Gardening app ideas

Hi there, I am a app developer and have noticed that there seems to be very few high quality apps made to help people out with home gardening. I know the community at Dave's Garden is filled with some of the most savvy gardeners, so I wanted to post a thread to see if anyone here had any feedback on what kind of features they would like to see in a mobile app dedicated to gardening. What are some of the daily tasks you find yourself doing when gardening where your mobile device could be of help? Also, if there are already apps that you use, I'd love to hear what you like and dislike about them. Thanks in advance for any and all feedback!

I cant imagine any electronic gadget that could be used while gardening. You either have filthy muddy or wet hands, your on all fours, your feet are in much or using a lawn mower or you have handful of plants to grapple with, so sorry, app's are the last thing I would want anywhere near my garden and anyway, for me gardening is not the cheapest hobby on this earth so any extra cash would be spent on something for the garden rather than for someone to make money at my expense but, for me, I say thanks for the offer but a useless item for me personally.
WeeNel.

Sorry, I beg to differ... I'm a weekend gardener but a serious one, with a large, very old garden I've been renovating over the past 7 years. I try to do a lot of my planning when I'm not there, and have yet to find a useful app. I've installed a few and deleted them all in frustration and disgust. I found 2 general types: overly simplistic and overly complex. One that had plant photos you could move around, but used only common names and had only a handful of listings. Under the d's, I remember, were only daylilies and daffodils. How serious is that?! Another had devices for making layouts to scale that it would have taken a draftsman to use.

My dream app would help me chart my garden areas and let me play around with design and composition, have a decent encyclopedia of plants with pictures and cultivation details, and not be either 'Gardening for Dummies' or meant for master gardeners. I'm not holding my breath, but am curious to see what others have to say and your take on their comments.

1) Gardners are obcessed with weather so anything that helps a gardner get updates on weather.
2) I would like something where I could stand on my property and using GPS the app would tell me where the sun will be in the sky for the following year for my property since the position of the sun changes as the earth tilts toward and then away from the sun. This is important in deciding where a plant would be most successful.
3) I would like an app that calculates how many cubic feet of top soil or mulch whatever it would take for a certain depth for so many sq ft.
4) i would like an app that calculates how much rain comes off my roof per inch of rainfall by plugging in the size of my roof and inches of rain. This would determine how many rain barrels I could fill in a good rain.
5) I would like to calculate for my GPS location, how much possible electricity I could generate per sq ft of solar panels
6) similarly calculate for my area how much wind energy could be generated using annual averages
7) a field guide to garden pests with color photos indexed by color of bug or caterpillar. If I see a bug on my tomato plant, I can whip out my phone and look him up by color, dimensions and likely host plants.
8) Having the agricultural zone and heat maps on the phone would make them handier than looking up on computer.

Steadycam, I agree with all of those! Weather, especially decent radar, is always kinda lacking in apps.

Photo upload from my mobile to Dave's Garden would be neat, too.

Wow, steadycam, you're way ahead of me! ... But I'm getting excited-- what great ideas!

IMO it would be great to have a plant identifier where you would take a picture of a leaf or flower and the app would tell you what the plant was. Also, I would like it if there was a plant encyclopedia sort of like on this site where you could type a plant name and it would pop up with all the plant's info as nursery tags are not always accurate.

Good luck!

Thanks so much for all the ideas! These are great!

Totally agree with you there! It would be useless for me too. (Of course, I have to admit at the same time to be being a dinosaur... ;-)
Re. some of the other desires mentioned (plant ID sites, plant photo examples, conditions for particular plants), you can already google this info. I'm sure there is a niche somewhere though that people would be willing to buy an app for.

BTW...
Volume of soil, rain, etc. is easy to figure out.
Volume = length x height x width
Figure out the length, height and width of the excavation or pile in feet (or if in inches, divide by 12 to get feet); then, when multiplied, the units are cubic feet (ft3). If you want "yards" (that is, cubic yards), divide by 9 (since a cubic yard is 3'x3'x3').

You can use the same calculation for rainfall.... 1" of rain (convert to feet by dividing by 12) x square footage of your roof = volume of rainfall. Divide by rain barrel size (in same units) to get how many rain barrels would be filled.


This message was edited Jun 14, 2013 11:57 AM

I cant help thinking that what is happening to gardening is very similar to what is happening in our everyday life in as much as
We want instant results when we wish weather reports': some people want to be able to sue the weather station because the rain started at 10 oclock but reported rain by lunchtime, Hallo, what world are we living in ???

