NASA is sending a really cool garden to the International Space Station on April 14, on board the SpaceX Dragon. For the first time in history, astronauts will grow their own food in space using this groovy disco box, an important step towards future long-term space travel and extraterrestrial colonies. Incidentally, this must be great to cultivate weed.
Garden gnomes are supposed to protect your garden. So what kind of gnome do you trust with the job? One of those happy gnomes you see everywhere or a gnome that knows how to play the Game of Gnomes? I trust the latter.
Your garden will be safe with Ned Bark guarding it. He is Lord of the North of Grassteros and sits on the Throne of a Thousand Shovels in King’s Lawnding. In the Game of Gnomes you grow or you die, there is no middle ground.
There will be blood. And dirt. This little guy is made of cement, hand casted, hand painted, and then sealed in outdoor weather sealer. He’s just $79.99(USD) from Chris and Jane’s Place. Spring is coming. Will you be ready?
[via Geek Alerts via Nerd Approved]
Technology has changed not only how people do things, but how people perceive and create art as well. Take what researcher and artist Cassinelli Alvaro has done with his Toro-bots.
The Toro-bots are a pair of walking robots that have Japanese lanterns for a head. They were created for beautifying gardens with minimal effort, but they certainly could be used for indoor illumination as well.
People often have to get down on all fours to move lamps and lanterns from one spot on their garden to another. The Toro-bots get rid of the dirty work because they’ll get up and walk to your desired location with a few flicks of the remote control. They’re also equipped with infrared rangefinders that allows them to detect when someone is nearby (they’ll step off to the side if they sense they’re in someone’s way.)
We propose here a garden that takes care of itself, that somehow understands and re-interprets the rules of harmony and equilibrium, and reconfigures itself depending on the season, the presence or absence of a human observers – that develops structure in a generative way, creating a dynamic conversation between the elements in the garden.
Now this is garden decor, just the way I like it. What do you think?
[via Trossen Robotics via Dvice]
Potatoes grow underground. Tomatoes grow above the ground. The TomTato plant grows both potatoes underground and tomatoes above ground… at the same time!
I don’t know what the folks over at British horticultural firm Thompson and Morgan were thinking, but they managed to turn a far-off idea into reality. It took them ten years, but they finally figured out how to make a plant grow potatoes and tomatoes without genetically modifying it.
The process involved grafting, more grafting, and even more grafting before the team achieved success. Incredibly, the plants were combined without genetic modification.
Thompson and Morgan director Paul Hansord explains: “It has been very difficult to achieve because the tomato stem and the potato stem have to be the same thickness for the graft to work… It is a very highly skilled operation. We have seen similar products. However, on closer inspection the potato is planted in a pot with a tomato planted in the same pot – our plant is one plant and produces no potato foliage.”
Pretty weird, but still amazing, isn’t it?
I’ve never been a fan of garden gnomes, honestly they are little disconcerting. I always had the sense that they’re watching me and is waiting for nightfall when they’ll creep into the house and stuff Tic-Tacs up my nose until I suffocate. For some reason I don’t find these zombie garden gnomes nearly as creepy as the regular ones – go figure.
These would be perfect decorating your garden for Halloween. ThinkGeek has four different zombie garden gnome styles including the survivor, zombie, rising, and evil versions. Each individual zombie garden gnome is between nine and 11.4-inches tall and made from resin.
The only exception is the zombie version (the one with the blue outfit), which is actually made from terracotta.
I particularly like the survivor gnome because he has a machine gun and it says “Say hello to my little friend” underneath. The gnomes sell for $19.99(USD) each, or you can get the survivor and zombie version in a bundle for $29.99. We’ve seen some other zombie gnomes in the past, but ThinkGeek has machine guns (plus they’re cheaper.)
You don’t even need to buy a Roomba lawn mower, all you need to do to rid yourself from the chore of mowing lawns is to make the lawn mower mow itself. How? Be like this guy who strapped his self-propelled lawn mower with rope to a stake in the middle of the yard. The lawn mower ingeniously mows the lawn in smaller spirals as the rope wraps around the wooden stake.
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When you’re cutting your lawn, it always seems to take a lot of time. Not anymore, thanks to this lawn mower, which can mow your lawn at speeds of up to 130 mph. OK, maybe that’s not entirely accurate, but still, it’s fast enough for the Stig from Top Gear!
Honda UK teamed up with Team Dynamics to re-engineer this lawn mower, the Honda HF2620, that has an all-new chassis. It comes with a 1000cc engine that comes from a Honda VTR Firestorm motorcycle, which produces 109hp. Thanks to this engine, the lawn mower can reach 62mph in four seconds. It’s top speed is 130 mph, and it comes with a paddle-shift six-speed gearbox.
The HF2620 can still mow your lawn, but at only 15mph. Well, at least you can get around pretty fast!
[via Autoblog]
Gas-powered weed eaters are burly enough to chop down the thickest underbrush, no doubt. But they’re also noisy, smelly, and expensive to run. Instead, take the CGT400 Trimmer from CORE GasLess Power for a spin.
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It’s always been fun to climb trees, and I guess that it’s cool to have some sort of high perch in your garden or in the wilderness to look out from. While you won’t be dragging this unwieldy tent around anytime soon, it’s certainly an interesting way of setting up a treehouse for adults.
The Luminair Tree Tent is a semi-permanent tree house. The curved hybrid aluminum and steam-bent ash frame provides stability, while the 16oz waterproof cotton canvas skin keeps the elements out.
It’s about 10 feet in diameter, which is big enough for two adults. The whole setup weighs about 264 lbs. and can handle another 550 lbs in occupants.
Unfortunately, the Luminair Tree Tent doesn’t come cheap. You’ll have to spend £6500 (~$10,095 USD) in order to get yours. Or you could just build a tree house the old-fashioned way.
[via Uncrate]
Those little LED garden lights are a nice way to add a little illumination to your outdoor paths and walkways. However, most of them emit the same boring white light. Not the LED lights from MoodLights. No, sirree, Bob.
Artist Felicia Renaud of MoodLights hand paints solar LED garden stake lights so they cast beautiful colored patterns on the ground and your garden at night.
She guarantees that her high-temperature water-based paints will hold up to the elements, so assuming the LED fixtures themselves hang in there, you’ll get many seasons of enjoyment out of these.
LED garden stake MoodLights sell for $25(USD) each. Be sure to check out the MoodLights Etsy shop for more nifty hand-painted bulbs, designed for indoor use.
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