If you can’t raise a plant to save your life you know the appeal of terrariums, which can sustain themselves for months on end without being watered. But a retiree in the UK says he sealed up his bottle garden in 1972—and hasn’t watered it since.
Click and Grow’s second generation home hydroponic system launches today that, like its predecessor, provides urban gardeners an organic, pesticide-free, and nearly autonomous herb garden. Except the new Smart Herb Garden doesn’t need a bright window spot—it includes its own miniature sun.
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Traditional sprinklers simply spread water over an area, which leads to lots of water wasted and uneven watering. Droplet wants to change all that with its eponymous robot. Instead of blindly spraying water around like Bill & Lance with a Spread gun, Droplet knows where your plants are and aims at them like Mr. Mundy in Doublecross.
When you get a Droplet, you’ll go to a web app to specify the type and location of your plants. I don’t know how exactly the web app works, just that you can go through it on a computer or a mobile device and in just a few minutes. In addition to that data, Droplet will also supposedly tap into the United States’ weather station and soil sample data to gauge when and how much water to spray. One Droplet should be able to tend to a 2700sq.ft. area.
Grow a browser and head to Amazon, where you can pre-order Droplet for $300 (USD). That’s a lot of money for a sprinkler, but when you consider its resulting water savings and positive impact on the environment I think it’s worth it.
[via Digital Trends]
A built-in sprinkler system is a better way to water a garden than just standing there randomly blasting plants with a hose. And taking that idea one step further, the Droplet turns your sprinklers into intelligent snipers that only water the plants you tell them to using a focused stream—except when rainy weather already has.
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Even as the East Coast continues to dig out of its latest snowpocalypse the country’s more hospitable climes are already beginning to thaw out. And now that your garden no longer resembles tundra, it’s time to dig in and get your plot ready for spring planting. Here’s what you’ll need to do.
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These special shotgun shells take the green revolution to the next level. If planting stuff the traditional way is too boring for you, then you might want to shoot up gardens instead with Flower Shells as your ammo. You could also pack a couple of seed bombs that you can toss when you’re out of shells.
The Flower Shells were thought up by developer Per Cromwell of Studio Total. Unlike Flower Grenades, Flower Shells actually contain gunpowder so you can blast them as you would blast real bullets with your shotgun. Each shell contains a reduced amount of gunpowder and is filled with flower seeds. Shoot the shells into patches of dirt or grass with it and you’ll see daisies, sunflowers, and meadow flowers blossoming in those spots in a matter of weeks.
The Flower Shells are currently up for funding on Indiegogo, where a pledge of $50(USD) will get you a set of four shells. Shotgun sold separately.
[via C|NET]
If you live in an apartment or condo in a big city, and have managed to find a little room on your tiny balcony for a modest garden, you probably don’t have much space left for the tools needed to toil over your cramped crops. So inventor Marc R. came up with this rather clever soft-sided watering can called the Squish that’s thin and easy to store when it’s empty.
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For all the hubbub about California banning the use of lead in ammunition, there’s been less of a focus on safer alternatives—but designer Per Crowell has taken this to perhaps its most tongue-in-cheek extreme, proposing shotgun shells filled with seeds.
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Cultivating an indoor garden is surprisingly easy these days, even if your studio apartment is only slightly bigger than a shoe box. And with a bit of resourcefulness and some minor MacGyvering, you can grow fresh produce year-round without sacrificing precious closet-space.
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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?
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