Gardening Blog

Have you ever wondered what you’re houseplants are thinking? Well, thanks to this cool gadget, your houseplant can now tweet. By using Twitter, your houseplant will communicate with you via the Internet.   The Botanicalls DIY Plant Twitter Kit easily translates all dialect of ‘houseplant’ to English.

So how does it work? The original breakthrough was made when the chief scientist at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) was trying to communicate with a patch of catnip by using a super computer.

“I CAN HAZ TWITTER?” said the plant. This confused the scientist, but his granddaughter was able to figure out that the plant wanted to Tweet!  Plant who tweet don’t have much to say, but they do request that you water them and thank you once you have.

Fact or fiction? Who knows, but this fun toy is perfect for a techie gardener who is feeling stir crazy during the long winter months!

I stumbled upon this nifty garden device the other day while I was surfing the web. The GardenWatch Cam is perfect for gardeners who love gadgets. Maybe this is something you’d like to add to your wish list for Santa – I know, I shouldn’t be thinking about the ‘C’ word already, but Santa’s elves needs time to build all the toys you know!

The GardenWatch Cam by Brinno is designed to be placed outside in your garden to take photos at specific predetermined time settings. Simply put, you can record your flowers blooming, speed it up, and then watch it on your computer. It’s not like sitting on your deck watching the grass grow in real time. The time-lapsed images are sped up so you can watch seedlings sprout, a morning glory climb up a trellis, bees pollinate flowers, or capture the sneaky garden gnome who mysteriously manages to be in a different spot in your garden every morning.

Housed in a weather resistant plastic case, the GardenWatch Cam blends into the garden so you won’t even notice it’s there. At the end of the season, you can download the images and play it back to watch your garden bloom all over again. Take a peek at some of these videos filmed with the GardenWatch Cam.

Seedlings sprouting

Hyacinth blooming

For bird watchers trying to catch a glimpse of visitors to your bird feeder, be sure to check out the BirdWatch Cam.

For all you hip gamers out there, I thought this might interest you. A media company recently announced they are releasing software that will function as a gardening guide for the Nintendo DS. The Royal Horticultural Society has given the ‘Gardening Guide - How to get green fingers’ their offical stamp of approval.

For those of you who don’t know what a Nintendo DS is, let me clairify. It’s the world’s bestselling portable game system.  You’ve probably seen kids hanging around with their gaze glued to the small hand held device.  The Gardening Guide is designed to be more of a guide then a game.  You can plan an existing garden or design a virtual oasis. It has an encyclopedia of over 400 plants, information on pests and disease, as well as tips and advice on growing plants. The guide even comes with a virtual gardener named Paul, who will help you along your virtual gardening journey.

Unfortunately, the Gardening Guide has only just been released in the UK, but hopefully if it’s successful, they’ll soon bring it to North America.