9 ms·

As a hobby gardener and wannabe roboticist I've thought a lot about this problem. Before I continue I love this thing and am seriously thinking about getting on

As a hobby gardener and wannabe roboticist I've thought a lot about this problem. Before I continue I love this thing and am seriously thinking about getting one. However, a concern that I'm sure they've thought a lot about is in it's technique. I really only care about making sure there are no weeds within, say, 8 inches of my plants (or put another way, my level of concern about a weed is proportional to it's distance from my vegetable or flower plant). This looks like it will weed everything except the 8 inches around the plant. Never mind things like cucumbers that spread out on the ground and have important bits that are short and can't be contained by the wire protectors. Still, an exciting place to start.

prawn 9y ago
It looks like they started with a Roomba and went from there, which leaves them with a robot that can't deal with raised beds or (as you said) weeds integrated with plants. I have raised beds and then raised side gardens which would render this device useless to me. Same with the other hobby gardeners I know. I always imagined something with long spindly legs that would cut, inject or spray things that it identified as weeds by leaves. For me, the weeds that are the most trouble are those close to or mixed in with plants. Anything on its own isn't that hard to pull out.
- cctan 9y ago
  One workaround is that I hope that it can climb up and down slopes that lead to the raised beds. Does it detect cliffs or edges and avoid falling down?
  - pxndx 9y ago
    Roombas do, it would be weird if this new iteration didn't
    - c3833174 9y ago
      Roombas have to deal with stairs while this thing will probably get it's underside covered in mud (especially since it has that unshielded trimmer) and is supposed to run only inside a fenced area, so I doubt it has any provisions for that.
  - prawn 9y ago
    My raised beds are between 200-800mm (2-3' for the highest ones) - I'd need quite the slopes for most of them!
- otempomores 9y ago
  Those weeds that wind around the stem of the hostplant and strangle it climbing..
mikepurvis 9y ago
I do raised beds as well, so I have the same concern. But from my point of view the larger issue is that I'm almost never only weeding. Like, it's just not that big of a job. But more importantly, time spent "in the garden" includes a lot of inspection and minor adjustments to all kinds of things— move plants on a trellis, pinching suckers off the tomatoes, clipping blighted leaves off of plants, ensuring flowers are getting fertilized, monitoring fruit growth, etc. All of this stuff is an essential part of being in tune with what's going on out there, and I'm not sure that having a robot do one small piece of it is beneficial. Basically, this product doesn't really look like it was built by a gardener— it looks like it was someone who had a solution they wanted to apply elsewhere, and spent 15 minutes watching a gardener at work, without really understanding what they were doing.
- visarga 9y ago
  Watering would be a nice function as well. Many people don't want to bother with water pipes, so a bot that takes care of watering would be useful.
  - mikepurvis 9y ago
    In my opinion, that suffers from the same fundamental issue that it's covering a small portion of the visible work that a gardener is doing, but isn't accounting for all the observation and tweaks. Basically I'm just not sure it's realistic to pitch this product to someone who wants to have an outdoor garden but spend little to no time actually tending it. I feel this kind of user might be better served by something like Aerogarden. In any case, it's a much harder problem because watering even a small garden takes a _lot_ of water, so for it to be practical, you either need a robot with a huge (and very heavy) reservoir, or a base station at which it can fill up (which would almost certainly require leaving the garden bed itself, massively complicating the whole system).
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Maybe you could attach a garden hose.
rangibaby 9y ago
Easiest way to do it is to put layers of wet newspaper then black mulch. I left it for a month and it's as if the weeds were never there. I made holes in the mulch and planted some veges, they are doing great (except for the Shiso which something ate).
- michaelbuckbee 9y ago
  This is a great idea. Growing up my parents used black plastic on our fairly large garden. Black mulch seems much more aesthetically pleasing.
  - mod 9y ago
    Plus if we're talking about black hardwood mulch, it'll improve the soil as it decomposes.
    - lostlogin 9y ago
      The bit that shouldn't surprise me but still does, is the volume change. Add 6 ish cubic metres of mulch and 5 years later is a thin layer of soil comprising maybe 1-2m.
- wil421 9y ago
  You do know you can buy weed barrier fabric and cover the beds. When you plant you put holes in the barrier where your plant goes. Work well for a few people I know and it's similar price to mulching every season. Mulch worked for me but I am using pots at the moment.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    I do that. Still lots of weeds directly around the plant. Which I guess the bot isn't going to pull anyway. Hm.
    - rangibaby 9y ago

