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MauritiusToday.com - Shopping Mall - EasyBloom Plant Sensor
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List Price: $59.95
Our Price: $59.95
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Plant Sense
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Batteries Included: 1
Binding: Lawn & Patio
Brand: PlantSense
EAN: 0895564002016
Feature: Access the EasyBloom database of 5,000+ plants (developed with the largest growers of plants and flowers)
Is Autographed: 0
Label: Plant Sense
Manufacturer: Plant Sense
Model: 1000
Publisher: Plant Sense
Studio: Plant Sense
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Features
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Access the EasyBloom database of 5,000+ plants (developed with the largest growers of plants and flowers)
Find plants to thrive in every area of your home and garden, based on algorithms developed by leading plant horticulturalists and botanists
Diagnose ailing plants and bring them back to health
Keep inventory of your own plants for one-click plant care
End the discouraging cycle of trial-and-error planting. Saves you money and time!
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Editorial Reviews:
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EasyBloom Plant Sensor helps you enjoy beautiful, flourishing plants--easily and without guesswork! It will recommend plants for specific locations, tell you why a plant is doing poorly and more. The EasyBloom Plant Sensor has environmental sensors to detect sunlight, shade and soil moisture levels, plus a USB plug to connect to your computer. EasyBloom can tell you what plants will thrive in a specific spot in your home or yard, what is wrong with an ailing plant and how to help it, and even whether a plant needs more water or not. It gives you access to a database with information on more than 5,000 plants--you can even create a personal plant database online, to help you monitor and care for all your plants, houseplants and outdoor plants alike. Best of all, EasyBloom is very easy to use. First, plug EasyBloom into a USB port on your computer and select Recommend' (to get plant recommendations for specific locations) or Monitor' (to help evaluate a weak plant). Second, place EasyBloom in the spot where you would like to grow a plant, or next to the plant that needs monitoring and leave it for 24 hours. Finally, plug EasyBloom back into a USB port--sensor data will upload to the EasyBloom website, which will use that data to either recommend plants or diagnose a plant's problem. Compatible with Windows Vista/XP and Mac OS 10.5+ (effective January 2009). Uses 1 AAA battery (included). 11 1/2" tall, 1 1/2" wideWhat EasyBloom can do for you Recommend plants for specific locations in your home or garden, based on sunlight, shade and soil conditions. Diagnose an ailing plant and suggest how to help it thrive. Tell you whether a plant needs to be watered. Help you create a personal plant database online with care, maintenance and planting info.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great holiday gift!
Comment: I have to admit that I am a gardening newbie. I want to make my yard look nicer and can certainly do my own planting, but am always stumped by not knowing what will work where.. This is the product that helps me with that. As to the earlier comment about soil and fertility testing, that would be good but I live in California and that never tends to really be a big issue in most places. It is usually water and light..
Anyway, love the product and I am buying a few more as Xmas gifts for my sisters.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent and Fun Flower
Comment: This has been a fun and enjoyable gift for my wife. She uses it in both her personal and school garden. Even the kids have fun tracking the water, sunlight and more for their garden vegetables. I highly recommend this sensor - take some of the guesswork out of gardening!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Save Your Plants - Make The Right Decisions!
Comment: I'm a landscape architect specializing in design, construction and planning. I am not an expert in plant materials like a botanist. The `easy Bloom' was a real eye opener for me. It has a library of thousands of plants with detailed descriptions of anything a botanist or ordinary `garden-variety' gardener would want to know. It is virtually an on-line encyclopedia and more expansive than the Western Garden Book.
Some of the options were: Plant recommendations, Environmental Conditions, Edit (later info) and Notes (personal). Searching for a certain plant, you can choose: Bloom Color, Bloom Season, Foliage, Characteristics, Special features, Height, Plant Type, Shape/Form and Soil Type.
There are SO MANY options. I decided to try it on indoor and outdoor plants, but finally decided to share just one problem spot I have. On my deck I have a large potted barrel about two feet high by three feet in diameter with good loamy soil. Oddly, nothing seems to really do well there. So I planted the `easy Bloom' in the dirt for 24 hours. Then I placed the USB stick into my computer and was asked to refine my plant choices by: Bloom Color, Bloom Season, Foliage characteristics, Special features, Height, Plant Type, Shape/Form and Soil Type.
