First, there is the garden planning tool, it’s namesake. It’s not just a simple listing app, where you can name the vegetable or fruit you want to grow, but rather, it’s a drawing and diagramming tool. Here you can create a map of your garden area(s). This can be an open plot or smaller squares like raised beds, or, if you have your garden segmented for herbs, fruits, greens and so on. After laying out your garden’s outline there’s more than 140 plants to choose from.
These plants include herbs, flowers, veggies and fruits. The nice thing with this app is that you can select a plant and place it in your garden. You can also select the number of plants you want to grow and the app will space them according to recommendation. And, since you’ve laid out your garden to scale you will have a perfect idea of how much space you do or don’t have. Very useful information for planning any garden.
Oh, not sure about a plant? The app also has encyclopedic information for all the plants. You’ll know when, how, where, and why to grow what you want. Plus, as you enter the plants into your garden, the app creates a calendar for you to follow. Grow Planner will not only tell you when to plant seeds or transplants, but how long until maturity and estimated harvesting. If you decide to link the map to an online account with Mother Earth News, you’ll receive emails every 2 weeks to remind you of your frenetic gardening pace.
To add to the awesomeness of this app, if you’re struggling to find the seeds locally, the app is connected to several seed company catalogs to give you access to a myriad of plants and varieties. You can also access numerous articles and helpful tips about gardening from the magazine and set the app to your zip code thus linking it to a nearby weather station to help you with your gardening.
All in all, it’s not a bad app for the price (although at $20, it’s at the high end of app pricing). Grow Planner might just help you get organized for the next gardening season, which can be worth the price of admission.
I guess what I’m wondering is now that we have ipads, iphones, ithis and ithat are they no longer going to write these things for us outdated laptop users? If we don’t upgrade to some ridiculous tiny little screen we get nothing?
Nice review – I love Mother Earth News – venerable old school, 70’s style greenies, and that should be encouraged. There’s things I like and don’t like about their app, but it’s good to see it up and about amongst the US DIY crowd. Nice work!