4 Gardening Apps We're Digging Right Now

Darla Antoine

Indian Country Today Media Network

From black-thumbed beginners to green-thumbed experts, there are gardening apps that help you keep track of your garden, troubleshoot problems and push your gardening skills to the next level. Here are four of my favorites. All of these apps are compatible with both the iPhone and the iPad and none of them are free. Why? I haven’t found a free gardening app worth using. Let me know if you have.

Everything You Want To Know About Composting — $0.99

From the benefits of composting to where, what and how to compost, this app is very comprehensive. There is even a section on how to buy a compost bin and a step-by-step guide to making your own bin. There’s a quiz for the knowledge thirsty (or the nerdy) built-in to the app as well as a couple of video guides, general advice about composting and a section dedicated to busting the myths around composting. Think you need to turn a compost pile regularly? Think again.

Gardening Toolkit — copy.99

This app is amazing. Hundreds of plants make up the reference guide, complete with a chart on when to sow, when to expect blooms or harvest, common and scientific names, a watering guide, and ideal growing conditions. You can sync the app with your location for easy growing zone information and you can also add the plants to up to 12 different gardens. This is a great feature to help you either plan a garden or keep track of what is in a particular garden. The advice section has a monthly garden-maintenance tip, a “what to plant now” guide, a gardening glossary and an index for finding plants based on your need (to attract bees, butterflies, for hanging baskets, etc). Finally, keep track of all of your gardening to-do’s with the check-list/reminder. Well worth the price.

Moon Gardening — copy.99

Planting by the moon is an agricultural practice that is as old as agriculture itself. With this app you can keep track of the phases of the moon while also having access to daily zodiac information—horoscopes not included. Add your plants to the app to set up a watering schedule. The app also guides you through learning to plant according to the moon phases and which zodiac signs are conducive to certain gardening tasks (planting, irrigation, pest control, etc.)

Pickin’ Chicken — $2.99

Okay, so this isn’t exactly a gardening app, but many gardeners also have (or are interested in having) chickens. And I’m too delighted with this app not to share.

Pickin’ Chicken allows you to narrow down the breed of chickens you should have based on whether or not you want these chickens for eggs, meat, or both. From there you can narrow it down even further based on the color of the eggs you’re interested in, the size of the eggs and how frequently the chicken lays the eggs. Click on a specific breed of chicken and you’ll get all of their specs: weight, egg color and size, a photo, their temperament, preferred climates, etc.

Want a meat chicken? Choose your breed based on how quickly they mature and their ideal weight at butchering time. For example, chickens that lay medium-sized brown eggs at a “good” rate include the Faverolle breed and the Dominique. They both also make good meat chickens and are calm, docile and likely to allow holding and interaction with people (kids). However, the Faverolle may go broody and is a threatened species—meaning it’s a good idea to try to husband and grow this breed.

This app is definitely coming along with my family the next time we go to the feed store for some chickens.

Darla Antoine is an enrolled member of the Okanagan Indian Band in British Columbia and grew up in Eastern Washington State. For three years, she worked as a newspaper reporter in the Midwest, reporting on issues relevant to the Native and Hispanic communities, and most recently served as a producer for Native America Calling. In 2011, she moved to Costa Rica, where she currently lives with her husband and their infant son. She lives on an organic and sustainable farm in the “cloud forest”—the highlands of Costa Rica, 9,000 feet above sea level. Due to the high elevation, the conditions for farming and gardening are similar to that of the Pacific Northwest—cold and rainy for most of the year with a short growing season. Antoine has an herb garden, green house, a beehive, cows, a goat, and two trout ponds stocked with hundreds of rainbow trout.

Virtual fencing the future of farming: US expert

The man considered the father of virtual fencing says the concept is the future of Australian production farming.

Virtual fencing confines livestock to boundaries without the need for an actual fence, instead using coordinates, wireless technologies and sensors to control where the animals can graze.

Dean Anderson from the United States Department of Agriculture has been speaking at a symposium at the University of Sydney Centre for Carbon, Water and Food at Camden about the opportunities virtual fencing provides.

Dr Anderson also joined the precision grazing management tour in Armidale in northern NSW in the lead up to the symposium.

He says he's impressed with some of the technology being piloted in Australia.

"It's some fantastic gadgetry that I think has some fantastic potential and I think that virtual fencing, tied into the type of things I've seen this week will make it an even more productive and meaningful way to manage free ranging animals," he said.

Dr Anderson says his involvement with virtual fencing spans over thirty years.

"One of the biggest challenges world over is distribution, and I came to the conclusion of virtual fencing in managing free ranging animals," he said.

"Internal fencing, in my opinion, is at many times built in the wrong place after the year in which it's built.

"It's static, and when you think about it we're trying to manage two dynamic resources, that is the plant community and the animal community."

Dr Anderson says virtual fencing enables a person to "control animals in real time" without requiring any fences on the landscape.

The polygons work both to confine animals inside of them, as well as to exclude animals from areas, such as endangered species.

Because of the dynamic nature of virtual fencing, Dr Anderson says boundaries are not exactly cut and dry, as with traditional physical fences.

"You must be able to accept leaky boundaries, because virtual fencing is based upon modifying animal behaviour," he said.

Zachary Economou is an honours student at the University of New England at Armidale, who had the opportunity to share his research with Mr Anderson this week.

He says it's been great getting feedback on his studies from a world leader in the field.

"He's been the person that I've referred to through my whole assignment and literature review," he said.

Mr Economou is studying how changing camp locations can influence sheep behaviour.

"I wanted to see how sheep behaved when you removed their primary camp site, typically at the top of the hill," he said.

"A few interesting things have come out of this, in terms of where sheep want to move when you remove that camp site, and how they've intensified their urge to get to the top of the paddock, which is pretty natural."

Sharp makes a comeback! It's growing strawberries in UAE

Ailing electronics giant Sharp hopes to turn around its fortunes by growing strawberries indoors in Dubai, it seems.

Once a global household name, the former sponsor of Manchester United is losing money so fast that commentators suggest it won't survive another year without a huge cash injection. But its directors plan to cash in on Middle Eastern consumers' penchant for the sweet strawberries from its native Japan, it seems. The firm's using technology to allow the fruit to be grown from seedlings at a facility in the United Arab Emirates by artificially controlling light, temperature and humidity - thus avoiding the problems of berries spoiling during shipping - reports Tokyo's Asahi Shimbun.

It apparently uses LED lights to facilitate photosynthesis. "If we can generate results in cultivating strawberries, a plant that is difficult to grow, we can apply the technology to other farm products," a company official is quoted as telling the paper. News agency Kyodo says Sharp invested roughly $100,000 to build the laboratory test facility in Dubai. Sharp is now beginning testing of the operation with the aim of growing up to 3,000 strawberries a month, ahead of a planned factory-scale launch in 2015.

BBC