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I'm a newbie. I do fine until I get to the part where it says "Partial shade" or partial sun or whatever. I am never sure how that pertains to my situation. I understand that there is a device that looks like a plastic flower that is actually a sensor of some kind that you stick in the ground in the spot you want to plant something in and leave it there for 24 hours. At the end of the prescribed time you take it out and pull the head off to reveal a USB plug port that you plug into your computer. From what I hear it takes you to a web site where all of the data is uploaded about the spot in your yard and it analyzes the soil and moisture content and tells you what kind of site that is as far as "partial shade/sun" goes and gives you a list of plants that would do well there.
Is any of this true? Does anyone have any experience with it. Does it work. It costs about $60 bucks so any real life experience with it would be greatly appreciated.
You might be better off paying attention to how many hours of sun particular areas of your garden get (also pay attention to whether it's morning sun or afternoon sun), then head over to a local nursery with that information and get some suggestions from them.
Generally 6 or more hours is considered full sun and 4-6 is considered partial, etc but afternoon sun "counts" more than morning sun, and being in a hotter climate also makes the sun count for more (in other words, something that is listed as partial sun might be happy with 5 hrs of afternoon sun in the Northeast, but in FL it may be happier with just morning sun, or maybe it could only handle 3-4 hrs of sun instead of 5-6 that it could take in a cooler climate)
I'm not sure how much the device you're talking about will know about those sort of climate differences, or whether it'll pay attention to the sun being in the AM instead of the PM, etc so before you consider spending $60 on it I would do a little more research and see if it understands those sort of things or not. Either way, your local nursery people ought know what will do well in your area & how much sun things can take so they can give you better (and cheaper!) advice.
