Sprout

Sprout opens on today and tells you what there is to do: what to sow, what to plant out, what to prune, what to graft and what to pick, here and now. It is not an almanac to leaf through. The first screen is already the work: the date, your climate zone, and everything whose window is open today, grouped by job. Entries fade as their window closes, so what is about to end is visible at a glance. SEARCH FOR A PLANT When do you prune a pomegranate? When do you pick it? Type the name — English, Italian or Latin — and you get its whole year: every window drawn across the twelve months, the dates spelled out, and the rule that explains why the pruning falls where it does. Stone fruit is pruned in the warm season because winter cuts invite canker; shrubs that flower on last year's wood are pruned after flowering, or you cut off next year's flowers. 194 PLANTS • 140 vegetables and herbs, with sowing and harvesting for twelve European climate zones • fruit trees: apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry, apricot, olive, grapevine, fig, pomegranate, persimmon, citrus, kiwi, almond, walnut, hazel, chestnut • soft fruit: raspberry, blackberry, currants, gooseberry, blueberry, strawberry • ornamentals: forsythia, lilac, hydrangea, buddleja, rose of Sharon, crape myrtle, camellia, oleander • roses, repeat-flowering, once-flowering and climbing • climbers: wisteria, clematis, jasmine • hedges: bay, cherry laurel, privet, box, photinia • herbs: lavender, rosemary, sage, thyme • bulbs: tulip, daffodil, hyacinth, crocus, dahlia, gladiolus, lily YOUR OWN PLANTS A star keeps a plant among yours, and the «Mine» filter shows only those: somebody with six trees should not have to read the list of all of them. Next to it are the filters by kind — vegetables, fruit, ornamentals, hedges, bulbs — and long sections stop at twelve plants with a «+N» that opens only that one. ANOTHER DAY Tap the date and pick any day of the year: "what is there to do on 20 October?". One tap brings you back to today. CHECK IT, DON'T TAKE IT ON TRUST Every plant links to its Wikipedia entry: what the app says can be verified in one tap. THE PHOTOS 188 plants out of 194 have a photo, and they travel inside the app: they come from Wikimedia Commons, with the author and the licence printed under each one, as the licence requires. YOUR ZONE Dates move with the climate: Milan and Seville do not sow on the same day. Pick the reference city whose weather looks like yours, from twelve European zones, and the calendar moves with you. THE MOON The moon phase is computed for the moment, not read off a table. It is there because many gardeners follow it: the app says as much, and it is tradition, not agronomy. WHAT SPROUT DOES NOT DO • no account, no sign-up • no permissions: no location, no camera, no files • no connection needed: the calendar is inside the app and works in flight mode • no weather and no forecast: this is a calendar, not an oracle WHERE THE DATES COME FROM Sowing and harvesting of edible species come from the Edible Plant Database of the GROW Observatory (University of Dundee, DOI 10.15132/10000157), published under CC BY 4.0. Pruning, grafting, planting out and flowering come from a table written for Sprout, indicative for central and northern Italy. Scientific names are checked against Wikidata; the photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and remain their authors'. Sprout is a calendar, not agronomic advice: your soil and your season count for more than a date. Privacy policy: https://mindcontact.app/mcma-sprout/privacy/