I picked through all the options of what I wanted and within a few seconds, the `best' plants choices for my barrel were for:
Height: fern (American Maidenhair), Hyacinth, Tulip, Carpet Bugle, Lily, Coleus.
Bloom (of nine colors I chose red): Coleus, Tulip, Geranium.
Environmental Conditions told me for that 24 hour period: Average temp was (51-55 degrees) with mostly midday sun and moderate to fairly high humidity.
The final plant choices for my outside deck barrel for all options were: Coleus, Geranium and Friendship Plant. Now that I know what will look best year round for my barrel, I can just move to each pot, garden area or indoor pot and get several great choices.
Next I plan on choosing why my indoor `Climbing Onion' that is going through dormancy, will need to survive and thrive. I'll be ready for the spring!
I have never seen a plant monitor like this that is so extensive or thorough with thousands of plants and analysis. This is a must for any serious gardener - especially those who think they know it all (and I know quite a few of those). Just be prepared - after owning one of these, they WILL know it all!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mac-ward incompatible. Overall inconvenient
Comment: I have this peony plant that I love, but it just doesn't seem to want to stay alive. It hasn't died yet, but it isn't exactly flourishing either. I was really looking forward to the EasyBloom Plant Sensor to help me with my woes.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to use it. This is not a product that is useable right out of the box. It works in tandem with downloaded software from the maker's website, which is currently only available for PCs. Mac users get a nice little message saying that Mac support should be coming soon, and they will e-mail you when it is available.
I'm not a big fan of products that require you to register at and use their website in order for the product to work. There are too many "required fields" in the registration process, and it seems like they are gathering more information than necessary just to get the sensor to work. I feel I should be able to buy the hardware, pop in a CD if necessary, and then get to work.
Even if/when the Mac support becomes available, this device requires a permanent relationship with the website. If the company goes under and the website comes down, then the EasyBloom Plant Sensor becomes just so much colorful garbage.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mostly for beginning gardeners
Comment: When I received the EasyBloom Plant Sensor, I was excited because I had been struggling to grow plants on my new property despite years of gardening experience. This product promised to recommend and monitor my plants to determine what was going wrong. Unfortunately, it measures nothing more than I could tell by sticking my own finger in the soil and watching the shadows for a day: moisture and light. Yes, it measures temperature and relative humidity, but those vary both daily and seasonally and can be figured out by walking out the door. It does not analyze the soil -- probably the most crucial information that cannot be intuitively known -- for type, fertility, toxicity, and acidity. You must discover and enter this yourself on the web site.
The monitor setting does basically the same thing, only over a longer time so you can see the moisture and light fluctuations over a longer period of time; again, it cannot diagnose over- or under-fertilization, incorrect acidity, compacted or too sandy soil, diseases, or pests, the most common reasons a plant dies. The EasyBloom can take a snapshot of the location for future reference.
Probably the best part of the device is the web interface that provides detailed information on recommended plants. Yes, this information can be found online or in a good plant book, but the site shows thumbnail photos of the plants that can then lead the user to a more detailed description, including care, known pests, height, growing zones, attractiveness to birds, shape, etc. I really would have liked a "deer resistant" option; maybe they will add that in the future. Strangely enough, the site does not recommend the plants that *are* thriving in my landscape.
Beginning gardeners will find this device much more useful than experienced ones since they may not yet know how to use light conditions (shade, partial shade, afternoon sun, etc.) and soil moisture content to select the proper plants for an area. Unfortunately, they are also the ones who might over-fertilize or select the wrong plant for the soil type.
Although the EasyBloom is not comprehensive enough for advanced help, it would make a good housewarming gift for someone's first home. I'll be the first in line when they upgrade the device to include soil testing and fertility.
Note: As of this writing, this device is compatible only with Windows. The company says that the Mac version of the software should be available on December 15, 2008, in time for the holidays.
-- Debbie Lee Wesselmann
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