If you are a garden lover like me you probably spent a lot of time in your garden. In my garden, I have different types of plants from flowers to medicinal plants. Last summer I have developed a vegetable garden in my backyard that makes us self-sufficient. We no more need to buy veggies from the market.
Now, I am planning to build a small compost pit near my vegetable garden. I have also taught myself to make liquid fertilizers from organic waste.
When I was developing my vegetable garden, I had to go through a ton of work. It was fun for me to spend time in the garden. But, I had limited knowledge about soils and different diseases of veggies. I had spent hours and hours on my laptop searching for answers to simple questions like “what is the best soil for cabbage?”, “What is the perfect time for watering a plant?”, etc.
One of my friends suggested that I should check for apps that can help me take care of vegetable gardens better. Nowadays you can get an app for any day-to-day problems. After a long search, I came up with some cool gardening apps which can be used to build a vegetable garden.
The apps mentioned here are used by me and my friends and I found it useful to mention their names.
Why you may need an app for your vegetable garden?
- It is difficult for a beginner to manage everything as you will have less knowledge about plants and soils.
- An app works as an assistant and can guide you in designing, and planning the vegetable garden.
- You do not need a separate notebook to keep a recording of your garden plants.
- Getting access to weather information becomes effortless, no need to waste time searching on google for specific information on plants.
Vegetable Garden Planning
When you plan a garden, you should know certain things about the garden soil, garden plants, and the season for the plants.
We can make it easy by diving into parts. The planning becomes simple if you keep in mind the followings-
1. Best Soil and Seeds for your Home Vegetable Garden
It is very important to choose the best soil and seeds for your garden. Choosing the best soil and seeds will minimize your efforts on plant care and will maximize the harvest.
You can take the help of tools like soil testing kits like XLUX Soil Tester Meter to detect soil moisture, pH, and light. Soil should be perfect according to the vegetable plant requirements. Broccoli grows in full sun, moist, slightly acidic soil. Similarly, all vegetable plants have their own soil type for better growth.
That was for choosing the best soil for a plant. While choosing the seeds too we have to be strict. Vegetable plant seeds are available both online and offline. But I would recommend purchasing from local vendors as you can see with your eyes the conditions of the seeds.
While choosing the seeds for your garden keep in mind the zone where you are living and the sunlight that falls on your garden. Having a seed catalog helps a lot in choosing seeds. I always choose organic or heirloom seeds for my vegetable garden.
2. Taking Care of your Vegetable Garden
Just Sowing the seeds is not enough to get a healthy vegetable garden. You need to spend time removing weeds and other parasites growing in the garden.
Watering the plants on time is essential for plant growth. Vegetable plants like cucumber and spinach drink a lot of water. We need to water them frequently for the best harvest.
3. Information about Weather and Season for Vegetables
This information can be gathered either online or from books. But I prefer to take the help of mobile apps.
Mobile apps are handy and they are always updated with the latest weather reports. Apps like When to Plant, and Garden Plan Pro gives you information from 5000 weather stations across the US.
From the above lines, we come to know that garden planning is not an easy task. It requires time and knowledge about plants, soil, and weather. We can take the help of mobile apps to process our work fast. Some of the best vegetable garden planning apps I have shared with you.
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Garden Answers
Garden Answers app is developed by a San Diago Based company, this app helps to identify any plants and their probable disease just by clicking a photo of the diseased plant. They have included more than 20,000 plants in their database. The main purpose of the app is identification but can be used for identifying diseases too.
You can ask questions to garden experts through the Garden answers app and they will reply to you with the best answer.
When I looked into their database, I found that they have included many vegetable plants in the list. Though the app is not for daily use, it helps when required. The app is available both for Android and iOS.
Veggie Garden Planner
The Veggie Garden Planner gives you arranged information for planning and designing your own home vegetable garden.
Features:
1. The app works in the freemium model and Before you purchase you can enjoy all the features at no cost so that you get the assurance to buy the app.
2. In your vegetable garden, there will be many plants, who will keep track of them and their bad neighbor plants. Choosing the best combinations of vegetables to grow in a strict land can give productive time yield.
3. After you choose the vegetable plant, the app will show sowing/harvest times in tabular form. You will also be informed about interactions between vegetables.
4. Using Patch Plan Editor find good/bad neighbor plants at your fingertips. Plant rotation can easily be managed with Veggie Garden Planner. Rotating plants with seasons will make the soil suitable for the next sowing.
Moon & Garden
This app is not just for vegetable growers, anyone who loves growing herbs, fruit, cover crops, and flowers will be benefited from the information in the app. The app will let you know the best time for growing plants according to the lunar phases.
Most vegetable plants are naturally dependent on moon influences(full moon, new moon…). It is important that gardening activities such as sowing, repotting, transplanting, and harvesting should be done in accordance with lunar calendars and also considering the crop nature (either the root, leaf, flower, or fruit of the plant).
