gardening
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The influencers of pandemic gardening
To the untrained eye, Kevin Espiritu’s garden is an overflowing hodgepodge of containers: stackable planters growing beans, herbs in traditionally narrow windowsill planters and a variety of trellises inside canvas grow bags. The front yard is packed tightly with raised vegetable beds made from sheets of corrugated metal, and a loquat tree sits in the corner, heavy with fruit. Getting a personal tour via Zoom feels like a treat after watching hours of Espiritu’s gardening tutorials, where he rarely features his front yard in its entirety.
How to grow a quarantine garden when you’re tight on space
With the COVID-19 outbreak potentially disrupting the nation's food supply, now is a great time to learn to grow your own fresh vegetables.
LG's first indoor gardening appliance helps beginners grow vegetables
LG wants to hop on the vegetarian bandwagon, and it's venturing into unfamiliar territory to make that happen. The company will use CES 2020 to launch its first-ever indoor gardening appliance. The modular device you see at left grows lettuce, arugula, basil and other plants by matching outdoor conditions through time-sensitive LED lighting, air circulation and fine-grained water control. All you need to do is plant all-in-one seed packages (with fertilizer and peat moss) and keep an eye on your crop through a mobile app. Even a "complete novice" could grow a garden with this device, if you believe LG.
The Grow connected planter is the ultimate no-fuss gardening kit
Horticulturalists looking to go high-tech will find no shortage of smart sensors to stick in their soil, sending data to their phones on particulars like water level, temperature and soil pH. However, even systems that hold your hand as much as possible still make a few assumptions -- namely, that you already have a garden. After all, no budding gardener is really going to make a set of sensors their first purchase. More likely, they'll buy plants, dirt and a pot and then have no idea what to do next. The new Grow Duo offers something a lot less piecemeal: Drop your $200 on the company's site, and get a connected planter, soil and even the seeds. It's everything you need to jumpstart your gardening ambitions within minutes.
Gnome is a smart garden system for urban horticulturalists
There are quite a few connected gardening products out there to help you grow and nourish plants. But most of them involve smart pots or indoor hydroponic solutions: Perfect for beginners or casual hobbyists, but not so great for more serious gardeners like Hugreen founder Clement Lee. New to the world of organic farming, Lee found himself frustrated by the limitations of existing products like the system from Edyn, which monitors small outdoor areas but is fairly limited in distance and overall capability. Hugreen's Gnome, launching on Indiegogo today, is aimed at large backyards or rooftop gardens and tackles those weaknesses directly with more accurate monitoring and the ability to communicate as far as a kilometer away.
The SproutsIO smart microgarden nurtures your inner botanist
I'm not good at remembering to water my one houseplant. I know I'm not alone -- the phrase "black thumb" exists for a reason. And if some of us can't even manage something as basic as adding a little H2O regularly, asking those same people to worry about humidity or soil pH for our flora is right out. Unfortunately, that means a lot of us don't get to enjoy the benefits of growing our own herbs or vegetables at home. The SproutsIO connected planter, now on Kickstarter, aims to solve that by not just reminding you to water your plant, but creating an entire support system aimed at your individual wants and needs about what to grow.
The Internet of Things is coming to your hydroponic garden
It was only a matter of time. The Internet of Things has already come for our vaporizers; now it is back for our hydroponic grow ops. Behold the Gro.io, an all-inclusive hydro system that's nearly fully automated. The brains behind this system is the Gro.hub. This central computing tower runs an embedded Linux OS on a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 Processor and processes signals from ten separate remote sensors. These monitor things like water temperature, level, pH and flow.
Sensor-equipped plant pods take the guesswork out of indoor gardening
Have you been thinking about trying your hand at gardening, but lack the green thumb to keep those plants alive? There's a new Kickstarter project that may be able to lend a hand. Plug & Plant is a wall-mounted system of pods that not only neatly organizes the indoor plants, but each one is equipped with Bluetooth room, humidity and light sensors. That tech gathers data from the environment and offers tips for optimum plant growth. A Smart Water Tank also uses the collected info to vary the watering regimen as needed for up to 30 days. Details are beamed to a companion app that displays the stats for each senor independently as well as analyzes the data and providing suggestions for care.
