There's a link to a Gardening Toolkit blog, but I found it had been inactive since September. Maybe that'll change with the season.
Garden Tracker, 99 cents from Portable Databases, also comes with separate pricing for phones and tablets. The iPhone version was 99 cents, while the iPad version was $3.99 and called Garden Tracker - Bumper Crop. This app helps you plan a garden for optimal plant health and vegetable yield by describing how much room each plant will need. It can help further by tracking how often you water and fertilize, and by telling you how many days it will be until you harvest a crop.
A pest database has photos, descriptions, and control steps for common insects and plant diseases. Other settings give sunrise and sunset times, moon phases, and average temperature guides. This is a strangely warm year in the Philadelphia region, but the guide shows that frosts could come until mid-April.
Lawn Mower Forum, free from End of Time Studios L.L.C. for Apple and Android, is for serious lawn people who want to talk mowers, landscaping, and mole trapping. What's not to love? If you register, you'll be allowed to weigh in on the sometimes-heated discussion threads about snowblowers, lawn-care contractors, and Briggs & Stratton engines.
AgriLife Food Safety, free from the Texas AgriLife Extension Service for Apple, is an app from Texas A&M University for food growers and handlers. It has buying, storage, and food-preparation tips for avoiding disease and pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella.
And when things really start heating up outside, there's the 99-cent app Grill It, by Sluice L.L.C. for iPhone and Android (or $1.99 for the iPad). This is a simple cookbook for the great outdoors, with grill recipes for such delights as beer-brined and grilled chicken, chipotle bacon BBQ sauce, and pesto brussels sprouts. There's a new recipe each week, and you can share favorites on Facebook.
Contact Reid Kanaley at 215-854-5114 or rkanaley@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @ReidKan.
