The Gardens Across Iowa! App™

Invented by Sondra Wilson, the The Gardens Across Iowa!™ App is what makes the Gardens Across Iowa!™ Campaign and Right to Garden Act feasible.

Phase I: The Gardens Across Iowa!™ Google Calendar (prototype to create App – see Phase II)

In order to develop the App, first we’re building the Gardens Across Iowa!™ Google Calendar. It integrates directly into the your current Google Calendar to provide you with:

  • Precise dates to plant various garden crops based on Iowa’s frost date (~April 20). For example:
    • On Jan. 26, users receive this notification, “Two weeks from now is the ideal time to begin germinating hot and bell peppers indoors. Here are the supplies you will need…” Soon you will be able to purchase any supplies you don’t have right through the Calendar (which in turn helps support this project). We are only seeking the best, most affordable products in order to save you time on research.
    • On Feb. 9 the Calendar will alert you with this notification that it is time to germinate your peppers. 
    • On May 1 you will receive this notification, “Ten days from now it will be time to transplant your pepper sprouts into the garden. Now is the time to harden your plants and prepare the soil.” Again users click the notification to receive directions for doing these two tasks.
    • On May 11 you receive this notification to transplant them into the garden, again with step-by-step directions.

The Calendar contains several entries for various crops now, however with your support Wild Willpower PAC will be able to hire our student-led team to:

  • Vastly improve the entries we currently have in place (including adding photos), and
  • Add numerous entries for a wide variety of garden crops and herbs.

The Calendar also groups each plant with their companion plants. For example, corn, beans, and squash grow exceptionally well together. Beets and turnips are also companion plants. The Calendar integrates companion planting techniques throughout to make planning your garden simple and fun.

There are also many plants that should not be grown next to each other which are also indicated within the Calendar.

Additionally, we are vacuuming the internet to collect the most efficient, aesthetically-pleasing techniques we can find. Here are just a few examples:

Double-planter technique for potatoes

A clean, simple, portable way to grow potatoes, allowing gardeners to simply lift the inner pot to pluck potatoes. A great way to maximize space within your garden. To grow potatoes earlier in the season while there is still danger of frost, put a tarp over the ground to enjoy an earlier harvest.

Cucumber tipi

Vine cucumbers love to hang, allowing them to grow larger and longer, with stronger vines, and without yellowing and flattening on the underside. The large leaves grow up the tipi and provide shade to retain water within. Cucumbers like a lot of water, so this creates a perfect environment for the fruits to thrive.

Rain gutter-planter hanging strawberries

A semi-shady overhang to guard the plants beneath from direct sun doesn’t get more gorgeous than this:

 

Oh my gourd! – what a gourdgeous tunnel!!

Advertising Opportunity for Businesses = Discounts & Special Offers for Calendar Users

At the bottom of each of the Calendar’s database entries, our sponsors will be listed along with their logo, a link to their website, and a special offer available to the user that is available exclusively through Gardens Across Iowa!™. Users can activate this offer in two ways:

  • Coming into the business and saying, “Thank you for helping to sponsor Gardens Across Iowa.” This allows our sponsors to hear firsthand gratitude from Iowans who appreciate that businesses are helping to make this possible, and provides our users with an opportunity to consider that these businesses do in fact care, and are doing something very important to help the community and the environment.
  • If a business provides sales through their website, a link may be provided that users can click which brings them to a page to make the purchase where the exclusive discount or offer is available. 

Not only will can you use the Calendar/App to plan your gardens, you can also use it to shop deals and find discounts locally! This could be 10% of any select types of products, “buy one get one free”, or whatever offer our sponsors choose to make.

This will get more exciting once the App is developed (see Phase II below), however as we’re developing the Calendar, we will work to equitably place different businesses at the top of each entry so that all businesses are as visible as possible throughout the Calendar. If at some point in the future we find a way to make location service based advertising available within the Calendar, as described within Phase II, we will do that.