The TUAW Daily Update Podcast for June 9, 2014
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get some the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the player at the top of the page. The Daily Update has been moved to a new podcast host in the past few days. Current listeners should delete the old podcast subscription and subscribe to the new feed in the iTunes Store here.
The "smart garden" of the future is on the way, thanks to your iPhone
If it seems like everything is connected to your iPhone these days, that's because it is. Well, almost everything. A company called Edyn is ready to connect it to one more thing: your garden. The company has successfully funded its first Kickstarter campaign for the Edyn garden system, a super smart collection of gadgets that can tell you everything you need to know about where your precious plants call home. It starts with the Edyn garden sensor. Once you stick the sensor into your garden soil it begins tracking all kinds of important metrics such as moisture levels, the fertility of the soil, temperature, and sunlight exposure. Using the Edyn app for your iOS device, the system compares the readings from your garden with data about your location to give you a better understanding of how your garden should be performing. It can suggest types of plants that will thrive in your specific garden and even tell you what types of fertilizer are going to work the best for you. The Edyn garden valve is the next piece of the system, and it works with the app to devise the perfect watering regimen for your plants. It takes readings from the Edyn garden sensor into account and decides when to water your garden. It's all automated, and it will automatically shower your plants whenever they need it. It all seems very slick, and if it works as advertised it could be an invaluable tool for anyone without a particularly green thumb. With a month left of funding, the Edyn system has already blasted past its original Kickstarter goal, so if you're interested in soil intelligence, you can hop on the crowd funding train right now.
Garden naturally with Grow Smart, Grow Safe for iOS
Grow Smart, Grow Safe is a handy free app that will assess the dangers of some of the garden products you use and then suggest safer alternatives. While the app is aimed at the Pacific Northwest, the information it contains should work for anyone using American-made garden and lawn products. The app is designed for use at the store when shopping, or you can survey lawn and garden products at your leisure. You begin by picking a category like weeds or insects, then browse products or enter some product names. You'll get indications of how hazardous the product is, based on information provided by the Department of Agriculture in the State of Washington. Once you find the selected product, Grow Smart, Grow Safe suggests safer alternatives, usually products containing no chemical pesticides. All product listings show the active ingredients, so you'll get an idea about what's in the products you intend to use. There is a good bit of controversy over the health effects of pesticides, and this app has a definite point of view, but anyone who gardens will find the data interesting and appreciate the tips designed for safer gardening. If your view of garden chemicals is "better to be safe than sorry", then Grow Smart, Grow Safe has your name on it. The app contains lots of background on why we should care about what we use on our gardens or lawns. A nice feature for the developers to add to a future version would be the ability to create a shopping list of some of the recommended alternative products. The app was produced by the King County (Seattle) Local Hazardous Waste Management Program, along with government agencies in Oregon. It's not a universal app, but will run fine on all platforms that can run iOS 7 or later.
Parrot Flower Power review: Can technology give you a green thumb?
Sure, you've heard of the connected home, but what about the connected garden? If you're someone who manages to always kill your plants, Flower Power, a new gadget from Parrot, might sound like just the thing. The $60 Bluetooth-connected device aims to turn your black thumb green by sending you daily push notifications about your garden's health. The small sensor can provide up-to-the-minute reports that can ensure everything from your potatoes to your petunias are getting exactly the right amount of sunlight, water and even fertilizer. So, is the tiny gadget what your garden needs?
