Man, 2020 has been one crazy ride so far, huh? In this midyear post, I will summarize what we’ve accomplished so far in 2020, what we are currently working on, as well as what you can expect from us for the rest of this year. Despite all the crazy around us, we are determined to make this year count. And you should too!
User Content
Users of Sprouted can now sign-in to our backend systems and contribute content to our plant databases. All contributions are tracked and are displayed in the new user profile tab. For now, user profiles and data are only accessible to the currently signed-in user, but as you will see later in this post, this is an important first step toward another valuable feature.
Users can contribute optionally captioned photos of their exceptional specimen plants in our field guides. Our guides are growing slowly and many plants do not yet have photos associated with them. We look to our users for contributions. (Oh, and please, appropriate content only! )
In addition, users can also contribute entirely new plants in our fields guides. The only requirement we have is that it should be in English (for now) and preferably as scientifically accurate as possible. No worries, if you make a typo or your English isn’t perfect. You can edit the plants you contributed at any time. You can even delete them if you no longer wish to share them with us. (Bear in mind, however, that our moderators can edit or even remove content if necessary.)
Plant Packages
We’ve decided to remove in-app-purchases from Sprouted until further notice. Palms is now free and accessible to anyone! Additionally, we have added three new packages, based on feedback from our users.
- Edibles have been added and (will one day) include most fruits and vegetables that people grow in gardens worldwide.
- Conifers is another new package exploring the enormous beauty and grace of this ancient and magnificent tree family.
- Miscellaneous is sort of a catch-all, for any plant that should be in Sprouted, but doesn’t yet have its own category/package assigned to it.
Note: Tropicals is slightly differentiated from Miscellaneous in that it contains most popular houseplants, as well as other exotics from generally warm weather climates. It’s an arbitrary distinction, but can be helpful in some cases.
Honorable Mentions
While user contributed content and the restructuring of our field guides were definitely the biggest changes this year, some other minor features are worth mentioning.
- You must have an iOS 13 capable device in order to take advantage of these new features in Sprouted.
- Drought List: Under the My Plants tab, you will see a new default group, which will always be auto-populated with plants that may require your attention. This list is generated depending on either the plant groups’s default setting (settable either at creation time or by long-pressing on a plant group’s name) or the Approximate Watering Interval slider value in each user-tracked plant detail page.
- Optionally receive a morning reminder at 7:30 AM each morning related to the state of your Drought List. (Note: the time is currently not user configurable.)
- User plant thumbnails are now settable by long-pressing on a user plant photo and selecting Set Thumbnail from the action sheet.
- User plants can now have various states such as Indoor, Outdoor, or Dormant. This feature is a work in progress, but may already be useful to gardeners who, for example, move their indoor plants in-and-out during the warm months.
Sprouted for Android
Many have asked and we’ve listened. A few months ago, development has started on Sprouted for the Android operating system. Currently, it is still very early to predict when the initial ship date will be, but we hope to be shipping an early 1.0 version later this year. Stay tuned for the official announcement as that date approaches. (Note: the initial Android version will only contain the Sprouted 1.0 feature set, as released for iOS in August 2019.)
Marketplace
That’s right. The goal for the rest of this year is the creation of the Sprouted Marketplace. This is where user profiles and contributed content intersect.
The marketplace will allow hobbyists, collectors, nurseries, garden centers, or mom-and-pop plant shops to list or promote plants for sale. The pricing and/or fee structure for how this will happen is currently in development and will be announced prior to official launch. Optionally, users of Sprouted will also be able to share their listings with other popular online plant sale forums, such as Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, etc.
We are incredibly excited to bring these features to Sprouted, as we are certain it will bring huge benefits to your plant buying and selling needs. Looking for rare seeds? Look it up in Sprouted! Add the plant species or cultivar to our database, if it isn’t already available, and post a wanted listing. Have too many seedlings of a particularly rare species and want to ship or do you prefer local pickups only? Not a problem! Just create a listing with your terms and let the community respond.
We are hoping to build the Marketplace in a way that will make searching for plants easier than ever by bringing together like-minded individuals and companies through the power of the internet.
We are really looking forward to it and we hope that you are too! Stay tuned for updates! Leave a comment or write to us and tell us your thoughts.
Thanks for reading!
