Gardening Apps: Make This Your Best Growing Season Yet

Gardening is one of my favorite pastimes that has both physical and emotional rewards. In fact, planning for gardening season has even helped me survive 16 Midwestern winters (no small feat)!

Cuddling up by the wood stove and sifting through stacks of seed catalogs and gardening apps on my iPhone has been one of my prime escapes during the winter months.

After much testing and exploring year-round, I bring you some of my favorite garden design and maintenance apps and websites, and even a few I use to help preserve the harvest and minimize waste. You're sure to find a few resources to start your first garden or improve the one you already have.

Sun Seeker – Tracker, Surveyor ($9.99)

Let's start with planning. I've been using this app for years to visualize the sun's location throughout the gardening season, and I haven't found a better one! SunSeeker can help you decide on sites for new gardens, tree planting, or even where to place plants in existing garden beds. It also maps out solar trajectories and gives sunrise and sunset times, so you know how much sun will reach your plants at all hours of the day.

I'm currently using this app to plan my latest, greatest project: a passive solar greenhouse on the south side of my house (more on that in a future issue).

The Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner ($35/year)

This is a super fun one! I've spent almost three hours playing with this website in the last two weeks and have found several ways to save space and grow more produce in the new year. The Garden Planner connects to the weather station closest to you, then lets you create personalized planting charts for veggies, herbs, and flowers. It'll suggest how many plants you need, when to plant your seeds, where and when to transplant into the soil, and when to harvest your produce.

There's a garden journal to keep track of what worked and what didn't, articles, and more than 250 tutorial videos to help you learn new skills, crop rotation warnings, and so much more.

Seed to Spoon – Garden Planner (Free or $4.99/month)

I know the Old Farmer's Almanac is a bit pricey, so my second garden-planning recommendation is the Seed to Spoon app. The free version offers a visual garden planner with up to 10 plant choices, a regional planting calendar with planting dates, weather alerts for your location and gardening zone, a garden journal, and up to three questions a day to their AI chatbot Growbot.

The premium version offers these features for more than 100 vegetables, herbs, and fruit. There's also a Critters tab that covers pests and beneficial animals and how to encourage or discourage each of them. You can also ask unlimited Growbot questions!

Facebook (Free)

Facebook is a great resource for all kinds of hobbies. I'm in groups for dog owners, quilters, fiction readers, and, of course, gardeners! My local gardener's group lets members post photos, videos, and questions, and trade free supplies and tools. We give each other tips, warn each other of incoming weather, and commiserate over pests and blights.

This is also a great place to trade seeds, seedlings, and even produce when a bumper crop is just too much to process on your own. I've given away catnip, yarrow, mint, and oregano that have outgrown their beds, and have been the recipient of many “ugly” tomatoes to turn into salsa.

National Center for Home Food Preservation

I don't know why there aren't more food-preservation apps out there, and perhaps that's where my millions are to be made. Then again, I'd rather be out in the garden! In any case, if you're growing more fruit, veggies, berries, and herbs than you can eat in season, you'll need to know how to preserve your harvest. This website is THE resource for canning, pickling, fermenting, freezing, drying, and storing all the bounty from your garden in a safe, flavorful, and long-lasting way.

Local Composting Services (Pricing Varies)

There's no getting around it; gardening generates waste. Whether it's spent plants at the end of their life cycle or scraps and peels from processing and preserving your harvest, you're sure to have a steady stream of organic waste that needs somewhere to go.

But what if you don't have space or time to compost? You can use local composting services, such as CompostNow or Community Compost Company, to connect with fellow gardeners and compost enthusiasts to make sure your garden debris turns back into soil instead of languishing in the landfill.

If neither of the organizations linked above is available in your area, you're sure to find a similar service to give or take compost material.

I hope this roundup has introduced you to one or more new tools to make this your best gardening season yet! Let me know if you know about any I've missed, especially if you run across a comprehensive food preservation app!

Top image credit: PeopleImages.com - Yuri A / Shutterstock.com