Droplet robotic gardener waters your plants with precision (video)
There's a new helper robot for homes called Droplet, but it has no intention of usurping Roomba's territory -- in fact, you can think of it as a Roomba for your garden. It's probably not capable of killing snakes like its badass indoor counterpart, but it can care for your plants without input. Technically, Droplet's a smart sprinkler, but it's actually more like an automated hose that aims only at plants (or anything you want) up to 30 feet away, since it was created as a means to conserve water. Of course, you'll have to configure it a bit beforehand: after adding your plants' names on Droplet's interface using a phone, laptop or tablet, you'll have to aim water at each of them, so the system can remember their locations. The robot then taps into various sources via WiFi to look up each plant's needs to determine how often and how much it should be watered. In the event that rain's coming your way, the device will hold off on doing its gardening duties, as it also gets real time data from thousands of weather stations. Droplet's creators claim it can lower water sprinkler consumption by up to 90 percent, which is huge if true, as lawn sprinklers are one of the top water wasters. They also claim that it can save up to $265 a year on water bills, almost enough to recoup your investment should you choose to pre-order a unit from Amazon right now for $300. As for the remaining $35, well, let's just say that's just the price you'll have to pay for keeping R2D2's Mini-Me as a gardener.
Home Lohas brings hydroponic gardening into your room, rabbit guard not included
While running between booths at Computex earlier this month, we were momentarily distracted by these vegetable boxes (maybe it was lunch time as well). As it turned out, this product was launched by Taiwan-based Home Lohas around the same time as when the expo started. The company pitches its hydroponic gardening appliance -- so the vegetables rely on nutritious water instead of soil -- as a hassle-free, low-power solution for growing your own greens, plus it's apparently the only solution in the market that doesn't need water circulation. With its full spectrum LED light, air pump and timers, harvest time can apparently be reduced by about 30 percent. It's simply a matter of filling up the water tank, adding the necessary nutrients and placing the seeded sponge on the tray (the package includes three types of organic fertilizers and some seeds). The only downside is that this system costs NT$15,800 (about US$530) in Taiwan, and for some reason, it'll eventually be priced at US$680 in other markets. If that's too much, then stay tuned for a half-size model that's due Q4 this year. %Gallery-191544%
The New Sunset Western Garden Book now available on iOS
Sunset Magazine is a popular magazine that focuses on cooking, gardening and traveling in the western United States. Besides its monthly magazine, the company also produces the Sunset Western Garden Book. Around for more that 80 years, this ultimate guide to growing in western landscapes is now available on the iPad and iPhone. This latest version of the Western Garden Book has features that are unique to the digital version. Included in between the pages of the book are 30 hands-on videos that'll help you grow a bountiful garden. There's also an interactive slideshow that'll let you see how select plants will look when they are in full bloom. Last, but not least are interactive images, like the very useful Climate Zone Map, that'll help you plant the right mix of plants in your garden. Besides this interactive content, the Western Garden Book also includes a note-taking feature that lets you add your own content to a plant card. You can record when you planted that variety and report your success or failure with that plant. If you want to go back to a particular plant, you can also bookmark a plant card and retrieve it later. All notes and bookmarks will sync across devices. The Sunset Western Garden Book is available for US$19.99 from the iOS App Store. It's a bit pricey compared to most apps, but with 1 GB of content, the book is packed full of tried and true tips from gardening experts. Being able to keep all the information you need for a successful garden right at your fingertips is, in my humble opinion, well worth the price of admission.
The Daily Grind: Is farming ruined forever?
One of my favorite things to do in games is farm. No, not the kind of farming that involves killing zillions of mobs for mats and money -- real (virtual) farming. Like when you buy seeds and plant them in the ground and wait for them to grow and then collect the literal fruits of your labor. Think I'm talking about FarmVille? Nope. Lord of the Rings Online, actually. And Ultima Online and Glitch and hopefully, someday, ArcheAge. MMOs actually implement farming so much better than the social game that seems to have redefined it. In UO, I can grow decorative plants and buff petals; in LotRO, I can mass-produce crops that are used by cooks to make food; and in Glitch, I grow flowers and herbs used by tincturers. I suppose even in Star Wars Galaxies, I was farming up corn and tubers in my oversized industrial extractors. But I have to wonder whether the FarmVille-induced stigma attached to farming as a gameplay concept has ruined it for MMO fans forever. Even when we discuss ArcheAge's amazing farming system, we can't help but crack jokes about tractors, jokes we wouldn't make about big, burly, angry Orcs practicing their fine tailoring skills in World of Warcraft. What do you think -- is farming in MMOs ruined forever? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Koubachi WiFi Plant Sensor takes your cactii's temperature, sends it to your iPhone
Plants, like pets, need to be constantly cared for, but not everyone's blessed with the requisite green thumb. So, for those of you imbued with what we'll call the bad, brown touch, Swiss outfit Koubachi's got a cloud-based solution to sidestep those negligent ways and keep your window garden thriving. Dubbed the WiFi Plant Sensor, this wireless peripheral nestles into the soil of any potted flora or fauna, sending relevant vitality data off to the company's servers where it's then analyzed and beamed back to your handset (via iPhone app) or online account with care instructions in tow. You'll have to cough up £99 (about $156 USD) for the currently available European-only, golf club-like device, but that's about all -- access to the company's apps and services are free for users. So, if you've been dying to pull back the curtain on the secret life of plants or just sick of shelling out to replace your withering window collection, hit up the source below to get your order on. Official presser after the break.
