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.

Quail farming is good for meat production

Quail farming can offer numerous benefits in terms of meat production, nutrition, and eggs. Salient features of quail farming with nutritive composition of its meat and eggs can be summed as:

• Lesser market age 4-5 weeks

• Less initial investment

• May be started as cottage industry

• Easily manageable by household ladies

• A better tool to alleviate poverty

Meat qualities:

• Tastier than chicken

• Promotes body and brain development in children

• Best balanced food for pregnant and nursing mothers

• Less fat and cholesterol content

Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix Japonica) was first described as a research model by and was used as a pilot animal for more expensive experiments in 1960. During 1970, research with Japanese quail expanded from avian-science related topics to biology and medicine, as bird could be kept easily relatively in large number in a small facility and be used as model animal for wide variety of works, from embryology to space related sciences. At the event of World Poultry Congress, 2004, the quail has been declared as the model avian species for future research. Quails are now commonly used as an experimental animal for biological research and vaccine production, especially Newcastle disease vaccine to which disease quails are resistant.

In Pakistan quail farming was started in early 1970, with the introduction of exotic breeding stock of Japanese quails. However, quail production has remained as one of the neglected components of poultry sector in the country. Very little research work has been conducted on its breeding, incubation, housing, nutritional requirements, feeding, management and disease control aspects in Pakistan.

About four decades back a breeding stock of hybrid Japanese quails was imported in Pakistan with good genetic potential having better egg production performance, egg quality parameters and hatching traits compared to local quail called “Betair”.

But unfortunately, due to continuous inbreeding, genetic potential of the imported quail might have deteriorated. Simultaneously no serious attempt has been made to improve genetic potential of our native quail.

Although public and private sectors made efforts for the development of quail farming, but the measures were not adequate and fall short of expectations for producing high yield of quail meat at a reasonable low cost.

The private sector was not given adequate monetary and technical incentives. Even public sector organizations dealing in quail and allied industries faced enormous hurdles due to bureaucracy and lack of application of modern quail production technology.

These together with many other problems including poor quail management, low live body weight and meat yield, late ready to market age and lack of quail processing are some of the important reasons for slow development of quail farming in the country.

The low live body weight and meat yield appears to be a great hurdle for development of commercial quail farming. The situation therefore calls to take immediate concrete steps to improve genetic potential of our local quail.

Avian Research and Training (ART) Centre, of the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Lahore has been working on this thing for sometime now. The main aims and objectives of this centre are as under:

• Human resource development in the field of quail/avian production.

• Technical guidance and advice to the stake holders, small farmers and house-hold women in avian production.

• Research for enhancing genetic potential to improve performance and meat yield in local quail strains.

AHMED SULTAN

UVAS, Lahore