The thing is, you don’t have to do all of this on your own. There’s a ton of useful information and resources online for you to turn to, not to mention smart devices that can make gardening much more effortless.
What Is Smart Gardening?
Gardening is a great hobby that can result in a beautiful-looking space. You can end up with fresh flowers, veggies, or both, depending on the type of gardening you’d prefer. What gardening doesn’t have to be is exhausting and consuming all of your free time. Enter smart gardening – it helps you work smarter, not harder.
Smart gardening means you’re using technology in your garden. Gadgets make your tasks much more effortless and efficient, not to mention accessible. So if you have any issues with accessibility or simply need a little more help in the garden, tech is the way to go.
The simplest example of how smart tech can help with labored, time-consuming garden tasks is to consider the mowing and watering of your space. Smart gadgets can take over and do the job for you while you look on from the side lines.
1. Plan Your Garden Ahead
The best first step to take is to ensure you have a plan. If you plan out your garden with a virtual garden planner, you’ll avoid making real-life mistakes.
Using the virtual garden planner, you can try out different layouts, see what works and if you like it. It’s a fun way to see if you can apply your vision in the real world or if it needs re-working.
Virtual planners are also lifesavers if you have an odd-shaped space set out for your garden. Whether it’s a front or back yard or a balcony you’re thinking of utilizing, planning out the room in advance is always the better choice.
If you’re wondering where to start looking for an online garden design tool to assist you, you can find many free ones online.
2. Educate Yourself
You can find so much information online to help you along your gardening journey. There are apps and websites dedicated to educating you and helping you discover what you need for your garden. Like, the proper soil for certain plants to thrive or calendars for the best planting times.
For example, Garden Journal at Territorial Seed is a website that offers expert advice, support, and an established gardening community.
And From Seed to Spoon Gardening is an app available for iOS and Android that’s the perfect choice for a beginner gardener looking to learn. It estimates sprout and harvest times based on when you planted them, lets you know what grows well together and what doesn’t, and much more.
Download: From Seed to Spoon Gardening for iOS | Android (Free)
3. Keep Tabs on the Weather
Weather can be a huge factor in whether you’re successful in your gardening efforts or not. Too much sun, and your garden gets scorched. Too much rain, and it’s drowned. Humidity, wind, everything outside can affect your garden, which is why keeping track of the weather is a pretty solid thing to do.
And, no, simply looking out the window won’t do you much good. Smart tech, like a smart weather station, can take the data from what’s happening weather-wise and give you prompts on the best action to take.
Most such stations monitor the weather conditions and send notifications straight to your phone. For example, if it’s too sunny, it will notify you that the garden is getting too dry, and you’d better water it.
Or, if it rains, the smart weather station assesses how much rain the soil gets and lets you know when the best time is to water your garden based on how much water it has already received. It saves you from making the wrong decision and harming your garden.
4. Save on Water and Effort
Watering your garden can rack up quite the water bill. It can also take hours of labor to go around and water everything, even if your garden isn’t on the larger side. That’s why setting up a smart irrigation system is worth the investment.
It’s one thing to go around physically watering with a hose or watering can, and entirely another to press a button and have every part of your garden watered at the same time. An added benefit is that you’ll water everything just the right amount instead of overwatering, cutting back on your monthly bill.
There are plenty of smart garden hubs that do the job of watering for you. Most such hubs are controlled through an app, making them the epitome of convenience. And though it can be pricey to set up a smart irrigation system, it will ultimately save you water, time and energy.
5. Identify Plants and Diseases
Being able to identify whether your plant is sick and what from can be the difference between having a garden and having a patch of dead plants. Thankfully, you don’t have to buy a ton of books or ask your nan for advice. Instead, you can turn to the plethora of resources online.
You can find an array of apps to help you with your garden and identifying plants, diseases, and pests. Once you know the exact problem, you can act accordingly. And since you can look for an answer and find it in a matter of minutes, you can solve the problem quicker and have a better chance of saving your plant.
If you’re looking for well-rated apps, you can try Plantix or Plant Disease Identifier. And, if you’d rather stick to a website or simply don’t have space for another app on your phone, you can try Planet Natural Research Center. The site offers a pretty hefty section you can browse on the most common plant diseases.
6. Use Smart Mowers and Smart Weeders
Odds are, you’ll be dealing with grass in your garden, and mowing your yard is usually time-consuming and exhausting. And even if you invest in a superb mower that does most of the work for you, you still have to be there and, at the very least, steer. That’s why smart mowers are a grand alternative.
Smart mowers have a few boxes to tick to work properly in your area, like the evenness of the ground and whether it’s on a slope. But if you can get one, it’s a great investment. You won’t have to spend hours in the sun moving a mower around, saving time and effort.
And a step beyond smart mowers are smart weeders. Smart weeders usually use a focused laser to target weeds individually when spotted, ensuring they won’t kill your plants by accident, only the weeds. Some of the ones already on the market are designed for farmers, so they’re pretty bulky. But smaller ones have started to pop up, too. You can find solar-powered ones that can manage a small garden.
Smart weeders and mowers are a godsend if you have health issues and can no longer afford to spend hours tending to your garden daily. So, with the help of tech, you can still maintain your garden.
Smart Gardening Is an Investment, but Worth It
Technology is ever-developing, and more and more smart devices are put on the market to help with all imaginable tasks. Gardening can be a relaxing activity, but comes with some laborious jobs.
Smart devices in the garden can save you hours on daily tasks, on top of a ton of time and effort. So, if you can afford to invest in some helpful devices, go for it. Of course, you don’t have to buy everything under the sun, but you should consider getting stuff that would work well for your lifestyle and garden.
So consider what’s worth it to you more. Are you willing to invest in smart tech for your benefit and convenience? Or, would you rather skip all that and do everything by hand?
