Technology can now help gardeners get a green thumb. NY1's Technology reporter Adam Balkin filed the following report.

If your thumbs are slightly less than green, technology can easily help reverse that trend.

"Technology is really trying to take the guess work out of it because
most of us don't have scientific labs where we can test how much water our plants has versus how much it needs, or what's the temperature of the soil," says Natali Del Conte of CNET.com.

The $60 Easy Bloom Plant Sensor, seen above, detects such traits in soil.

"You just plug it into your soil and it's able to take readings of the
soil, how many nutrients are in there, how much sunlight is there," says Del Conte. "And then you plug the USB stick that comes out of the measuring tool into your computer and it's going to tell you what plants should be grown in that space."

If that seems intimidating, the $40 Prepara Powerplant Mini allows plants to be grown without soil and only using water.

"So when you have your seedlings you can just put them in here and get any plant started," says Del Conte.

Real techies can keep their plants going with the Botanicalls system, which uses a soddering iron to help plants use the social networking website Twitter.

"You'll take these little [metal] readers. Once you put it together, you'll stick it in the soil and then it'll send you a [message through] Twitter that your plant needs watering or your plant is overwatered or it needs some sunlight."

Finally, if Mother Earth really does not want any more soil put to waste, one can practice with a virtual garden on the Nintendo DS.

Made by the same developers of Cooking Mama, the $30 Gardening Mama game lets players plant and grow all sorts of virtual flowers, fruits and vegetables, and sow and care for crops with the use of a stylus.

After all, it could be a confidence booster to enjoy the fruits of one's labor in just minutes, rather than weeks or even months.