Whether you’re a veteran, green-thumbed gardening enthusiast or are getting your hands dirty for the first time, the iPhone is a tool that you 
may find is surprisingly useful in your quest to cultivate a luscious, thriving oasis of plant life. These ten iPhone apps provide the perfect mix for successfully planting a year-round, evergreen garden.
- Gardening Toolkit – With over 1000 pictures, tips and advice on seasonal planting based on where you live, Gardening Toolkit is great value at $1.99. The “Your Garden” feature allows you to keep track of exactly what you’re growing, where and when. Helpful reminder lists also make it easy for you to keep track of your gardening tasks, so you always know when you need to plant, prune and feed.
- Garden Tracker – If you’ve ever spent hours meticulously planning and plotting out your garden, then this app is the answer to all your needs. At $1.99, Garden Tracker is packed full of useful features. The app is easily synced to your Dropbox account, which means you can work on your garden design from any supported devices. You can also keep a track of optimum harvest, feeding and planting times, as well as sourcing the greenest plants and vegetables for your garden from a handy referencing feature.
- Organic Gardening Planting Planner – This free app uses GPS to determine your frost dates, in order to give you the best planting dates. The brain child of Organic Gardening magazine and Safer©, Organic Gardening Planting Planner provides a wealth of resources for everything from choosing seeds to how to plant and maintain your garden crops.
- Gardening Reference Guide! – A gardening reference app with thousands of resources for planting, blooming and harvest times, Gardening Reference Guide! is a great reference for all your gardening information, at your fingertips. If you have concerns about pests, overfeeding, propagation and much more, this free app is available to download from the iPhone apps store, now.
- My Gardening – This very simple app allows you to grow your garden at your pace. Learn from experts, then apply the changes to your garden and track the results. My Gardening provides a feature where you can build a vegetable and plant catalog, and share your progress via text and email. You can download this simple and free app now, directly from the iTunes App Store.
- Garden Time Planner – One of the simplest gardening apps available from the iTunes store, Garden Time Planner has some very smart features. The app creates automatic to-do lists based on region, sowing and harvest times, which are especially useful for those who are new to gardening. There is also a full database of plants and herbs that acts as a useful reference for what to plant and when.
- A Garden Life – Unlike many other gardening magazine apps, A Garden Life is completely free, with all the features you need to plant a beautiful and evergreen garden. Articles are written by professional gardeners, with tips on everything from planting, sowing and harvesting, to plant types, pests and worst case scenarios. This magazine app is essential reading for amateur and professional gardeners alike.
- Garden Compass – If you’ve even seen a plant, herb or tree that you couldn’t identify, Garden Compass is the app for you. It is completely free to download from the App Store, and provides the user with a number of features to identify plants in your garden. You can take pictures of plants, herbs and trees, and then receive instant comparisons to help you identify the exact species. There is also a “fast tap and buy” feature, which enables you to purchase seeds for any plant you find instantly.
- Vegetable Garden Calculator – Never run out of vegetables again with the Vegetable Garden Calculator! This free app is ideal for self-sustained families, who like to plant and live off of their own vegetable garden. The app determines how much you need to plant, based on the average number of people in your family or group. Vegetable Garden Calculator currently supports over ninety different vegetables, with more additions planned in the future.
- Organic Gardening – For $0.99, you get nine concise, easy to follow chapters on organic gardening – it’s that simple. For novice organic gardeners, this app is one of the best guides available, anywhere. There are no chemicals or man-made products in Organic Gardening, making it an eco-friendly guide to gardening that will give you complete ease of mind. If you have ever wanted to plant your own vegetable garden without the fear of causing further damage to the environment through the use of harmful chemicals, then this is the app for you.
Reprinted with permission from Housekeeping