10 ms·
It sill looks like the software is written by people who don't know how to care for plants. You don't spray water on leaves as shown in the video; you'll just e
by getpost 2y ago
It sill looks like the software is written by people who don't know how to care for plants. You don't spray water on leaves as shown in the video; you'll just end up with fungus infestation. You water the soil and nourish the microorganisms that facilitate nutrient absorption in roots. But, I don't see any reason the technology can't be adapted to do the right thing.
- SoftTalker 2y agoDoesn't rain fall on the leaves as much as the soil?
- r2_pilot 2y agoIsn't the point of being smart human beings is that we do things better than what occurs in nature?
- NilMostChill 2y agoThat assumes that rain falling on leaves serves no purpose.
- stale2002 2y agoNature isn't perfect and has disadvantages compared to us. We don't have to invent ex post facto explanations for why something is the case in nature or why there is some un-intuitive reason as for why the natural way is better.
- twojacobtwo 2y agoNor are we perfect and we've been wrong about much in nature more often than we've been right over the past many millennia. The previous poster didn't imply either case regardless. The post simply pointed out an assumption being made. Frankly, I prefer the way that thinks of 'ex post facto' explanations for nature. At least that keeps us hypothesizing and not sitting there tooting our own horns.
- quaintdev 2y ago> Nature isn't perfect and has disadvantages compared to us. Wow we have completely different world views. I think nature is perfect and it's us who have gone too far away from it to notice and hence we are far from perfection as well. Ideally we should not be comparing us to nature since we are part of it. But somewhere deep down we know we are not aligned with it so we end up comparing it to humans which seems pretty grandiose on our end.
- throwthrowuknow 2y agoHow can nature be perfect when it is constantly changing? We alter our environment out of necessity, we would only be able to survive in a very small number of climates on Earth if we did nothing to change our surroundings. Lucky you if you happen to be somewhere with year round fruit to pluck from the vine and temperate climate in the winters but that leaves the other 8 billion people to die of starvation and exposure.
- freedomben 2y agoI'm sincerely fascinated by your perspective. I haven't heard this viewpoint before. Why do you think nature is perfect? I.e. what is your "gold standard" against which you measure? Something that immediately comes to mind for me is all the death and suffering that is abundant through nature. If the only thing that matters is propagation of life, then nature does seem pretty good at it, but as a being that operates some layers above the selfish gene, it seems far from perfect.
- quaintdev 2y ago> Something that immediately comes to mind for me is all the death and suffering that is abundant through nature What if this is the best it can do with all the things that can go wrong or are going wrong. Perfection does not mean things will never go wrong. They can and they will. I can give you example of process that is near perfection: photosynthesis. Nature can store energy and then utilize it without creating adverse effect on other life. This is just one example but there are many processes like this.
- NilMostChill 2y ago> Nature isn't perfect and has disadvantages compared to us. That's assuming that we are somehow outside of nature. > We don't have to invent ex post facto explanations for why something is the case in nature or why there is some un-intuitive reason as for why the natural way is better. We don't have to , no , but we do , because that's how we learn. Nobody was claiming the "natural" way was better, just that it might serve a purpose.
- lukas099 2y ago> That's assuming that we are somehow outside of nature No it isn’t. You know what they meant, you are just one-upping them on a technicality in a way that doesn’t advance the discussion at all.
- NilMostChill 2y ago> No it isn’t. Yes, it is. > You know what they meant. I have clearly stated what i think they meant. They specifically said "disadvantages compared to us." that heavily implies ( if not outright declares ) an us vs them. It seems you have a different interpretation, I'd be interested to hear what that is if you don't mind ? > you are just one-upping them on a technicality in a way that doesn’t advance the discussion at all. If you don't see how what i said was related to the discussion then we probably aren't going to agree on what constitutes a technicality.
- stale2002 2y ago> I have clearly stated what i think they meant. Hey and you were wrong. You are pretty bad at understanding what other people are saying. > how what i said was related to the discussion It wasn't related because the other person was correct in that you misunderstood my statement.
- NilMostChill 2y ago> Hey and you were wrong. You are pretty bad at understanding what other people are saying. Or you are bad at conveying an explicit meaning. > It wasn't related because the other person was correct in that you misunderstood my statement. I've outlined why i thought what i did, if that was a misunderstanding of your intention I'm willing to accept that, doesn't mean what you said was clear.
- lukas099 2y agoIf modern farming protocols are to water at the soil, I would be strongly willing to bet that is the best way to water, at least for our particular situation of growing the crops we grow on the farms we grow them on. Much has gone into studying how to best grow these crops, both at universities and research centers and on the field at farms themselves.
- username135 2y agoThat assumes that we are better at doing things than nature is. I dont know if im sold on that.