Dont really think in our lifetime there will be an apt that will identify a leaf / flower and report back to you the name of the plant, unless your watching too many detective programs where they can solve a crime in one hour program, life just aint like that and would that really be the type of gardening most real gardeners would want, there already are programs for identifying stuff but not that advanced,

All the things Steadycam wishes for are already available but if your out in the garden it must be really taxing to have to walk indoors to the computer,
I'm just too old for it all, I still want my gardening to be a bit of an excitement and a mystery and a challenge full of expectations each season instead of an apt telling me the sky's blue or Grey today at 3 PM or the sun is not in your street tomorrow but the forcast said our area would have sunshine.
Next we will be needing instructions on how to use a spade or garden fork, there is a great way to learn all the stuff mentioned and it's called Gardening, you learn that as you gain experience and patience that comes from learning what nature does instead of MAN.

Just giving my views on too much reliance on gadgets and other stuff sold for easing gardening, when we get it all home it lies in the back of the garage and forgotten about. Wish I had a dollar for every item that I had bought after being advised it would be a great help for me in the garden, after 50 odd years gardening, I would be able to employ the qualified gardener I used to dream about, but unlike the app's idea, I want to garden when I feel like it, want to have my hands in my soil even IF it's going to rain by lunch time and don't want any electronic device telling me I should not garden today or whatever, it's irrelevant as nature is best at telling you stuff regarding outdoors if you take the time to study your environment. it comes with experience and no one can learn it ill at the switch of a button, if that were true I'd have a free membership for Mensa as I'm always switching lights on and forgetting to turn the darn things off ha, ha, ha,

Please don't think I'm saying don't go down the root of gardening app's I just don't think that road is for gardening. more for armchair nature studies. but hey, were all different and that's what makes the world go round.
Best regards. WeeNel.

Too funny, WeeNel... As if any gardener could be told when and how to garden!

But I can't begin to count how many times I come in with gloves on to look up one more detail before planting a new acquisition-- how deep, how far apart, how much sun/shade, how rich soil, manure or no, drainage...

I've been renovating a very old, very large garden for the last 7 years, very much a labor of love, but hard labor none the less.

This year I did hundreds of plants from seed, starting in the winter while the house was closed, in one window in a city apartment (pic 1). In the spring when we opened the house, I started shuffling hardier plants out there (Pic 2), then outside under shelter to be hardened off, then outside ready to be planted (pic 3).

Some seeds I bought, some were found in a round robin. I also bought 'liners' through co-ops, traded plants with DG-ers, and then there was the occasional must-have from local nurseries on top of that. Now it's time to plant them all... That's an awful lot of detail to remember! Not to mention, by the way, learning about all the great plants that had managed to seed themselves or otherwise survive the chaos of ferns, tradescantia, goldenrod, raspberries and all the other thugs and weeds one wild.

Anything that helps me organize better is a good thing!

Pic 4, 2007
Pic 5, May 2013

A lot of great ideas so far! I know for me, as a relatively beginner gardener, I have bought, and will still buy, plants that don't have informative tags on them. Instead, the pot will just have a sticker on it naming the plant, but no other information is listed. Many times after I have bought plants like this, I get home, look it up, to find out it is deciduous when I wanted evergreen, or thrives in sun when I wanted shade, which is where the nursery had them located at the store. Once I loved the look of a plant, which was so small at the nursery, to find out it is 6-8 feet tall at maturity! Of course, the generic tag in the pot sure didn't say that! LOL Sometimes, even plants with the information tag are so general, that when I buy it, I come home to find out that it really doesn't do well in "full sun" here in my location.

It would be nice to have an app where I could type in a name of a plant & I would get information about how to grow that plant in MY area/region - not zone, because zone 8 here in SC is much different than zone 8 in Arizona & Washington. An app that could do this would be handy for me to use when I am out plant shopping so I don't have to call my teenage son to look up the info for me, or so I don't have to drive home, look up the info, then drive back to the nursery to buy it. The app out there now where you just scan the barcode still only gives generic information. And don't tell me to just ask the employee in the nursery about the plant because so many times they either don't know, give me wrong information, or give me the generalized information. Also, I don't have internet service on my phone, so I can't just look up the info when I am out plant shopping.

I love steadycam3's number 2 suggestion. To expand upon it, for people who moved into a new house during one season, can use the app to know where the sun will fall, and for approximately how long, for the same planting area. From experience, things I have planted in summer that preferred more shade than sun, end up in full sun during fall & winter once the trees lost their leaves. Yes, I knew the trees were deciduous, but I had no idea the fall & winter sun stayed on that area much longer than during summer. Some people and articles say that after moving into a new house, to wait a year before planting gardens, and to watch where the sun falls for each season. But, seriously, who wants to wait a whole year to plant a garden at their new house? LOL

I also love Pfg's idea about a garden chart design app that is able to include the plants one is planning (or thinking about planting) in the garden, and not just include some of the popular plants of today. Even better would be a garden design app where one could type in the dimension of the garden plot & amount of sun it receives, Then one could type in the names of the plants they would like to plant in the plot and have the app organize the plants in the virtual garden for them.

