9 Gardening Gadgets + Apps to Save Your Plants
So long, snow! It’s time to start our spring gardens. Lucky for us, we can give our green thumbs a whole lot of help with these garden apps and gadgets. Whether you’re looking to identify a specific variety, or just want to keep yourself on a watering schedule, we’ve got something for you. Grab your gloves, tools and those super cute planters you packed away for winter, and let’s get messy and tech-y all at once.
1. Flower Checker: We’ve all been there: You’re on a walk and you spot the perfect flowers for your garden, only you don’t have a way to identify them. With this app, you can take a picture of your dream flowers and upload them to the app, and it’ll do all the hard work for you.
Cost: $0.99 on Android
2. Grow Planner: Getting organized has never been so fun or green. Plan your awesome garden before you even go to pick up your plants. It’ll calculate how many of a particular plant you can fit in your garden. As if that wasn’t enough, it’ll also give you great tips about weather, soil and planting times.
Cost: $7.99 for iOS (iPad and iPhone)
3. House + Garden: Running low on ideas? Get a fresh batch right to your phone with this beautifully styled House + Garden app. You get the full magazine on a month-by-month basis, so no more running down to the store or tearing pictures out of magazines. Now you can just take a screen shot and upload to Pinterest.
Cost: $5.99 per month on iOS
4. Sprout It: Sprout It is the greatest app if you have no idea where to start. It’ll tell you what the best plants are for your zone, when to plant and even when to harvest. Newbies, you’ve totally got this gardening thing down.
Cost: Free on iOS
5. Home Depot: You may know Home Depot as your friendly source for hardware goods, but their app can actually save you time, so you’re not wandering the aisles in search of help. Plan your garden shopping trip and make it as streamlined as possible with their app, and get the scoop on their sales. The only thing we like more than efficiency is a good deal.
6. Like That Garden: Similar to the Flower Checker for Android, this app helps you identify varieties of plants, plus it gives you the origin, ideal climate and information you need to grow the healthiest plant you possibly can.
Cost: Free on iOS
7. Niwa: It’s not even out yet, but we are so excited about this. It’s an indoor greenhouse, so even if you don’t have a yard, you can grow all of your own vegetables indoors. As if that weren’t exciting enough, Niwa comes with a super impressive interactive app to make sure your veggies are getting exactly what they need out of their environment.
Cost: App free with purchase of Niwa, starting at $279
8. Infragram: If you want to get really knowledgable about your garden, get this infrared plant camera. It actually shows you the parts of your plant that are actively growing at any given moment. When you’re not in your garden, you can use this camera to decode what all of the infrared information means. If you have any junior scientists in your house, this is a very affordable DIY that will keep them busy in the outdoors for hours.
Cost: Starting at $10 on Kickstarter
9. Parrot: This garden tool assess what your plants’ needs are. Even if you have the blackest of black thumbs, there’s no way you can go wrong with this thing. It lets you know with an app whether your plant needs water, sunlight or fertilizer and even if the plant is getting too hot or too cold.
Cost: App free for Android and iOS with Parrot, $59
What’s your favorite garden tool? Let us know in the comments!