If you enjoy gardening as a way to unplug from technology, you may initially be hesitant about the concept of smart gardening. However, incorporating garden technology can ultimately benefit you by saving time, money, and energy. Additionally, it can aid in developing gardening expertise, especially for those new to the hobby.
Whether it comes in the form of a smart plant monitor, an indoor smart garden, or a smart irrigation system, it can simplify your tasks and enhance plant care. This will give you time to focus on some of the more pleasurable aspects of gardening.
Smart plant monitors
Hi-tech sensors for indoor plants are devices that you push into the soil next to them. The sensors are often solar-powered and connect wirelessly by WiFi or Bluetooth to a smartphone or laptop. They can measure light, humidity, and moisture levels, and even analyze the soil.
You can receive regular notifications about how your plants are doing, and whether they need a nutrient boost or water top-up.
Garden Planners
Hortisketch by Garden Savvy is an online garden planning platform. You can plan and design a custom garden layout based on your needs and preferences. It will help you to space your plants correctly according to their growth patterns. You are able to visualize the plants and other elements so you can arrange them in an aesthetically pleasing way.
For Mac users, there’s a handy trick to make tools like these even more accessible. By using site-specific browser technology you can turn almost any website into an app that functions almost like a native macOS app. When you create an app from website with SSB technology it will have similar navigation features and functionality to a native app.
You can learn how to make a website an app using the MacOS default Automator utility. This gives you an idea of the type of functionality this offers. To add more customization and functionality when you turn a website to an app, you can use various third party SSB tools.
Smart Garden Systems
Indoor smart gardens are self-contained systems. All you need to do is to sow seed and the unit will do the rest. It can provide light, customize temperature levels, and automate watering.
For indoor smart gardening, there are many different kits available that can help you grow tasty herbs such as chives, basil, and salad greens. A kit will usually contain seed pods, LED grow lights, and water tanks that you only need to fill every two to three weeks. Another indoor garden growing system is one that helps you to grow microgreens which are high in nutrients.
If you live in an apartment or condo, indoor growing systems will provide a useful way for you to grow herbs and food. The best indoor plant growing system will be user-friendly and have mobile app integrations. When choosing an indoor growing system, you will have to decide what best suits your purposes.
There are lighter models that you can move around or bigger ones that take up more space but can hold up to 36 plants at once.
Gardening Apps
A gardening app can help you with garden design, identifying plants, where to place irrigation, and much more.
PictureThis is a free app you can download in the App Store or Google Play. You can upload a photo of your plant to identify it and get information about it. This includes the light, water, and soil requirements. You can access FAQs and share your photo and plant description with friends via text.
From Seed to Spoon is a free app that makes it simple for you to grow herbs, fruits, and vegetables in a backyard, on a patio, or in an indoor food garden. It offers you a menu of fruits and vegetables you can plant in a virtual ‘grow box’. Some of the app features are:
- Personalized planting dates
- Estimated sprouting dates
- Reminders and notifications
- Companion planting
- Organic best treatments and beneficial insects
- Health benefits of plants
- Recipes
Smart sprinklers
Too much or too little water kills plants. Fortunately, you can buy smart controllers for pre-installed sprinkler systems that work with an app. You can use the app to customize the watering schedule, adjust it to accommodate the weather, determine breaks or leaks in the system, and save water.
Conclusion
You no longer need a green thumb to make sure your plants flourish, whether you are doing outdoor or indoor gardening. Smart indoor gardening technology such as smart sensors can help you get the growing conditions correct when growing plants indoors.
Smart indoor gardens will control all the conditions for you so you can benefit from growing herbs, etc. even when living in a small apartment. Garden planners and smart sprinkler systems will help you plan your outdoor garden and keep it lush and green.