SproutRobot: Sprout Robot

Here’s a topical one. You can’t watch a cookery programme these days without the celebrity chef banging on about the pleasure of growing your own fruit and veg. As if he actually gets down and dirty with a spade and a hoe! He’ll be too busy in make-up or signing his latest recipe book. It does however have a certain charm about it but for people of a certain age it’s something that your dad did. Add to that the likelihood that he learnt the skill from his dad and you start to get the picture; why did I never ask my dad?

Well, the art of planting can still be learnt of course and this app aims to make it even easier than ploughing through your dad’s old gardening diary. What’s more instead of having the pleasure of an old timer leaning over your garden fence and tut-tutting about it being far too early to be planting carrots you can get the news via email.

Sign up, enter your zip code, tell the site what you fancy growing and you’ll get a planting guide based on the weather history of your area. Depending on the level of service you pay for you will then either be sent the seeds through the post or emailed when it’s time to go and buy them yourself. In either case you’ll get an email explaining the time to plant and how to plant.

Anyone considering turning that unused piece of scrub at the bottom of the garden into source of fresh fruit and vegetables could have some fun with this one. If you’re anything like me it’s always the timings that I miss even for just a small pot of chillies. With an email nudge the fiery fellows will get plenty of time to produce the required heat.

Conclusion

Anyone can acquire green fingers with the right guidance and this one should get you on the way to producing at least some basic kitchen needs. Concentrate hard and you could end up with a silver cup for best in show!