Thing 19 of 23 Things

Hobbies:

I read through all the options for this Thing before I went to bed last night, and I was leaning towards one of the ESPN apps. I would really like to have access to game results and maybe highlights, but only for World Cup soccer, which will be going on for the rest of the month.

This morning, the gardening app My Garden was most appealing to me. So I dived in . . . And I noted right away that I like the simple icon (which I guess il like judging a book by its cover).

I started by looking at the list of plants, which I can add to my garden. I was surprised at the simplicity: there was a listing for tomato, and for a specific variety of tomato which is good for slicing: Siletz.

There are 1384 gardens with the Siletz tomato, but I've never heard of it. Where is the Big Boy and the Early Girl - the go-to varietals for Minnesota gardeners? There is no listing for these (and if you have a garden in Minnesota, and don't you start with tomatoes. . . ?).

One answer may lie in the list of top gardeners. There are five people of the first page of gardeners; the first is from Troy NY, the next is from Belgium, two seem like somewhere in Germany, and one is from Dublin.
A very international showing.

But Minnesotans? The search engine seems to lack robustness, but finally I pulled up four other Minnesotans. One had 21 plants, one had 26, two had none. Only one mentioned zone 4, our hardiness zone, which is a critical factor in discussing perennial plants that we can grow (that is, that can survive through our long cold winters).

These observations led me to the question: where are all the 'real' gardeners? The master gardeners must have somewhere to meet electronically over the long northland winters. I don't think they are using this app.

I expect that there's another app out there for gardening that's more popular among locals. I may take the time to look for it- but maybe not until I and my flower beds are tucked away for the long winter.

The ultimatum: not for work, and not for home. But I will ask my tech savvy gardening friends if they use any gardening apps.

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