- jimbokun 2y agoWe can also do stupid stuff much faster and efficiently and at greater scale than nature, too.
- jahewson 2y agoI think it’s the difference in frequency. There’s likely other factors too, I’d suppose rain purges mold spores from the air for example, as it does with particulate pollution.
- efilife 2y agoMay I ask why you used there's instead of there are? There is likely sounds wrong and is wrong and I see it very often
- ac29 2y agoIts written the way it'd be spoken, which seems fine for informal writing
- HPsquared 2y agoYep. The thoughts are evolving during the speech process. The speaker might start the sentence thinking about one factor, but decides to make it plural after the first words have already started.
- efilife 2y agoI don't think this is the case. 1. If you accidentally say There is and want to use a plural after, (for example, a lot), you can just say a number in between. The sentence stays correct, you just have to say 2 additional words. I personally never had this problem 2. This is internet. You are free to edit your comment and reread it a million times before posting Hope you understand what I'm trying to say, not being native sometimes restricts my ability to properly articulate semi-complex stuff
- samatman 2y agoYou have very strong opinions about correct English for someone who doesn't speak it as a native language.
- kylebenzle 2y agoYes, and rain fall causes the spread of fungal infestation as said above and it is why we farmers use drip irrigation when possible. FarmBot defenitly has a great marketing video, 3d animation and logo though!
- Grimblewald 2y agoPart of the problem is water composition. Water which contians fertilizers, surfactants etc is going to damage the protective waxy layer on leaves, while rain water will do so less. Next, when watering youre doing so as frequently as the plants can make use of, to encourage maximal growth rates. It would never rain that frequently. finally, the size of droplets is different. Rain drops tend to be big and fat and roll off the waxy leaves while smaller dropplets sit on / stick to the surface where they create a nice wet and likely to rot environment.
- RobotToaster 2y agoWhy would you water your plants with surfactants/soap? Genuine question, does it help the plants in some way?
- HPsquared 2y agoReduced surface tension will soak into the soil better and improve capillary flow to the roots.
- waldothedog 2y agoI believe this is common for large scale irrigation and ferti-gation as it breaks surface tension and helps the water flow
- ajuc 2y agoIt's a common traditional fix to aphids infestation.
- brikym 2y agoYes and that's a problem. Many modern plants aren't selected to grow in natural conditions. They're breed for properties like high yields, large fruit and often other characteristics are traded off to achieve that because the farmers can change the environment to deal with those problems with greenhouses, chemicals, fertilizers, irrigation etc.
- notatoad 2y agoin the wild, plants compete for space and resources and the leaves act as a funnel to direct water (including dew) to the roots that might not otherwise be captured. the leaves can also serve as a shield to prevent the soil around the roots from being eroded by rainfall. in a garden where plants do not have neighbours competing for space and water isn't scarce, there's no reason to water the leaves when you could just water the roots directly.
- gen220 2y agoJust a mild pruning: in natural/wild environments (I.e. not the sterile labs of monocultural agronomy), plants actually cooperate in the resources department, because each species and stage of maturity has different needs and resource extractive capacities. They’ll “use” their root systems and mycorrhizal connections (which are only reliably present in wild soil) as a medium of exchange. We do plants a disservice by studying them when they’re grouped together by species and age cohort, and generalizing their behavior under those conditions. You can recreate these circumstances in your garden by, for example, planting the three sisters (beans, squash, corn) together. You can also opt to grow perennial versions of your crops and stagger their planting / surround them with annuals the complement their chemical needs.
- lukas099 2y agoIt doesn’t have to be either/or. Plants can both compete and cooperate with each other in different ways.
- tonyarkles 2y agoHere's a wild thing: at many of the high end vineyards they'll do low-level helicopter flights over the vines every time it rains to blow the water off the leaves and fruit specifically to prevent infection and rot.
- 0_____0 2y agohaving worked at a cargo drone company, that is one thing that our platform would have excelled at. although ours had a tendency to simply flatten vegetation when "cornering" at low altitude.
- amoshebb 2y agoI’ve heard of this for frost prevention, but never rain. Do you know of a specific vineyard doing this?
- throwup238 2y agoNapa and Sonoma vineyards have been doing it for decades: https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/vintners-rush-to-dry-grapes-helicopters-being-2829662.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/vintners-rush-to-dry... (dated 1997) It’s pretty rare though. They usually only do it when it rains heavily right before harvest.
- amoshebb 2y agoparent comment said “every time it rains”… this article and your comment make it sound “pretty rare”.
- tonyarkles 2y agoI could certainly be wrong about the timing. I’m definitely not a grape growing expert by any means, I mostly know about it from being in the UAV world and having had some discussions about replacing the helicopters with drones for getting the water off.