Bastion's canceled feature: 'Find a shoe? Plant it.'
Supergiant Games spent one year working on a "rich gardening feature" for Bastion that the entire team was "really excited about," but was eventually cut from the game, designer Amir Rao said at GDC. The final version of Bastion demonstrates the team's obsession with plants, but gardening itself was set to play a pivotal role in exploration and players' overall sense of accomplishment, Rao said, breaking it down into four functions: Players would find seeds for story items and worlds Planters on the Bastion would open up gradually, limiting how many seeds could be planted Plants would be watered with blue "cores" They would sprout and the fruit would offer its item, world, etc.Gardening in Bastion faced a slew of problems, but mostly the seeds had no aesthetic connection to the final plant -- "What does a 'hammer plant' look like?" Rao asked -- and Supergiant eventually realized that they were solving the wrong problem. What Bastion really needed was a menu.
Holiday Gift Guide: iPad apps for the home
Welcome to TUAW's 2011 Holiday Gift Guide! We're here to help you choose the best gifts this holiday season, and once you've received your gifts we'll tell you what apps and accessories we think are best for your new Apple gear. Stay tuned every weekday from now until the end of the year for our picks and helpful guides and check our Gift Guide hub to see our guides as they become available. For even more holiday fun, check out sister site Engadget's gift guide. My iPad spends most of its time at home. I don't travel very often, and the 9.7-inch tablet is too large to throw in my bag while I run a quick errand. That's OK; the iPad may not trip the light fantastic, but it is my faithful companion at home. I, like many others, use the iPad while I'm cooking, watching television, or sitting on the couch. If you are gifting an iPad or want one for your coffee table, then you should check out my list of favorite iPad apps for the home. GoodPlayer (US$2.99) Good Player is a jack of all trades when it comes to video. It's a movie player, downloader and streaming media player which supports AVI, Xvid, Divx, DAT, VOB, FLV, WMV, MKV, MP4, RM, RMVB, AC3, HTTP, FTP, RTSP, MMS, SMB, MMSH, MMST, RTP, UPnP and UDP. I use it to stream media from my ReadyNAS, and it works exceptionally well. IMDB (Free) IMDB, the Internet Movie Database, is an excellent app for movie buffs. I use it all the time to look up actor information, cast lists, plot information and more. It covers old movies, current flicks and upcoming films. iBooks (Free) iBooks is an app from Apple that'll let you download and read eBooks from the iBookstore. It's perfect for reading on multiple devices as your bookmarks, notes, and last read page are synced wirelessly between all your iOS devices. Netflix (Free; service costs $8 per month) The Netflix app will let you stream movies and TV shows from Netflix's vast catalog. The UI was just redone, and the updated app looks even better than before. The app also tracks what you have watched and syncs this information between devices. I have an Otterbox case with a built-in stand and use Netflix all the time. Flipboard (Free) Flipboard is a magazine-style reader app that pulls content from your social networks and RSS feeds. It has a beautiful interface and is terrific for catching up on the news while sitting on the couch. Epicurious (Free) Epicurious is a cooking app that pulls its recipes from professional chefs and well-known cookbooks. The app has 30,000 recipes from Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Self, and other professional chefs and cookbooks. The app lets you save recipes to a favorites list and then add the ingredients to a shopping list when you're ready to get cooking. The app also has social media support so you can share your favorite recipes with Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Allrecipes (Free; $4.99 for the Pro version) Allrecipes is an online website that's filled with user-submitted and user-reviewed recipes. The iPad app taps into those recipes by letting you search for recipes by course, cooking method, or prep time. You can then filter the results by rating. If you're an Allrecipes member, you can buy the $5 pro version and sync your online recipes box to the iPad. It's an excellent, all-around app for