Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Inspiration

The 8 best apps for beginner gardeners

Rebecca Wolken
By

As a beginner gardener, it can feel overwhelming to keep track of your plants and when you watered or fertilized them last. It’s also seemingly impossible to keep up with every care tip for each plant. Here are some apps that will help you on your way to becoming the best gardener you can be.

Garden Answers

Sometimes we gardeners forget what we’ve planted, or there’s suddenly a new plant in our garden that we didn’t plant and we’d like to know what it is. With Garden Answers, you can send in a photo for identification, and the app will compare it to thousands of other images to bring you similar-looking plants, to help you figure out what the plant most likely is. The app will then supply you with the scientific name and its common name, along with where it’s from and how to care for it. For a small fee, you can also send in garden questions to expert horticulturists.

plant identify app

Garden Journal by Territorial Seed Company

Keeping a stack of books and notebooks filled with sticky notes and hastily written down advice is a messy method and often leads to things being lost. Track everything you plant and get reminders for planting seasons with the Garden Journal by Territorial Seed Company. With this app, you can track when you watered and fertilized last and get reminders when it’s time to do it again. You can also get updates and notifications based on your location and add photos and notes to your journal to keep track of experiments. Upgrade to pro and get access to a garden planner to draw a garden of any size and make a plan for the upcoming planting season. The app also includes gardening advice for over 200 plants, as well as videos and written content for gardening techniques.In addition, you can connect to other local gardeners and exchange tips and tricks with gardeners in your area.

Related

Garden Manager

Made explicitly for edible gardens, this virtual garden coach helps you with everything from planning to harvesting by using questions to lead you through the process. Using local weather stations, the app send notifications about the weather that might damage your plants and help you protect tender plants from frosts. It supports more than 52 edible plants for easy tracking of the most popular plants. Finally, it will send you reminders on what to do and when to do it to have the most successful garden through the season.

There are three levels of subscriptions with an increased amount of support. With the free subscription, you can create a garden planner that will help your garden thrive. The second subscription is called Coach and is $6 per month. This option sends reminders to keep you on track with plant care and aware of potentially dangerous weather. Finally, with the ultimate subscription, you get everything included with the free and coach subscription, but you also get access to the online library of easy-to-follow training videos and eBooks and access to monthly webinars, group coaching sessions, and members-only chat forums.

iNaturalist

Although this isn’t an app specifically for gardening, the identifying and observation aspect of this app could help beginner gardeners learn more about the ecosystem around them. Understanding where and how your garden fits into the world can help you grow better and ensure you’re not doing anything that could harm your environment. For example, knowing what types of birds are in your yard or when certain butterflies might migrate through can help you support and adapt your garden according to your specific needs, which means less damage to the world around you and a more successful garden experience.

Johnny’s Seeds Calendar

Frost dates, seed starting dates, germination periods, and harvest days can all get confusing. To make life a little easier, try out Johnny’s Seed-Starting Calendar. Look for the plants you’re planning to sow and find out when to seed start, transplant, and when they’ll be ready to harvest according to your growing zone. Get rid of the confusion and get back to enjoying the relaxing potential of gardening.

house plant identifier

Gardening Companion

With the Gardening Companion app, you’ll have free access to over 1,000 articles about gardening, including YouTube videos, photos, and text posts. Topics range from companion planting, pest control, and harvest questions. You can also create your own “magazine” by telling the app which topics you’re most interested in and getting a personalized homepage filled with your specific interests. This app is also a garden planner to track all of your planting and gardening activities and stay on top of care. You can add photos and notes, and the app will even send you notifications about upcoming weather that might damage your plants or when they might need to be watered or fertilized. You can also share your gardening successes or failures on social media with quick and easy share buttons.

LeafSnap

While this app only identifies trees, this can be super beneficial for beginner gardeners as often they quickly become interested in the trees and plants already in their yard. With this app, you can take photos of the leaves of the trees around you and identify what plant it is. This will allow you to understand its place in the ecosystem better and improve your garden plan. In addition, some trees drop heavy seeds or leaves that might damage your garden. Use this app to identify the trees in your yard or trees you find out about that you might want to add to your landscape. It’s also a great tool to teach kids about trees; it’s so good even the Natural History Museum uses it!

Gardenize: Plant Growth & Care

This garden diary allows you to take photos, keep notes, and get notifications about possible care needs for plants inside and outside your home. You can track the progress of the growth of your plants, when you last watered or pruned them, and when you should fertilize next. This app will also make suggestions about the plants within your garden. It offers care tips and pest control options. It has sections that specialize in raised beds, flower beds, organic growing, and sustainable growing. Maintain your joy for gardening by taking out the frustration of remembering which plants need fertilizer or when the tomatoes will be ready to harvest.

Try one or all of these fantastic gardening tools to help you increase your gardening knowledge and build your perfect garden.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Do you live in climate zone 10? Here’s our guide to choosing the perfect climate zone 10 plants
What you need to know about caring for climate zone 10 plants
Stacey Nguyen
By Stacey Nguyen
December 28, 2022
Tomatillo plant

One part of the country that many gardeners envy is climate zone 10, a warm sanctuary for a variety of plants, thanks to its very long growing seasons and mild winters. Made up of the southernmost parts of the country, this region has a climate that's ideal for multiple rounds of harvests. While it has specific challenges with blisteringly hot summers, it’s an overall welcoming environment for plant life. Below, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about zone 10 and all the plants that you can grow in it.

Where is climate zone 10?
Before we get into the specifics of climate zone 10, let’s talk about the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. When shopping for plants, you may see labels indicating a zone range — that basically tells you where the plant will be hardy for more than just one growing season. Essentially, the United States Department of Agriculture has divided the country into 13 regions, or climate zones, based on annual minimum temperature ranges. Zone 1 faces the coldest winters, while zone 13 usually has the warmest ones. Bearing this in mind, inhabitants of zone 10 will often experience warmer winters.

Read more
What to do with an old Christmas tree: 6 ways to recycle your tree after the holidays
From making firewood to mulch, here are ways to recycle Christmas trees
Rebecca Wolken
By Rebecca Wolken
December 27, 2022
Ornament on a Christmas tree

Once all the Christmas festivities are over, it's time to take down holiday decorations and figure out what you're going to do with that huge Christmas tree. Unfortunately, every year a massive amount of Christmas trees end up in landfills where they don't have the opportunity to decompose and break down like they naturally would in a forest. This isn't good for the planet, and you'd be wasting a potential resource you could use for something else.

So if you're curious about what to do with an old Christmas tree and how to get the most out of it, here are some ways you can recycle it so it becomes a gift that keeps on giving.

Read more
Trying to beat the cold? Here are our favorite frost-resistant plants for any climate
Here's how to protect your plants from the cold this winter
Cayla Leonard
By Cayla Leonard
December 7, 2022
Three types of heuchera growing outdoors

You spent all spring and summer tending to your garden. Now the weather is turning colder and the first heavy frosts are here. How can you help your flowers survive the winter? Keep reading to find out what plants can resist the cold and if and how to protect your plants from the freezing weather.

Which plants can survive a frost?
Evergreens are known for their ability to survive winter, but they aren’t the only cold-tolerant, frost-resistant plants out there! Leafy vegetables like cabbage, lettuce, kale, collards, and chard can tolerate some frost. Early spring blooming flowers like crocus, snowdrop, and primrose can all survive the winter, and pansies are especially resilient. Violas, hostas, heuchera, irises, lily of the valley, cyclamen, and phlox also tolerate frost and provide some visual interest, as do catmint, baptista, sedum, and peonies.

Read more