- 2y ago
- ajuc 2y agoDepends on the plant. There's little rain in the lowest layer of a forest for example. Or in a desert.
- semicolon_storm 2y agoWater on the leaves isn’t bad if you’re watering in the morning where it’ll soon evaporate in the sunlight.
- tuatoru 2y agoI was told that water beads on leaf surfaces act as lenses, creating burnt spots on the leaves. So water at night.
- mapt 2y agoThis is 99% urban legend. You can just barely create it in a lab with just the right plant (with thick hydrophobic trichromes) under just the right light with no wind... but that's not what happens in nature.
- tzot 2y ago> but that's not what happens in nature. Exactly. When it rains in nature, 95% of the times a) there isn't enough sunlight for the droplets to focus and make a burn spot, and b) the droplets don't stay on the leaf but flow down instead. The original advice is solid and not an urban legend, but it applies to cases like watering plants in your balcony when the sun is out, bright and hot. Source: I have caused burn spots in plants of my own.
- Kerrick 2y agoThose “burn spots” are almost certainly from a fungal disease, not from some magnifying glass effect. https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/leaf-scorch.pdf https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/leaf-scorch....
- rvense 2y agoI was told to water at night because it doesn't make much sense to pour water on the ground only for it to evaporate before it goes where it's needed.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 2y agoI think the idea is that using the CNC style design for everything makes it a simpler system? Watering from the soil may be better, but harder to automate to such an extreme? Automating the setup of irrigation lines with a CNC head seems like a pretty cool project though.
- aydyn 2y agoDrip irrigation is a once and done setup and also automated. I feel like this project is insanely cool, but ultimately not practically useful at the pricepoint.
- kylebenzle 2y agoWatering is definitely a solved problem in agriculture. There is absolutely no scenario where two plants growing right next to each other would need drastically different amounts of water. The project, founders and company are utterly useless.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mapt 2y agoProbably? But spraying water on leaves is not only the way water naturally gets to plants, it's often the only practical way to water crops at scale. Center-pivot irrigation has dramatically increased the amount of and reliability of arable cropland, while being dramatically less sensitive to topography and preparation than flood irrigation. The advice to "water the soil, not the leaves" is founded in manual watering regimes in very small-scale gardening, often with crops bred to optimize for unnaturally prolific growth at the cost of susceptibility to fungal diseases, but which are still immature, exposing the soil. Or with transplanted bushes and trees where you have full access to the entire mulch bed. And it's absolutely a superior method, in those instances... but it's not like it's a hard-and-fast rule. We can extend the technique out to mid-size market gardens with modern drip-lines, at the cost of adding to the horrific amounts of plastic being constantly UV-weathered that we see in mid-size market gardens.
- cbsmith 2y agoDrip irrigation is kind of a thing out here in the desert...
- bboygravity 2y agoAnd then there is burried drip irrigation...
- goeiedaggoeie 2y agomore tricky frequently because you need to measure the moisture for each plant as maintainance is difficult without, but this is generally the most efficient low cost method in very arid regions from what I have seen (dad is prof in the field, so exposure is years of unpaid labour as a child and student)
- freedomben 2y agoYes, but as GP said that doesn't scale. I live in an agriculture heavy community in the desert (mountain-west USA), and drip irrigation is only really used for small gardens and landscaping. Anyone with an acre or more of crops is not using drip. I certainly agree that drip is the ideal, and when you aren't doing drip you want to minimize the standing water on leaves, but if I were designing this project I would design for scale.
- rmason 2y agoThe best way to water a garden is drip irrigation. You do have to manually lay the tubing and then in the fall roll it up. But there are farmers doing it in large fields so a small garden should be possible. Once everything is hooked up it can be pretty well automated. Home Depot now in some stores has drip irrigation supplies. https://www.dripworks.com/drip-irrigation https://www.dripworks.com/drip-irrigation
- goeiedaggoeie 2y agoyou don't need anything fancy for drip, a small hole in the pipe and a timer on your pump is is generally enough. If you really want to go fancy you can isolate the system and use moisture sensors, which are cheap.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 2y agoAre moisture sensors any good? I always read about how useless they are, but maybe that’s just a certain type? What would you recommend?
- throwup238 2y agoMoisture sensors that measure conductivity are pretty useless unless frequently recalibrated but time domain reflectometry sensors are much better and more accurate. I use the VH400 from Vegetronix: https://www.vegetronix.com/Products/VH400/ https://www.vegetronix.com/Products/VH400/
- goeiedaggoeie 2y agoYes, conductivity is pretty useless over time.