finding new recipes. The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America ($49.99) The Professional Chef is a reference guide for anyone with a passion for cooking. The app provides information on ingredients and how to buy the best quality when shopping. There's also cooking guides and video tutorials that'll show the best way to prepare and cook your ingredients. The photographs are stunning and the videos are professionally made, which makes its high price justifiable. Bento ($4.99) Bento is a free-form database app that'll help you keep track of anything and everything. You can use Bento to create a home inventory, keep a list of books, track the progress of home improvement projects and more. The possibilities are endless. Shopping apps (Free) Many people use the iPad to shop from the comfort of their couch and retailers are noticing. Major retailers like Walmart and Target have iPad apps; even smaller online shops like Newegg have joined the iPad revolution. Houzz Interior Design Ideas (Free) Houzz is an Interior Design app that'll help you remodel your house. It has over 200,000 high resolution photos that are organized by style, room and location. You browser the photos and choose the styles that you like. When you're done, you can show your ideas to an interior designer and bring them to life. Zillow (Free) Zillow's for the homeowner who's looking to buy or sell a house. The iPad app lets you search for a region and browse all the houses and land that are on sale. You can view the listing details including the price, taxes, number of bedrooms, number of baths and so on. It's an excellent resource for anyone in the market for a new home. Landscaper's Companion for iPad - Gardening Reference Guide ($4.99) The Landscaper's Companion for iPad - Gardening Reference Guide is the definitive guide to plants, tress, shrubs and bushes. The plant guide contains sun requirements, water usage, and growth characteristics for over 8500 plants. There's also 9,000 pictures, so you can see what the plant will look like when it's fully grown. Photo Measures ($4.99) Photo Measures is an app that'll help you keep track of measurements around the house. It lets you take a picture of your house and mark it up with measurements. If you need a new curtain, just snap a photo of the window, write in the measurements and save the doc for future use. It's perfect for your own work around the house, and is handy for creating plans to bring to a contractor. Best Baby Monitor ($3.99) Best Baby Monitor lets you use two iOS devices as a video baby monitor. You can connect the two devices using WiFi or Bluetooth. One device stays in the room with the baby, and the other (most likely the iPad) is with you. You can listen to audio and watch full screen video of your child's room. If it's night, you can turn on the flash to get a better view of your child. Photo by flickr user bfishadow (cc)
The Air Force will give you $150,000 to blast its weeds with a laser
With the holiday season just around the corner, the Air Force has been busy compiling its yuletide wish list, and it's got some pretty strange requests. Included on its latest call for small business innovations is a curious proposal for a project called "Floral Disruptor – Directed Energy Weed Abatement and Prevention Tool." According to Air Force documents, this project calls for "a device that uses directed energy technology to prevent and abate unwanted plants (weeds) in areas that require control or defoliation." Translation: a ray gun to blast weeds. Turns out, the Air Force spends a handsome chunk of cash each year on weed control -- so much so, in fact, that it's willing to pay $150,000 in grant money to anyone whose device can "deter, disrupt, deny, or degrade the desired objective." Private companies have already begun testing devices that annihilate weeds with lasers, microwave radiation and even sound, which is why the Air Force feels confident that the approach can bear fruit. But before you start entertaining fantasies of mass botanical killings, keep in mind that the government will only accept solutions that don't "target personnel or wildlife." As a Force rep explained to Wired, the idea is to develop an eagle-eyed contraption that lessens its dependence upon costly chemicals and pesticides. Besides, have you seen the Army's front lawn? It's immaculate.