The idea of an app, WeeNel is to make something accessible quickly. Yes, there are always other ways to do it. I know the calculations for some of the things I asked for, because Ive done them. That is why I asked for an app. Chuckl. As you all know, America is grey-ing and I am contributing to that, I admit. Sometimes I go inside and look something up and by the time I get outside, Ive forgotten what it said. I know writing it down would make sense but I always think I can surely remember that long!!! Not!!! For those of us whose telemeres are shortening, we need an "app for that". C'mon you guys, give him some more ideas!

This message was edited Jun 16, 2013 1:56 PM

I agree with Pfg's first suggestion. I have looked far and wide for an app that would allow me to input the dimensions of my garden and layout, and then change what I plant in each section every year when I rotate crops. It would also be nice to know which plants do well next to which others.

Currently I created a plan of my garden using Photoshop and each year I print out the template and write in what I plant where. I'm on a Mac, and garden planning software just isn't available for that platform. I'd also use a smaller app on my iPhone or iPad if one were developed.

pfg, good luck with your wonderful and exciting project, it really is a labour of love and at times you begin to wonder why you are doing it, I know only too well what an huge effort you are putting upon yourself and the cost both financially and mentally.

I began doing the exact same thing as you just over 30 odd year's ago, I was told I was either mad or bad or both, mad because the whole place was a jungle and bad, because I was told no good would come out of it as nature had already took over the whole 10 acres of ground, OH well, dont you just hate when several times you are told your reaching for impossible dreams of a by gone era, weeeeeell, dreams are what makes the world go around for some people and as my old Grandmother used to say, these ideas will either kill you or cure you, guess the last was pulled out the hat for me.

Eventually I got into the local historical society (Hysterical society my husband calls it) eventually I found old pictures, some writtings re the people who owned the property for many, many years and eventually word spread and I found pictures left laying on the doorstep, gosh without that help at the start I could still be at the dreaming stage.
I looked up the Sensors that we have here every 10 years and found all who lived here since 18 35 and the servants as in those days, these servants belonged to the master of the house,
then over the years (we live in a very small town on the coast) people came to the house to tell me there aunt and uncle were hired hands and they have family still alive in town so the search of people AND pictures of the gardens and grounds have been greatly helped by local knowledge more than anyone could guess, I hope you have the same luck as me but, that does not remove the hard work trying to re-establish the gardens and the type of plants used.
We are luck here in UK as we have a Victorian bank of seeds and Edwardian too but I love the history that belongs to the people as well as the land and gardens,it also put's a burden on you to make sure the plants / shrubs and fruit tree's go on as they somehow look right here where they were swamped with brambles, wild garlic and Lord knows all what, but you get there in the end.
Unfortunately an app would not help me here as in my head I could now walk the place with my eyes shut as I've wandered the streams, the old walls cleared out old drains and this helped us understand why drains were made the way they were and why the wall garden is curved etc, the curve is to catch the sun for longer and heat the wall for the peaches, cherries ect that were trained onto the walls, when you take your time you get to know the train of thoughts that went into how a large estate garden worked.
I hope you have the same amount of fun and pleasure we have had but sadly, for me at least, it is now comming to the end of the road as I know realise I dont have the same energy as before and no app will give me that but memories are wonderful and will keep me going long after I've moved on from here in the not toooooo distant future.

Wishing you the very best of luck and sending kindest regards.
WeeNel.

Just from the requests made, I forsee more than one app....or Regional versions and International versions....I also see being able to amass a library to reference as being a huge undertaking. But it does sound like a wonderful aid to a generation becoming used to near instant access to information and a passion for gardening.

Here is another idea. Some folk garden by the moon, allowing it to tell them whether it's a good day to plant root veggies, fruit veggies or leaf veggies. People used to get that info from the Almanac but it could be loaded into an app and updated each year for that years calendar. The author Thun produces a calendar each year and it is sold on Amazon and other book stores.

I bet something based on a cooking app would help structurally, too. Their communities have a similar structure to gardening communities, and you could look at them for how ad placement works. A little gamification might be good too - whose tomatoes come up first in your zone, or something.

(I do Internet communities online and on apps for a living.)

Wow!!
Lots of great info all around, but I can't finish this right now!! :-)
Be back later!! Carol =^•.•^=__?

Steadycam laid it out great at the beginning. I like the pest identifier. Maybe with each pest list known plants they tend to be attracted to or vice versa when searching(Say you have a pest in your Four'O Clock and don't know what it is, under the description of the flower have a list of "known pests").
As a still amateur gardener I find myself looking at seeds and grabbing what looks pretty. I live in Utah, yeah it says on the back that my zone will work best if planted by this date but it doesn't always turn out that way. Some flowers are just not meant to thrive in certain regions. A listing of what flowers and plants that would grow best in each zone would be wonderful for amateurs like myself.