- ein0p 2y agoI had the same thoughts when watching this. Cucumbers either require twine, in which case they grow quite tall), or each plant will take up half that raised bed. Tomatoes are not planted directly from a seed, you first need to grow seedlings, a very laborious process that’s hard to automate. Tomatoes can also get quite tall, with some plants exceeding 5 feet. You don’t need such elaborate setups for irrigation either - this is trivially solved with drip irrigation stuff available at any Home Depot. And so on and so forth. I grew up on a farm and will probably retire on a farm. The most labor intensive part was weeding and pest control. If you want to do something real, automate that, without making any unwarranted assumptions on how the various crops are planted.
- tastyfreeze 2y agoGrowing tomatoes as starts that are transplanted is not required if your frost free season is long enough. The benefit of using starts is you can give plants a head start and only plant the strongest.
- portpecos 2y agoI can’t emphasize this enough. I mean, I’m using the GardenGrid watering system and an Orbit automated timer to water my 8 raised bed. So the intensive watering problem is solved. Automatically planting the seeds? I can take it or leave it. But the really intensive work is pulling those extraordinarily hardy weeds and pest control. The cost of this thing at nearly $3000 including taxes is just too high for effectively an automated watering system that is easily solved at HomeDepot and the GardenGrid.
- Nebasuke 2y agoI get maybe 50 or so tomato plants in about 1 square meter in my garden, just from the seeds that are left in the ground from last year's tomatoes. (Of course I don't let all 50 grow and instead give most away.)
- ein0p 2y agoThose are not going to bear impressive fruit. People who grow tomatoes for sale almost exclusively plant hybrids. Making hybrid seeds is even more involved, and they cost more, but the crop is much larger, so it’s worth the hassle.
- thatcat 2y agoThere's a thing called foliar spraying, where you do spray water and nutrients on the leaves. You don't do it in the sunshine though because the water droplets will magnify the light and burn the leaves.
- Kerrick 2y agoThis magnifying glass effect is a pervasive and dangerous (to thirsty plants) garden myth. Don’t let sunshine stop you from watering a plant that’s suffering from lack of water. https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/leaf-scorch.pdf https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/leaf-scorch....
- thatcat 2y agoThanks for busting that myth. Foliar isn't about hydration state, it has chemicals and surfactants and it's recommended to do it in morning/night. according to this AL extension office, it can causes a phytotoxicity (leaf burn) at high leaf temps (probably because higher uptake rate of the chemicals) https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/lawn-garden/foliar-feeding-vegetables/ https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/lawn-garden/foliar-feeding-...
- ionwake 2y agoReminds me of when I got into electric skateboarding only to realise late in the game every around me had never had a skateboard when they were younger, they were all engineers. This was back in the day when it was only affordable to make your own. Not disrespecting anyone I just found it funny and surprising.
- loftsy 2y agoYou seriously think they haven't thought of that? I have no association with this project but it has been going for many years, has sold to many customers and institutions and the pictures certainly look like many healthy plants. Probably there is a cost/benefit trade-off to engineering watering at the soil level. Perhaps leaves would get damaged by the hardware.
- wood_spirit 2y agoA few years ago I saw on a tropical island some open ended poly tunnels growing salads and things that, in my own open air garden, are very heavily predated. They had a simple but very effective solution: they ran misters for a few minutes every hour. This made an environment that the plants thrived and insects left alone. And they lost very little water (on an island where fresh water was conserved generally) even though the tunnels were not closed at the ends. Fungus wasn’t mentioned when I asked about them. It was very simple tech level but I was struck by the smarts and knowledge behind it.
- jmdots 2y agoSo it’s like a giant 2L bottle on its side with the ends cut off and no label? Was the soil inside fully or was this a covering? Very cool
- alisson 2y agoI heard watering the leaves is a technique to avoid frost damage in some regions
- mkranjec 2y agoYes it is. Water freezes and provides protection from freezing cold as funny as it might sound. Of course watering systems for huge gardens or orchards are expensive even if you have access to enough water.
- znpy 2y ago> you don't spray water on leaves as shown in the video That’s pretty much what happens when plants get “watered” naturally though… I’m thinking about rain of course
- whynotmaybe 2y agoFrom my understanding gathered from grandparents, problems occur when watering under the sun because droplets act like magnifier and burn the leaves. Watering the soil means you don't need to care about the sun.
- jejeyyy77 2y agorain?
- enraged_camel 2y agoSometimes you do in fact spray water on leaves on hot days because the evaporation effect cools the plant.
- jcims 2y agoI think a lot of these tools are better placed in research where you want highly regulated interaction with the plant and the cash outlay is worth it.
- m00x 2y agoShove some Bravo once in a while in the solution and your fungus worry is gone. If you're going with a chemical solution with fertilizer, etc, you might as well use other chemicals like fungicides and pesticides.