How to Use Smart Tech to Help Your Garden Thrive
Nearly half of American households use smart devices in their home. This I can relate to: my new house is filled with smart tech–smart shades, thermostats, garages, and lighting–so it got me wondering if I could also use these types of tools in the garden. Indeed, smart tech can be helpful outside as well to track weather, water more efficiently, mow and weed the lawn, and monitor plant growth to help save time, stress, and money so we can focus more on enjoying our special time in the garden.
Smart gardening encompasses any technology that can help you grow plants and maintain your garden remotely using apps, automation, and AI. "In the realm of gardening and landscaping, technology has truly blossomed," says Lorraine Thompson, CEO and founder of Best Florist Review. "Smart gardening tools can save time, reduce human error, and even promote environmental sustainability. It’s an exciting era for home gardeners and landscapers, with technology enabling us to be more efficient, effective, and eco-conscious than ever before."
Here are a few smart gardening gadgets to explore for your outdoor space.
Smart Sprinklers and Irrigation Systems
Gone are the days when you need to stand outside and water your lawn by hand. With smart irrigation, you can conveniently schedule and control sprinklers remotely through an app and even set watering based on weather forecasts. This helps prevent unnecessary watering, which reduces both your water bills and your impact on the environment. While automated irrigation systems have been around for some time, their technology has evolved substantially. According to landscape architect Rituparna Simlai, principal at Studio Arth, "Beyond having rain sensors, smart sprinklers can detect breaks and leaks, conserve water, and adapt to weather changes."
Rhonda Fleming Hayes, garden writer and author of Pollinator Friendly Gardening, credits having a smart irrigation system with making it much easier to keep her gardens going, especially when she’s not home. She uses a smart irrigation system to manage both of her gardens in New Orleans and Minneapolis. "It has been a real game changer. I save time and reduce anxiety. It is so easy to use, and I can customize the water. I am amazed how it works every time," she notes.
One company making strides in this industry is Irrigreen. According to CEO Shane Dyer, the Irrigreen system essentially "prints" water. "Irrigreen uses precise technology to digitally map out where water is needed, which can reduce water usage by 50 percent," he explains. Instead of haphazardly spraying water like a traditional irrigation system, the sprinkler heads have 14 printer ports that print water at exact distances and precise patterns to lay an even coat of water across your lawn. This helps prevent swampy and dry spots on the grass. Irrigreen also uses machine learning that leverages hyper-local weather data to accurately predict the exact amount of water your lawn needs. "It’s a much more elevated and thoughtful way to think about irrigation," says Dyer. "We built something to grow the greenest grass and do something ecological."
Smart Plant Sensors
Smart plant sensors or meters collect and share data, including moisture, temperature, light levels, humidity, and soil nutrients, to your smartphone via Bluetooth. Simply insert it into the soil in the garden, raised bed, or plant pot to view real-time information about what your plants need to thrive. Many provide notifications to make sure you water the right amount at the right time.
Homeowner Emrecan Dogan thinks the standout benefit of smart plant sensors is their ability to provide live data. "By receiving accurate information on soil moisture levels and weather conditions, I can tailor my gardening efforts with precision, resulting in healthier plants and reduced resource usage."
There are various brands and models to choose from online and in home and garden stores, including ECOWITT WH51 Soil Moisture Sensor Soil Humidity Tester, RAINPOINT Soil Moisture Meter, and WANFEI Plant Monitor.
Robotic Lawn Mowers
While some people might enjoy spending time outdoors mowing their lawn, others prefer to outsource this tedious task to a lawn service. Now there’s also another option: smart robotic mowers. Available for lawns of all shapes and sizes, smart mowers are quiet and easy to set up and program. Many include features like a rain sensor, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity, a mobile companion app, flexible scheduling capabilities, and the ability to change activity based on weather.
These tools are on the pricey end as far as smart garden technology is concerned, ranging from over $700 for the most basic models to several thousand dollars for higher end ones. Also, keep in mind that you will need to install perimeter wire to keep the robot on your lawn.
Jeremy Yamaguchi, CEO of Lawn Love, a company bringing high-tech solutions to the lawn care industry, says, "A robotic mower can be worth it for most people if it's something you can afford. Not only does it save you lots of time, but it's more efficient. This means your lawn will last longer and you can get a lot more mileage out of it before you have to replant."
Electric Sheep, a landscaping service that uses robot mowers, provides smart tools so customers don’t have to deal with the hassle of mowing their own lawn. Nag Murty, CEO of the company, is excited about how they have used AI so the mower can recognize surroundings and chart its own path. "This is the next generation. It’s using AI at its core to make sense of the world around it," he notes. "As AI gets better, you can start to identify certain types of weeds to be very targeted about how to deploy weed killers and fertilizers and how to water your lawn." While AI is expected to gain traction in the coming years, it’s also important to remember that the technology isn’t always perfect—plus, sometimes we still want to get our hands dirty in our garden and enjoy the beauty of nature.
Weeding Robots
Weeding is one of the more unpleasant chores when it comes to outdoor work. Now, for a few hundred dollars, you can buy a robot to handle this cumbersome work. Smart weeders typically use a focused laser technology to target weeds without harming nearby plants in your yard.
Dandy Technology offers two different types of lawn weeding robots depending on the size of your lawn. According to their website, the robot is easy to set up and connect to your smartphone using their app. You draw in the lawn and determine a home position for the robot. Once charged, add the herbicide of your choice, place it down on the lawn, and then press the Play button. It says it detects over 95 percent of the weeds in your lawn and sprays them with a small amount of the herbicide.
Tertill’s weeding robot, from the inventor of Roomba, is another option. This self-charging, solar-powered machine uses specially designed wheels to churn up the soil and destroy weed seeds as they germinate. It also has a weedwhacker to take care of any weeds that do end up sprouting. "We market the robot to vegetable gardeners because usually a vegetable garden is laid out the right way for the robot to easily work," explains Helen Greiner, advisor at Tertill. "It is so easy to use. Just put it on the ground and press a button. Leave it out all growing season and take it out before the first frost." If you’re wondering if it works, it’s been proven as effective as hand weeding by the Cornell School of Agriculture.
Smart Weather Stations
Another way to stay on top of your garden is by installing a smart weather station on your property. They measure temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed and direction, and rainfall in real-time, sending updates directly to your smartphone. Some have add-ons like air quality, soil moisture, and solar exposure. With so many different wired and wireless options available at various price points, it will take some research to figure out which weather station is the best fit for your needs.
Having access to this uber-local weather data and forecasts can help you decide when to water your plants, helping you save time and money while giving your garden the best care possible. And because it’s all online, you can react quickly and control irrigation from afar. Some systems also give you the option to send your data to Weather Underground, Weather Bug, Weather Cloud, and Ambient Weather Network to be part of a larger community and contribute to citizen science.
Photographer and gardener Mark Turner invested in a home weather station because he wanted access to information about what was happening in his vegetable garden. "We invested in a service that stores the information online so we can download data over a period of time and look at trends," he says. "There’s an app that I can tune into on my phone that lets me see all of that data. We use the rain information to determine our watering schedule and it also lets us know how cold it was during the night in winter months to help us judge if some plants might not make it through the cold spell." After using the device for about a year, he believes it is accurate and completely reliable.
If you are ready to smarten up your gardening care, consider investing in one of these technologies. Just keep in mind that these solutions can never replace spending quality time outdoors. Instead of thinking that smart tech can do all the work for you, consider how it can free up your time so you can spend more of your day in the garden doing what you love.
Top image by Alexi Hobbs and originally found in Split the Difference
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