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Houseplants are great. It can also be difficult. All the stress-reducing self-care qualities they promise tend to fade into the background when they suddenly turn brown for seemingly no reason.
Unlike human pets and children, they can’t bother you when something goes wrong. They kind of wither away. There’s a reason why Reddit is filled with threads of confused plant owners who can’t figure out where things went wrong.
While plants cannot defend themselves, a number of smart home devices have emerged in recent years that aim to keep plants healthy. Here are some high-tech—and low-tech—solutions that will keep plant owners and their factories happy for the coming year.
Lettuce Grow Farmstand Nok – $799; Click and Grow $25 – $999
This is a truly ambitious gift, at an affordable price. Right off the bat, I would warn people in older homes that there is a problem between the water pump and the lights Farm corner He can be a bit of a power hog. In fact, I blew two of the fuses that turn on the system.
If your home can support it, this is a great way to make your produce as locally sourced as possible: by growing it in your own kitchen. Lettuce Grow offers a wide range of leafy greens and herbs shipped in seedling form. There’s something very satisfying about growing them at home using hydroponics.
Click & Grow is another great solution for indoor gardening. The startup offers a wide range of products, from a compact smart garden to your own three-tiered vertical farm.
the Click and grow 25 It is designed around a five-week growing and harvesting cycle. It comes with 18 green lettuces, 18 romaine lettuces, and 18 red kale pods to start.
M3D Kuutar 2L – XL Moss Pole Integrated Planter – $39
I love me a good and functional 3D printing app. UK-based company M3D is using this technology to create some smart farms, including… this With built-in and removable moss pole. My Monstera Albo is currently clinging to the moss I stuffed inside.
The pole is removable, so you can wet it without over-watering or increase its height by attaching additional accessories. Meanwhile, the 3D-printed pot has a drainage network to help avoid the death penalty of root rot.
Bare Root Planter – $7 to $99
Bare root It is a small but mighty company that produces smart “breathing” growers. Available in a variety of sizes, the pots feature two layers. There is a removable, vented inner pot that holds the plant. This is located within a larger planter that acts as a reservoir for runoff.
This combination helps avoid root rot caused by overwatering, while protecting the plant from becoming root bound by exposing larger roots to oxygen. “This process encourages the growth of billions of tiny root hairs, increasing the uptake of water, nutrients, and oxygen,” notes Naked Root.
Ola Boots – about $25
Sometimes old technology is the best technology. The use of ollas dates back more than 4,000 years, spanning a wide range of global cultures. There is some debate as to whether these irrigation-controlled ceramics originated in China or North Africa. Wherever they came from, they are still in use many thousands of years later.
Technology is that perfect combination of ingenuity and simplicity. Small pots made of unglazed terracotta/terracotta are buried in the soil and filled with water. The material is porous enough to allow liquid to pass through, but only when the surrounding soil is dry. I’ve been using them in my raised garden bed and in smaller versions to keep my thirstier plants hydrated when I travel.
Lots of companies make versions of the pots. Here’s a group I recently picked it up online.
Planta Subscription – $36 per year
Plant populations multiply rapidly. One day, you wake up and have a few dozen plants, each with their own light and nutrient requirements and individual watering cycles. After trying in vain to track the above via Google Sheets, I recently signed up for Subscribe to Planta.
Having daily reminders about water and fog stations has been a game changer. Planta takes into account various factors, including climate and light coverage when creating schedules. The app can also be used to identify plants (this is more hit or miss), detect light levels, and make suggestions when a plant isn’t performing well.
SmartyPlants Sensor – $43
Full disclosure: This is the only product on the list that I have no direct experience with. That’s because the product isn’t scheduled to launch until January 2025. Consider this a sort of honorable mention for Great Kickstarter project.
Soil monitoring devices are not new, of course. In fact, you can get one pretty cheap these days. SmartyPlants, on the other hand, is a soil monitoring tool for the smartphone age. The startup promises to “make killing your plants impossible.” The app-connected system monitors soil moisture, light levels, temperature, humidity, and even soil nutrient levels.
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