; unlike some apps that lock this capability unless you're a paying member. It also allows you to be active on social media platforms to share your garden creations.
Another well-received garden app that has close to half-a-million download in the Google Play Store, Garden Tags is a robust application - despite the fact that it's free. It provides instruction on growing all kinds of plants, as well as giving you the ability to identify the ones you've seen but can't name with the image search and keyword description capability.
One of its most valuable features is the plant care function. You can enter the details of the plants in your garden, and it will set up an alerts-driven schedule of caretaking to help you maximize your garden's potential.
Today, more help than ever before is available for gardeners of all levels of skill. If you're an expert, yourself, then share your knowledge and gain recognition in any of several app-drive gardener communities.
