Explore Your Green Thumb with Android Apps

I have been gardening since I was old enough to play in the dirt. For me, gardening is more than a hobby…it is a great stress reliever, a healthy way to break a sweat, an exercise in self-reliance, and a creative outlet. The payoff — whether it is in the sweet smelling flowers that attract foraging honey bees and an assortment of butterflies, or the abundance of fresh seasonal vegetables I can share with family and friends — is always rewarding, and it makes me feel accomplished to reap the fruits of my labor. The secret to gardening isn’t in the fertilizer, it’s in the apps. If you are looking for gardening tips and are not shy when it comes to technology, an Android phone or tablet can be an invaluable tool in planning and maintaining your green plot. Below, I have listed some apps I often defer to for garden planning and organization, plant facts, and other helpful tips.

Garden Guide

The Food Gardening Guide, from America’s leading magazine on organic gardening, is a comprehensive gardening app, providing an abundance of expert advice on Crops, Techniques, and Resources. This app has a balanced mix of beautiful illustrations (as seen in the Crops section), concise articles (as seen in the Techniques section), and links to additional gardening information in the Resources section .

As far as free Android apps are concerned, this is a great one-stop gardening app.

Gardenate

Gardenate is $2.50, but worth every penny.  This is a complete guide to growing popular garden vegetables (with local planting information) for the US, Australia, New Zealand, and UK.  The garden calendar shows the vegetables and herbs you can plant every month. You can successfully “grow your own” vegetable and herb garden using the information from this app and the Gardenate online community.

Remember to Water

This app helps me remember to water my indoor plants (the ones I completely forget about until they turn brown!), both at home and at the office. It’s simple and keeps me organized by putting my plants on a watering schedule that I create.  How simple is it? Take a photo of you plants, set how often you want to water each and get a reminder. You can set the time of day when you want the reminder to appear. Done! Each of these gardening apps is readily available online for download to your Android phone or tablet.

Do you have a favorite gardening app? Feel free to share with us!

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.