Features:
1. The app will calculate Planting dates from the current phase of the Moon and also the current zodiac sign.
2. The app can help you to grow medicinal herbs, hardwood trees, wild plants, organic vegetables, and indoor microgreens. You can comfortably choose the best vegetable in different seasons.
3. A stack of information on each plant like best soil type and sunlight requirements, sowing instructions, and harvesting time.
4. You also get access to information and a weather report of that area (US only).
Download for iPhone.
Garden Plan Pro
An award-winning App featured in Apple’s introductory video at the World Wide Developers Conference in June 2014. This app can help you plan the perfect vegetable, herb, and fruit garden on your iPad or iPhone.
Features:
1. The flexible garden design feature of this app lets you design a garden of any shape. You can add single plants, rows, blocks, or SFG squares and rearrange them until you get your dream garden.
2. The app has information about 190 plants with thousands of varieties available in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, EU, and South Africa.
3. The app shows you how to rotate crops season-wise adapting to your area.
4. The Garden Planner app connects to 5000 weather stations helping you find the perfect time to sow, plant, and harvest them. You can record this information as a chart in the app.
5. The free online service provided by the Garden Plan app sends emails twice a month telling what needs planting from your garden plans.
6. They have a blog section that educates about how to plan, start seeds, avoid pests and produce a bountiful harvest.
7. Find plants that can be grown in your area, once you harvest a crop you can plan for the next sowing directly from the app.
Download for MAC or PC.
Planter: Garden Planner
As the name says this app lets you plan your dream vegetable garden on iOS and Android devices. You can arrange the vegetable plants in different rows and have your virtual garden in the pocket.
Features:
1. This app also provides information on companion plants so that you can grow the veggies faster.
2. As I have already mentioned that this app allows you to make a virtual garden. You can save your own layouts and send them to other devices.
3. When you create a planting plot, the app schedules everything for you like sowing time, planting time, transplanting time, harvesting time, etc.
4. You can get information on hundreds of varieties of fruits and vegetables. If your plants are not available on the app, you can add them manually.
Download for iPhone and Android.
Gardroid – Vegetable Garden
Your dream of a kitchen garden can become real. Gardroid can help you harvest your own vegetables by providing useful information. This app is a gem for vegetable growers.
Features:
1. When we choose a new vegetable plant, we generally have less knowledge about the plant, Gardroid will help to choose Suitable sowing and harvesting periods according to the vegetable plant.
2. Temperature plays a great role in plant development, you should know the best time to sow. Gardroid gives you information about temperature and sowing time.
3. Tips for your plant care like right sowing depth, row distance, and spacing between plants.
4. You can track the progress of your vegetables and set notifications for each plant in your garden which is incredible.
5. Gardroid will help you with the probable harvesting time with a calendar, how cool is it to cook your own fresh vegetables and enjoy them?
The premium version of the Gardroid is ad-free and has many other included features.
My Vegetable Garden GLEYCO
This app is for all categories of vegetable gardeners from beginners, to amateurs, to experts. Using My Vegetable Garden, vegetable garden management becomes effortless.
Features:
1. The key feature of this app is that it has countless vegetable plants detailed information.
2. Using “vegetable editor” one can add own vegetable which is not available in the app plant list.
3. There is also a moon calendar, this will help to grow your plant according to the moon cycle. The app has a virtual plot of land where you can plant your seeds and you can play as if you are in your garden.
4. The interesting part of this vegetable gardening app is that it fully works offline.
Vegetable Garden Ideas
One another cool gardening app is Vegetable Garden Ideas. This app has many unique features that make it stand out from others.
Features:
1. The app has One hundred best Vegetable Garden Ideas with different designs. You can plan your own design choosing the best idea. The app lets you consider where and how you grow the right vegetables.
2. We do not know many things about our vegetable plants like green beans and peas can add nitrogen to the soil, If we use heavy fertilizer(I do not recommend it at all), we should avoid planting corn, pepper, or tomatoes in the same place for two or three times in a row. The types of information available on the app can be helpful for the careful choosing of vegetable plants in your garden.
3. The Vegetable Garden Ideas app will help you to maintain the distance between plants and choose the best plant for different seasons. For example, tomatoes are best to plant in June, and in August they become leafier occupying more space in the garden.
Well, this application will guide you to find ideas for designing vegetable gardens at home with an easy and useful course. You can find hundreds of Vegetable Garden ideas in this App, so you can choose what you think best suits your needs.
Bottom Lines
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Hi! Are you sure the “When To Plant” app is the correct name? I can’t find it in the app store or any of my searches. Thanks!
Sorry to say, this app no more available to download. Either they have changed the app name or closed down the app.