Garden, Vegetables

How AI Has Made It’s Way Into The Gardening World

What is AI and How Does It Fit in the Garden?

AI is everywhere! Over the past few years the news, social media and many other places have been flooded with stories on AI. AI stands for Artificial Intelligence and it’s technology that is used to replicate human intelligence, doing things that humans normally do such as vacuum your house (think Roomba), or reading the weather (any home device like Siri or Alexa). But AI has also made its way into the gardening world and today I wanted to show you all the different ways that it’s broken into our industry and what it can do for your garden.

Hydroponics & Greenhouses

Hydroponics is such an interesting part of the gardening industry. Hydroponics is when you use nutrient-rich water to grow plants, instead of soil. The industry is quite vast and ranges from small countertop hydroponic systems for the home gardener to entire greenhouses that run on hydroponics. Beyond greenhouses, there are companies that are looking at incorporating high rise buildings with hydroponic systems. However big you think hydroponics can go, think bigger!

Before we look at personal sized hydroponic systems, I wanted to first talk about hydroponic greenhouses. These are incredibly interesting ways of growing food because the entire system is automated. With hydroponic greenhouses, you can grow more food, with less resources. The cost of soil is gone and watering and feeding are done together in the system itself. And since it’s all done indoors, there’s even less pests with these systems.

With these AI greenhouses, the technology can control the screening or shading of the plants, will keep the climate set to the right temperature, waters if and when needed, turns grow lights off and on and it can all be automated from your digital device. Not only that, but there is also the ability to harvest crops using AI or robots. For an example of a technology first company you can check out this website from Dutch Greenhouses.

In terms of us hobby gardeners, there’s quite a few hydroponic systems on the market – or you can even DIY your own! Brands like Aerogarden are consumer sized systems that come with an app to notify you when water levels are low, allow you to schedule the grow lights and can turn the system off if needed. Other brands include Click & Grow, and Plantaform. However many more brands will surely be coming on the market as the popularity grows.

AI Systems: Automatic Watering, Plant Health Monitors, Garden Lighting

If you’re more of an outdoor gardener, and less interested in hydroponics, don’t worry because there’s AI for your outdoor garden too! From soil sensors, to automated lighting you can pick and choose which part of your garden you wish to automate, or choose to automate it all! Soil sensors help you monitor soil moisture and can automatically water your garden for you, while other sensors can help determine your plants health. Beyond the sensors, there are apps that can turn on your garden lights for you, or turn on your watering system. If you wanted to see what is available on the market, you can check out a full AI garden system from Gardena smart system.

Self Driving Lawn Mowers and Weeders

The first place I ever saw a self driving lawn mower was on YouTube. Quite a few online creators have started using these on their properties and they look quite interesting. Just like the indoor automatic vacuum, you can now get a lawnmower that will do your lawn and return itself to it’s home base. These are really interesting to watch work, but do require quite a bit of setup upfront to create the boundaries for the mower. But once it’s setup your lawn will be mowed on its own! Not only are there automatic lawn mowers, but robot weeders are also in development to start coming out. This is currently in the works for farmers vs the home gardener, but it won’t take too much time before it makes it into the home garden.

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Plant Apps

Plant apps have been around for a while now, and it isn’t difficult to find an app that can help you identify plants. But now there are apps that can help you identify issues that might be happening to your plants. This is such a cool addition to the plant app community because having a repository of information to help you grow better, stronger plants means that you have a better chance of getting a great harvest.

Farming Robots

Although fairly new, and I’m sure fairly expensive, farming robots are becoming a reality. The potential of these robots is to be able to seed farms, weed them and even harvest them! As you may know, farming is already a fairly automated industry, if you can afford to buy the tools to do the work. But now, this will eliminate a large amount of work for farmers and farm hands if these robots are able to effectively seed, weed and harvest.

Bonus: Talking Garden at 2025 Chelsea Flower Show

Garden designer Tom Massey and Microsoft have teamed up to create an AI-powered garden that will talk back to you at the 2025 Chelsea Flower Show. How the garden will work is that you can ask it “how are you doing” and the sensors will determine how the garden is and reply back with something like “I’m dry and could use some water”. This is an interesting take on AI garden systems where instead of monitoring an app on your phone, you can speak directly to your garden to determine what it needs. When it comes to watering, the system can water when needed. And even cooler, the sensors monitor nutrient or PH levels and let you know when to add compost or other supplements to your garden. This is definitely something worth keeping an eye on!