The #GeekyGardener
Ideas, Products, Tips & Tricks
Download Presentation Handouts
- September 9, 2018 – 90 Tech Tips for Gardeners in 90 Minutes: Virginia Master Naturalist State Convention (.pdf)
- October 10, 2018 – Documenting Plants with PlantsMap.com: Virginia Native Plant Society, Charlottesville, VA (.pdf)
- April 19, 2019 – 30 in 30 #GeekyGardener Products, Tips & Tricks, Webinar (Handout .pdf) / (Video playback)
- April 30, 2019 – 60 Ideas, Products, Tips & Tricks – Horticultural Horizons Symposium, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Richmond, VA (.pdf)
TECHNOLOGY IS ANY TOOL THAT HELPS MAKE A TASK EASIER
The first evidence of the use of technology humans have identified was the use of rocks as a tool. Some animals use tools but for the most part, it is humans that are known as tool-using animals.
TOOLS
- DeWit Serrated Farmers Dagger (Hori Hori)
- Dramm RedHead 1000 PL Water Breaker®
- Corona 8” Folding RazorTOOTH Saw®
- Bionic Gardening Gloves
- Okatsune 101 Bypass Pruners
- Power Planter® Auger
- Cobrahead® Weeder and Cultivator
- Calipers
- Fabric Tape Measure for Forestry Use
- Ben’s® InvisiNet
- BugBaffler® Insect Repellant Clothing
- Nikon Monarch 7 8×42 ATB
- Arlo™ Cameras
- Seedling Square: Seed Spacer for Planting
WEBSITES & APPS
- WolframAlpha.com
- vTree & Dendrology – Virginia Tech
- USDA Plants Database
- InvasivePlantAtlas.org
- Armitage’s Great Garden Plants
- Citizen Science Idea Database – SciStarter®
- USA National Phenology Network
- Monarch Watch Monarch Waystation
- US FWS Monarch Conservation Database
- iNaturalist.org
- The Garden Conservancy Habitat Network (No Longer Operating)
- NWF Garden For Wildlife
- Bee Habitat Certification for Schools and Cities
- Plant Trees While You Search The Web
- Find Interesting Communities on Twitter
- Buffer: Social Media Scheduling
- Virginia Cooperative Extension Video Series
- Million Pollinator Garden Challenge
- ArbNet: Morton Register of Arboreta
- WSDA Fertilizer Database
- If This Then That – IFTTT
PLANTSMAP.COM
- Connecting People With Plants®
- PlantsMap.com Plant Finder
- Who Uses PlantsMap.com?
- Interactive Plant Tags & Signs
- Virginia Master Naturalist Custom Logo Tags
- Prepaid state logo on file available to any Virginia VMN Chapter
- PlantsMap.com Interactive NFC Plant Tags & Signs (Coming Soon!)
GROW TECH
- Fin to Flower Aquaponic Aquariums
- ROOT PRUNING AND MESH POTS
- Air Pots
- Spring Pots
- Pond Pots
- Trash Can Fertilizer
- WeatherFlow WEATHERmeter
- Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller
- Basewell™ Rooting Technology
- Rootwell™ Watering Systems
- Mist Timer II
- LED Grow Lights
- How to Move a Cactus
MAPS
- Large Touch Screens are Moving Outdoors
- U.S. National Grid Emergency Location Markers
- Map Art
- Right Click on Google Maps for Latitude/Longitude
- Google Street View Time Machine
- Measure Polygons or Distance in Google Earth
DRONES
- DroneDeploy 2D Maps
- DroneDeploy 3D Models
- DroneDeploy Plant Heath Maps
- Pix4dCapture Mission Planning
- Pix4dFields Image Analysis
- How Tall Is That Tree?
- DJI Quadcopters
- Parrot Quadcopters & Fixed Wing UAVs
WEATHER
- Weems & Plath Mariner’s Stormglass
- Mike’s Weather Page
- Tropical Tidbits
- WXRisk
- RadarScope
- Real-Time Lightning Maps
- BloomSky
- Davis Weather Stations
- D-Link 505 Wireless Router
- Meteobridge
- Ambient Weather – All In One Stations
- Citizen Weather Observation Network
- Earth Networks / WeatherBug Schools
- WunderMap
- Weather Underground: 250,000+ Stations
- Weather Station Quality Reporter
- NOAA – Historical Hurrican Tracks
- Interactive Weather Maps by Pivotal Weather
- Cyclocane – Cyclone and Hurricane Tracker
- What is it doing out there right now? Davis Hill Weather Stick
PHOTOGRAPHY
- Yoobao 10000mAh Slim Powerbank
- CloudConvert
- Infragram by Public Lab
- Store & Find Your Pictures with Google Photos
- Organize your Digital Photos with Photo Mechanic
- EXIF: When & where was that photo taken?
- Meike Battery Grip w/ 2.4g Wireless Trigger
- Smartphone Lens Attachments
- Blip Lenses for Smartphones
- Painting with Light
- KolariVision 850nm Infrared Conversion
Bill Blevins, Cofounder
PlantsMap.com
bill@plantsmap.com
Plant Geek Bio
Bill is an avid plant collector and is known to try and grow anything that might survive in Zone 7. On a 2-acre lot in Spotsylvania, VA, he and his wife Tracy are growing over 1800 taxa of plants. Bill has also been an early adopter of just about every high-tech gadget that’s been introduced in the past 40 years. Bill is constantly thinking about how technology can help his plants and landscape. He was trained as a photojournalist and pursue that career for 10 years but then turned his attention to the Internet in the mid-1990s and went on to run some of the largest websites in the United States. In 2014 he started PlantsMap.com and is now helping gardeners and organizations all over the world document their plant collections. Bill has collected over 300 conifers and is an active member of the American Conifer Society and serves on the non-profit committee with the National Institute of Consumer Horticulture. He is also a member of the American Rose Society, American Iris Society, American Hosta Society, Arbor Day, National Garden Bureau, American Horticultural Association and American Hort.
Bill’s More Boring Professional Bio
Bill Blevins has more than 25 years of experience in the media industry. As Vice President of New Business Development for GateHouse Media, Inc., located in Fairport, NY from 2009 – 2012, he was responsible for developing a business that sells digital marketing services and tools to SMBs to help them manage and more efficiently communicate with their customers using social media and their traditional websites. These tools and services included reputation management monitoring, email marketing, Commerce, mobile website creation and hosting, social media messaging management, text messaging, online presence management, SEO, SEM, and social media advertising. From 2006 – 2009, Mr. Blevins was the Vice President of Online Operations for GateHouse Media. In that role, he was a key member of a team that completed a successful initial public offering (IPO) in Oct. 2006 that led to over $1.5 billion in newspaper and Internet acquisitions over the next 18 months. Mr. Blevins was responsible for designing and implementing a global online strategy, centralizing core digital technologies shared by more than 465 websites and he had P&L; responsibility for digital sales of more than $28 million in 2009. Bill Blevins joined the Board of Directors of Search Initiatives in 2006. He was formerly Vice President of Online Operations with Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. (CNHI) located in Birmingham, AL, from 2004 to 2006. From 1990 to 2004, Mr. Blevins held several newsroom and online management positions, including Director of Photography and Internet Director running Fredericksburg.com, for The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co. Inc., of Fredericksburg, VA. In December 2000, Bill received the Newspaper Association of America’s “20 under 40”; award honoring 20 people under 40 years of age who have had a significant positive impact on the newspaper industry. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the School of Fine Arts and Communications at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA.