:: GREEN THUMB
:: INFORMATION PACKEDFor those in the Northern hemisphere, Spring is here which means sun, less rain and snow and more plant growth out in the garden. This makes it an ideal time to round up our favorite four gardening apps. Each is an app that will help keen gardeners keep their land in check, whether it be by providing guides to fruit and vegetables or by helping users plot out their garden.
iVeggieGarden
Aiming to be an all round solution for gardeners, iVeggieGarden offers reference and planning tools as well as a means of tracking things. There's even a means in which users can enter their own notes and photos of how things are progressing. Over 50 different vegetables and over 500 different varieties are catered for with a plethora of information from appropriate temperatures and planting depths to harvesting tips. The app should cover all the key questions that both novice and experienced gardeners may have and it's all done in a very attractive format.
Vegetable Garden
Similar to iVeggieGarden but for those on a budget, Vegetable Garden offers growing tips, soil preparation advice and a schedule chart for vegetables. It's geared towards the UK market in terms of growing times but everything else is universal. A plot planner helps users plan out their garden, no matter how big or small.
Gardening Toolkit HD
An iPad exclusive, Gardening Toolkit HD uses the extra screen space to create an appealing way of tracking everything to do within the garden. A notes section helps users keep track of what they need to do and when. There's a colorful and photo-packed encyclopaedia of more than 1000 plants. For the US users, they can enter their zip-code and be informed of how hard their soil is, plus there's information on suggested plants for the area. It's an all round attractive reference tool.
Harvest - Select the Best Produce
Harvest provides a guide to how to pick the best produce by offering tips and techniques of exactly how to look for the ripest and healthiest fruit or veg. It'll be ideal once keen gardeners have already grown their crop. A large variety of different produce is catered for, each with their own bunch of tips and tricks that are impressively educational. The app follows such tips up with information on pesticide residue levels which can help those who still buy from stores, but why would you want to do that once you've finished growing your own, anyhow?
Bug & Weed Identifier by Spectracide® is free to download and offers some key features. First of all is the Pest Guidebook which tells the user how to figure out what bugs and weeds are involved. There's then Capture & Compare in which the user can take photos and place them side by side with those in the guide, or even email an expert for help.
Identifying isn't all that the app offers, however, with the ability to provide advice of what treatment to use to eradicate them, and also which retailer to go visit.
It's simple yet useful for the keen gardener, quickly giving them a way of defeating the scourge of weeds and pests.
Bug & Weed Identifier by Spectracide® is out now.
