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If you’ve ever tried to have a nice section for indoor plants in your home, you know how challenging can it get to keep the plants healthy, let alone get them to be thriving plants.
Even if you are a green thumb and a seasoned plant parent, you’ve probably failed a few times. If you’re always on the hunt to expand your range of green friends, plant identification might be a problem, too. The perfect solution for all these problems is plant care apps.
When it comes to keeping track of plants progress, watering reminders, and just making sure you keep your plants alive, plant experts and beginners alike have their favorites, so keep reading to find out which app will suit you the most!
Best Houseplant Care Apps Available on Android and iOS
Having a plant care app that is available on both Android and iOS is a great choice because even though you are currently using just one of these systems, you might change your device in the future, and you probably hope that your plants stay alive longer than the iPhone you might have.
So, when the transition happens, you will want your plant data to come with you, right?
Another plus would be if you happen to have an Android phone and an iPad, it would be cool to have your plant app be accessible to whichever device you might be using at the moment.
And, without further ado, here are the best plant care apps that you can find on both iOS and Android!
PictureThis
PictureThis is an app that’s known for the great use of artificial intelligence.
The idea behind this app is that it’s able to recognize plants from an extensive plant collection of 27 million plant species, so if you find some plants that you like the look of, but don’t know the name of, it’s more than likely that PictureThis will have an answer for you.
Besides plant identification, this app has another feature that will help you keep your house plants alive.
With the use of the before-mentioned artificial intelligence, PictureThis can give you some very important gardening tips – if there are any plant problems with your green children, it’s very likely that it’ll recognize that, and also give you instructions about what you need to do.
If you happen to notice that there are some brown tips on your plant, just pull your phone camera up, and you’ll know exactly what your plant needs.
Another feature that is available besides taking care of your sick plants, is that PictureThis can give you general instructions about what your specific plant needs.
Just take a shot of your plant and PictureThis will tell you whether it needs more direct sunlight, what kind of soil would be best for it, and when you need to fertilize it.
All of these features are available for free, but if you’re plant parents who are willing to pay $30 for the premium version of the app, there are even more cool things in PictureThis for you.
You will have access to a gardening specialist, and you can chat with them whenever you have doubts or are in need of even more specific plant recommendations.
Keeping a plant journal in this app will give you the option to have customized reminders for watering, so you’ll be safe from both over and under watering your plants. And we all know how sensitive some plants are to that.
Overall, PictureThis is a great app to have in hand whether you’re a beginner in need of plant care tips or you’re one of the pro plant lovers!
Related: Best Plant Identification Apps in 2022
Gardenia
If you are not a fan of having extremely detailed instructions and you like to keep everything straightforward and simple, then you should look no further than Gardenia.
This app will give you simple care instructions and reliable care reminders for your plants, without much distractions in the form of detailed plant descriptions.
For starters, you will need to know the name of the plants you need this for, and then find the exact plants in the database that Gardenia has.
After you’ve added a plant from the plant library to your list of plants, you will see six icons that will show you the most important requirements for that plant: what amount of water it needs, fertilization tips, preferred sun exposure, the recommended soil type, when are that plant’s blooming seasons, and what’s the minimum temperature needed for that plant to survive.
There’s one thing that’s unique about Gardenia – it doesn’t only have push notifications for watering and fertilizing.
On Gardenia you can personalize things a bit more and schedule dates for repotting, harvesting, pruning, and also getting your pesticides.
This plant journal app is overall great, but probably the best thing about it is the fact that it’s a completely free app!
There are no in-app purchases or anything of that nature, just simple, straightforward, and smart care reminders.
Gardenia is probably the easiest app for short but effective plant care tips, so if that’s all you need from an app, then this is what you should download.
Apps available on Android
While most apps nowadays are available on both Android and iOS, there are some exceptions.
Apps for plants are no different, and you will be able to get plant recommendations and care tips on your Android.
The best Android-exclusive plant app is Waterbot.
Waterbot
This app is perfect for you if you’re someone who has most of the plant facts down, but you have a habit of forgetting to water your plants.
As you probably know, different green companions prefer different watering schedules and levels of moisture, and it’s certainly a draining task to remember everything by heart.
