Over Christmas I decided to treat myself to an iPad and as the other half says ‘its been surgically attached to me ever since’. As an avid fan of the Apple Mac and not being able to justify buying an iPhone as I only use £10 of credit every 6 months, I had been wanting an iPad for ages and now I have one.
So now I’ve exhausted most of the free games – my favourite is Plants Vs Zombies, I’ve turned towards searching for gardening apps. There truly is an app for almost everything and that includes Vegetable Gardening.
My Favourite iPad Veg Garden App has to be:
Garden Planner HD
Garden Planner HD App
Price: £2.39 in UK
Available on:
iPad… iPhone and iPod version is called Garden Planner
Created by: CleverMatrix Ltd
This app has everything you need to start growing your own veg and is specific to UK and Ireland climate.
From information pages on when to sow and harvest, planting info, a garden diary, calendar, to do list, top tips and bugs identification chart this is a comprehensive growing app.
Graphics and Layout
When opening the app, it opens onto the Produce Page, to find details on different vegetables there’s a handy ‘All Produce’ drop down list where you can select your vegetable. The details range from soil preparation, sowing and planting, growing tips, best varieties and even companion plants. The produce page also shows a table of sowing and harvest months along with issues from insects, diseases or animals.
The app is beautifully displayed like a ring binder with pages and works best (in my opinion) in landscape view. Any of the vegetables in ‘Produce’ can be added to ‘My Garden’ which is the diary/recording section. To switch sections there is a handy bar at the bottom of the screen which is representative of the applications bar you have on a iMac.
Produce Page on Garden Planner HD
My Garden
This section is a place where you can record the planted date, variety, whether or not it will be successful or not, harvested number, notes and pictures for all the vegetables, fruit or herbs added from the produce section.
Favourites
This section stores your favourite veg, fruit or herb that have saved as your favourites in the Produce Section. It is a quick viewing option which saves scrolling through the main list in the produce section.
Calendar
This shows what vegetables, fruit and herbs to sow, plant and harvest month by month. A really helpful feature is that it shows any tasks (which can be recorded on the To Do List) which you may need to be reminded to do during that month.
Tasks
Record tasks and add reminders for things to buy, seeds to sow etc. These tasks are also shown in the calendar section.
Bugs
A comprehensive list of bugs filtered by animal, disease and insect with valuable details to help fight something that's attacking your crops or plants. This is the main list but it can also be sourced from the Produce Page by choosing a vegetable and seeing associated pests and issues for that vegetable.
Tips
Plenty of tips to scroll through however they are not in any order. It would be good if these in future could be added onto the produce page so you could see top tips when choosing a vegetable to grow.
My Verdict:
Highly Recommended for all vegetable gardeners.
This is easily one of the best gardening apps for the iPad due to its numerous, useful features and lovely graphics. It did have crashing issues when I bought it a few months ago but these issues have been fixed with the latest update and all is ok now. I love this app and look forward to using it in the growing year.
Other Vegetable Gardening Apps – My Reviews:
iGrowIt App for iPad
Available on: iPad, iPhone and iPod
Created By: Appgrading.com
Country: UK and USA versions
Price 59p in UK
This app is a simple to use photographic guide to ‘What Can I Grow Today?’ which is the app’s slogan. The first time you use the app you will be prompted to select the country you live in i.e. UK or USA (and Zone if in the USA) so it will show the correct growing conditions. Then its as simple as touching the vegetable photo of your choice to show preparation, planting and sowing, aftercare and ready to eat information.
This apps truly brilliant feature allows you to touch the sliced carrot ‘What can I grow Today? in the centre to automatically show the vegetables that can be sown in that particular month (which it auto-detects). The scroll arrows easily allows you to select the month manually so see what vegetables to grow in the next few months.
My Verdict: Great Cheap App, no crashing on the iPad, quick, easy to use and information good.
Garden Pro HD App
Available on: iPad, iPhone and iPod
Created By: El Nudo Molesto
Price £2.39 in UK
After browsing this companies bright array of apps in the app store, I decided to purchase Garden Pro HD as it had extra features of a journal. However don’t be lured into buying this app due to the lovely graphics like I was. Apart from the content in the garden guide (I should have just bought that version), the journal, to do list and pests sections are very disappointing and not worth the extra money.
There’s no denying this is a great looking app, which works best in portrait mode as the garden guide is easier to read and not squashed into 2 thirds of the screen like in landscape mode. The garden guide is comprehensive and the layout and details remind me of the Dr Hessayon’s skinny pocket guides to flowers and vegetables books. The details listed are botanical name, family, light, water, climate and soil requirements, planting time (although this is not by month just by season i.e. spring), aftercare and common pests and diseases (which are listed and then you have to look them up yourself in the P&D section which is limited and a bit annoying).
My Verdict: Really disappointing as the graphics look great, but the features are not there. If you can get this app to work (I keep getting out of memory alerts and it does crash) the garden guide is great for looking up flowers, herbs and veg. But don’t waste your money on this app as the extra features are not worth it.
All Apps reviewed above can be found by going to the App Store on your iPad, iPhone or iPod.
Content kindly supplied by Tracey at iGrowVeg
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