Gardening Tech Products

Have you guys heard of any good gardening technology that can help a new gardener? I researched some (oto lawn, get sunday, rachio) and wanted to get your opinion on them.

I had to search all those names (a link for each one would be beneficial going forward) to find out what is going on. I say try one and tell everyone what you think. As gardeners we all want the best things for our gardens without a lot of money or work.

I love wireless devices and thought about how easy/hard it should be to design one of these gadgets but I was more on the software end when I was working since the hardware should be off the shelf. Glad to see Hi-Tech has finally gotten to the gardening scene.

I use WiFi switches to control my lights in the basement for my 90+ shop lights and love it. The only problem I've seen with these is a power outage and the switches have to re-establish themselves on our home network which works most of the time. I often have to unplug each device one at a time in the basement to reestablish it on the network after a power outage or an internet interruption. I can see the status and control them anywhere by the phone as well. I set the on/off times for each day of the week and can see how many hours they were on per day, week, or last 30 days.

What are you wanting to do with this new tech? Is this for a lawn, in ground plants, potted plants, or a veggie garden? It would be nice to be on a Caribbean vacation and turn on your sprinklers from a thousand miles away but then it seems like we need some way to gauge the moisture in the ground or pots too so we don't over-water.

Anyway I wanted to add that a lot of stuff I've put in over the years often fail for one reason or the other as the years go by (age, weather, low cost junk) so I have been pulling up hundreds of feet of hoses; 4 zone battery operated timers and valves; manifolds; sprinklers of several different designs; and micro-irrigation pipes, spaghetti hoses, and micro drip/sprinklers. Leaks, trip hazards, split manifolds, ants in timers, and not to be forgotten malfunctioning quick disconnects (had dozens of these until they started failing) are some of the issues I've seen over the decades.

At this point I am ready to pay an irrigation company to design and put in a PVC buried pipe with taps every 50 feet or less so I can hook up a hose or more with sprinklers or a simple watering wand. The portable timers still work well but it is a bit of work to do the programming and hook up each hose to a valve (the programming has gotten a lot easier though). The best thing to do is take the manifold, timer, and valves indoors for winter though since even draining water in the hoses may still freeze the manifold and split it.

Landscaping companies like the one above (I used them for this same thing it's why I mention them) can often give out good advice too. They often know about what equipment works well for their area too so contacting local ones would be a good start. Sure they may try and sell you on their services while they have your attention but their experience is unmatched so it's worth hearing what their expert opinion is