Even if most plants in your collection have similar water requirements, it will probably help you greatly to have a little virtual assistant.
When it comes to the design of Waterbot, it’s simple and intuitive, so you won’t have much trouble with it, even if you’re not too tech-savvy.
The way it works is also as simple.
What you need to do is to add your plants and then generate individual watering plans for them.
Creating the watering schedule is not at all a daunting task even if it might sound like that, it doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes to work it all out.
When the time for watering the plants comes, you will get a memo from the app, and once you do water them, you can check that task as done. The chances of you skipping a watering are basically non-existent.
And the good news is that there are no limits as to how many plants you can add to this app, so don’t worry, your new plants won’t get left out.
Apps available on iOS
If you’re someone who is a lover of Apple products and you tend to always opt for them, there are a few plant care apps for you, too.
Planta
Planta is probably one of the best-known iOS apps when it comes to helpful information and cares instructions for both your garden plants and indoor plants. It can also help find plant names when you’re not sure about them.
Planta will cover basically any need you might have.
Planta has a lot of helpful resources for finding out something more about plants, which can also be quite fun if you love plants in general.
If you want to find out what your plant likes, just type in its name and you will find step-by-step care instructions that will make your life easier. You might even stop killing plants for good now!
To get the most out of it, you can set up smart care alerts that will remind you whenever your plants might need steaming, cleaning, or even fertilizing.
The schedules aren’t even your responsibility, the app will generate them for you! All you need to do is enter facts like what’s your plant’s variety, what’s your location, and what’s the usual weather for your region.
You can also enter what skill level you are in when it comes to gardening, and Planta will give you recommendations based on that.
Planta also has a built-in light meter that will help you decide in what light conditions you should keep your plants in. Think things like which light intensity, whether they prefer partial sun, full sun, or maybe full shade, and so on.
Most of these features come with the free version of the app, but there are some premium features as well that you get if you subscribe to Planta Premium.
One of these premium features is Dr. Planta that can help using Plantas plant scanner.
This app is a great choice, especially if you’re willing to also get into the premium content.
Sun Seeker
As you might guess from the name, this app is made to help you with tracking the Sun’s movement.
If you’re new to plants you might not be sure why you need a whole up for this, but other plant lovers who are pros will probably be delighted to know about an app like this.
Some plants prefer shade, some prefer being in direct sunlight, and some like a little bit of both, so this app is here to find a perfect place for every single one of your plant children.
Sometimes, getting all your plants the appropriate sunlight levels is more important than any other care tips.
Sun Seeker is not an app specifically made for plant parents, but it does an amazing job of being a light meter.
Another thing other gardeners found helpful in this app is that it gives you precise sunset and sunrise timings, so if you have some plants that need to be moved from one place to another depending on that, it has you covered.
The movements of the Sun are being tracked and visualized in 3D so you will be able to notice even the smallest changes during the day.
If you happen to be at work or if you’re not too alert about the Sun while you’re home, you can also set notifications that will inform you whenever there’s a change, so you can act accordingly.
The only thing you’ll need to have the app work is a stable internet connection, as Sun Seeker runs on GPS.
With this app, your Sun lovers will be sure to always get all the lighting they need!
FAQ
What Is The Best Free Plant Care App?
The best overall plant care app is Planta. Even though there are some premium features, you can absolutely get everything you need from this app even if you only use the ones that are free. This app is often marketed promising that you won’t ever kill a plant again, and that’s not far from the truth. It provides you with everything you need and it’s not at all complicated to use.
Is There An App To Identify House Plants?
Most plant care apps also have a feature for identifying plants, but the best overall is the app called PictureThis. PictureThis has a library of 27 million plants and besides being able to identify plants, it can also identify what’s the state of your plant and then give you instructions on what to do with it. Simply upload photos of the plant you want to check, and the app will take it from there.
Can Google Identify My Plant?
There’s always an option to google the specifics of a plant you liked in order to find its name, however, Google alone won’t be too helpful with this, as a lot of plants look a lot alike. It’s best to download an app that’s made specifically for identifying plants. You can use Google’s app called Google Lens for this, but if you also need an app for plant care, then consider downloading PictureThis or Planta.
