OK spent a decent amount of time working with it yesterday and loading it with data. Ive got a laundry list of usablity issue but overall I think the structure is solid and I can see the data design behind it and this its the right way to design something like this. Great work, after some more upgrades it's better then any of the other garden tracking software Ive tried, good enough to be charging for once its smoothed out a little. I am a 10 year .NET developer as well so I appriciate how complicated some of this could be/get.
1) having to click "new" all the time is unnessasary. Replace with "Save" and "Save as new", also makes cloning much simpler then what is in place.
2) again having to click "New" to create the first entry in a catagory is totally uneeded. Fields shold be enabled assuming new record
3) Custom Events - I can tell the system is actually reporting the date that the filed CHANGE was made instead of using the date (value) of the parameter.
This does not make sence and makes the queries almost useless, it only lines up if you enter the data on the date of the data's value ie day of. This could get complicated.
4) quantity does not really help and the clone grouping is also kinda usless. Grouping should group the plants under a common name and then show those grouped plants under that name in a tree view on the plant panels. Then you could group them under say "Lemon Batch 1" - lemon 1, lemon 2, lemon 3 etc...
5) with named grouping add option for events to apply to all plants in my group
6) some data should be shared within the groups. This gets complicated because youd have to decide what always applys to a specific plant and what can be overloaded by the group values.
7) strains should be tracked as an entity like plants/equip ect... some of the data that belongs to plants should be pulled directly from a strain instead
auto field updates - my biggest issue is that fields dont update automatically, sometimes you have to click around and reload lists in order to get newer values to show up, also the sorting is all messed up when adding new items, the lists should sort automatically on additions and updates. Many fields need to have dependencies created so that updates to one fields reflect on related fields immedietly.
9) some of the tabs could be hidden from the base UI and accessed via popups or models from their parent info tabs, makes it easier to tell say that your adding equipment to a room since you accessed the equip tab from a specific room record. Tabs could always be accessed through a menu option or something like that for global edits. Its just to easy to forget about the drop downs appling say a plant to a room.
Thats the short list, again it is a great start and already better then most of whats out there. The addition of a reporting suite would do alot just because when I think of the questions I would want to ask the software and the types of queries involved it gets insanly complicated in a hurry. I would think nailing down some of these issue would take precidence over adding sensors and the like but in the long run those things could bring it into the world of commercial software quickly. On that front Id personally ask for Insteon support over z-wave and any proprietary techs, its used more often and is easier to work with then the rest. I know its not mac software but being able to do somethign like just read data from say Indigo or some other home management software would be awesome and take the load off of your software actually having to talk to the hardware. I would think most people would have a mangement hardware system already before going to buy sensor hardware to support a free application with no technical support provided.
Beign a .NET app opening it up to a web interface should be simple and OH my goodness would it increase the value of the app. No need to write tablet apps or anything just provide a web UI to the data and bam, ipad,iphone,tablet remote access the whole damn nine yards.
Not knocking the app at all, like I said its probably the best approch to the data Ive seen so far and Im def going to be using it. I just dedicated one of my old laptops to it!
I will be surely using this program soon. What do you think about integration for climate readings into this system: http://www.sonomawineaccessories.com/wine-accessories/wine-cellar-temperature-sensors/wireless-sensor ? It is the cheapest I can find that can remotely tell you of the climate in the room(s).
I know about most everything you mentioned and will eventually work it all out over time, my time available to the project tends to flucuate a lot especially around harvest time 
I've already started a webapp, it's working fine just doesn't support everything yet, it's on google's site only right now and will eventually have full support over time as well.
. I've been using this software (or some version of it) for about 2 years and am very comfortable with its security. On top of that there are many different uses. Since you can reconstruct past plant cycles with the time managed updates, you could create 'ideal' grows for teaching or planning purposes.
