We have seen MIT students making robots to tend on their plants. Now Fuji Heavy Industries has created a robot that can completely take care of your fruits and vegetables in your fields (or greenhouse) for a modest fee of only $100,000. You can pick up your own by the next fiscal year. It uses lasers with reflective panels to orient itself and is 6.5 feet long, unfortunately there…
Well this is pretty much clichéd nerdiness but given it only required a couple of lines of C# I couldn’t resist. I have updated my grow box software to “tweet” some sort of semi-humorous and not really witty comment appropriate to its current state and share its current temperature and moisture content every 2.5 hours. For those who want to do something similar, this is how I did it. …
If it were up to me every part of my landscaping would be edible. Though my homeowners association may disagree with me but blueberry bushes looks just as nice as any ornamental plant/bush when you visit the nursery with the obvious bonus of free food. When selecting a blueberry bush, unless you are very patient spend about $10 a plant and get some more established ones (about 1/2 inch…
Though I have made some significant changes to the grow box controller, the actual grow box has undergone some minor but important changes over the past few months. Automated watering Now I must say this one is pretty darn simple. Though I will be planning on a slightly more complicated hydroponic setup later I decided to start with a very easy bottom watering technique. Just take a regular old…
Last February my 7-year-old daughter and I attended the Northwest Flower and Garden show for the first time, which is back on next year if you haven’t yet heard the good news. During our visit my daughter purchased a single dahlia tuber from Swan Island Dahlias. We carefully followed the detailed planting instructions and it grew to about 5 feet by the end of the summer, though there were…
Whether you are trying to determine if those seeds you have been stored for 3-4 years are still good or questioning your ability to harvest seeds on your own testing germination is a great way to take away from of the guesswork and avoid disappointment next spring. The process is very simple, I believe I did the same thing in second grade during our plant section. Though that was…
Well slightly more exciting than watching grass grow but for something that takes several weeks to complete is definitely worth a watch. If you watch carefully you can even see the automatic watering in action. Joining the sprouts is a mature pepper plant which has been flowering and daisy seedling my 7 year old planted hoping it will flower as well.
Though the advice on the back of a seed packet gives some great information, they are recommendations and their advice may not exactly apply to your garden. First is row spacing, many times you read something like “plant seeds 3 inches apart in rows 1 foot apart” This brings up some immediate logic of why can the plants be 3 inches apart one way but 12 inches in another. …
With the summer starting to come to a close it has been time for me to start thinking back to the computerized grow box. I have been doing some considerable work on the electronics and software over the summer. Better to break stuff while the plants are outside and not while killing them inside. Though I have been happy with my homemade gypsum soil sensors I decided to try…
My four five year old has been patiently been waiting for the “color sunflower” she planted from seed at a friends house this spring to finally bloom. Every morning she will run to the kitchen window and check on its progress. It turns out the sunflower was waiting to share her blooms on my daughter’s birthday which was definitely one of her favorite presents that day. Here she is…
Your mission, should you decide to accept it is to infiltrate a local farmers market to gain intelligence to help aid your personal garden. Sure, the farmers market is a great place to find some fresh food you can’t or didn’t have time/space to grow in your garden. It is also a great place to get seeds/starts for your garden. It is also a great resource to figure out…
UPDATE: With weather climbing my grow box got up to 111.5 degrees today with the lights off. If I was using one of those fancy computers with temperature sensors it would have turned itself off by now. Turning off computer so I will have something working this winter… [July 25, 2009] I was planning on growing my jalapeno peppers in my grow box this summer, but given the higher…