I don’t know whether to laugh or be filled with dread, but a group of science students at NYU have come up with BotaniCalls, a monitoring system that enables your houseplants to ring you up when they need a drink. Kind of like your friends do, but without the stellar company, human interaction and demand to buy a round.
I think the sample plant’s name is Eduardo. You’ll see why when you watch the video from the Smithsonian Channel HERE. (Would love to be a fly on the wall over at Low Tech Magazine…)
Alternatively, for about $14 you can automatically water your plants the old-fashioned, low-tech way using this handy-dandy device from God’s gift to gardeners (and woodworkers), Lee Valley:
or this lower-tech DIY beauty:
I mostly focus on food production and have a regular outside garden, fruit trees, fruit bushes etc. for the spring/summer season. But I have amazing southern exposure windows and just super-insulated my vestibule to create passive solar-heated interior growing space for the fall/winter. I’m looking to add in this WindowFarms open-source project:
And just to tempt fate, I threw a couple of packs of arugula, spinach and radishes in the ground to take advantage of our crazy-warm, unseasonable temps (and they’re all sprouting).
I don’t think I need a technology intervention here. As a gardener, my plants already relentlessly call me.