prawn 9y ago

It looks like they started with a Roomba and went from there, which leaves them with a robot that can't deal with raised beds or (as you said) weeds integrated with plants. I have raised beds and then raised side gardens which would render this device useless to me. Same with the other hobby gardeners I know. I always imagined something with long spindly legs that would cut, inject or spray things that it identified as weeds by leaves. For me, the weeds that are the most trouble are those close to or mixed in with plants. Anything on its own isn't that hard to pull out.

cctan 9y ago
One workaround is that I hope that it can climb up and down slopes that lead to the raised beds. Does it detect cliffs or edges and avoid falling down?
- pxndx 9y ago
  Roombas do, it would be weird if this new iteration didn't
  - c3833174 9y ago
    Roombas have to deal with stairs while this thing will probably get it's underside covered in mud (especially since it has that unshielded trimmer) and is supposed to run only inside a fenced area, so I doubt it has any provisions for that.
- prawn 9y ago
  My raised beds are between 200-800mm (2-3' for the highest ones) - I'd need quite the slopes for most of them!
otempomores 9y ago
Those weeds that wind around the stem of the hostplant and strangle it climbing..

mikepurvis 9y ago

I do raised beds as well, so I have the same concern. But from my point of view the larger issue is that I'm almost never only weeding. Like, it's just not that big of a job. But more importantly, time spent "in the garden" includes a lot of inspection and minor adjustments to all kinds of things— move plants on a trellis, pinching suckers off the tomatoes, clipping blighted leaves off of plants, ensuring flowers are getting fertilized, monitoring fruit growth, etc. All of this stuff is an essential part of being in tune with what's going on out there, and I'm not sure that having a robot do one small piece of it is beneficial. Basically, this product doesn't really look like it was built by a gardener— it looks like it was someone who had a solution they wanted to apply elsewhere, and spent 15 minutes watching a gardener at work, without really understanding what they were doing.

visarga 9y ago
Watering would be a nice function as well. Many people don't want to bother with water pipes, so a bot that takes care of watering would be useful.
- mikepurvis 9y ago
  In my opinion, that suffers from the same fundamental issue that it's covering a small portion of the visible work that a gardener is doing, but isn't accounting for all the observation and tweaks. Basically I'm just not sure it's realistic to pitch this product to someone who wants to have an outdoor garden but spend little to no time actually tending it. I feel this kind of user might be better served by something like Aerogarden. In any case, it's a much harder problem because watering even a small garden takes a _lot_ of water, so for it to be practical, you either need a robot with a huge (and very heavy) reservoir, or a base station at which it can fill up (which would almost certainly require leaving the garden bed itself, massively complicating the whole system).
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Maybe you could attach a garden hose.

rangibaby 9y ago

Easiest way to do it is to put layers of wet newspaper then black mulch. I left it for a month and it's as if the weeds were never there. I made holes in the mulch and planted some veges, they are doing great (except for the Shiso which something ate).

michaelbuckbee 9y ago
This is a great idea. Growing up my parents used black plastic on our fairly large garden. Black mulch seems much more aesthetically pleasing.
- mod 9y ago
  Plus if we're talking about black hardwood mulch, it'll improve the soil as it decomposes.
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    The bit that shouldn't surprise me but still does, is the volume change. Add 6 ish cubic metres of mulch and 5 years later is a thin layer of soil comprising maybe 1-2m.
wil421 9y ago
You do know you can buy weed barrier fabric and cover the beds. When you plant you put holes in the barrier where your plant goes. Work well for a few people I know and it's similar price to mulching every season. Mulch worked for me but I am using pots at the moment.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  I do that. Still lots of weeds directly around the plant. Which I guess the bot isn't going to pull anyway. Hm.
  - rangibaby 9y ago