Over the past three years, while Dwight has been happily tending to plants in our apartment garden, I’ve been regularly upgrading the technology.
This is mainly my side of the story.
Today's theme was irrigation. This morning, I tackled some watering issues with a couple planters on a community deck downstairs. This afternoon, I prepped our balcony for native grasses (in planters, of course) by setting up 48 drippers. One of my goals for this year is to focus on improving soil moisture sensing.
Early Sunday mornings, plants take priority in the shower. Here, Dwight is plucking dead bits and checking for pests. Dusty foliage receives a gentle shower from the spray head. There’s a link to his City Gardener blog in the Friends and Family section at the foot of this page.
On Sunday mornings Dwight does indoor gardening: watering, pruning, cleaning, pest control, adjusting for light, and so on. A 180-degree rotation of this plant rack will ensure even light distribution. Outside, the weather may be dreary, but inside these plants bring warmth and a pop of color.
Packed bags, checked-in flights for tomorrow, and corralled plants await our departure. Dwight has consolidated the houseplants and hooked them up to the watering system. While he insists on manual control, albeit remotely via the Internet, cameras offer visual and auditory (pumps whirring) assurance of their well-being.
Built a project box for wirelessly controlling lights on our mobile green wall via our Zigbee mesh network and Hubitat hub. Now, these lights seamlessly join lighting scenes controlled by voice, app, or household events.
Settled on black gooseneck lights for our climbing plants. As a prototype, ordered one light from IKEA which arrived today. It’s almost perfect, it’s almost invisible, but it’s not dimmable. The bulb can’t be swapped, so back it goes and the search continues.
Today’s early morning sun highlighted Dwight’s use of grouping, repetition and height on an industrial wheeled pallet.
Our Christmas cactus is living up to its name, with many buds still waiting to open. We won't assemble the tree for another week, but Dwight is busy creating two or three gingerbread houses using his architectural LEGO.
It's finally time for dessert: Dwight's apple crisp and whipped cream. Life is good. Grateful. Table centerpiece by LEGO from a kit, rolling plant racks by Dwight with lighting by Tom.
Researched unobtrusive nighttime front lighting for plants on a vertical grid on a moveable rack. Tried various paradigms, including: green wall, large artwork, trade show display, and wall wash. The sun shows backlighting is also a possibility.
Dwight sterilized soil for our next batch of microgreens, the last batch having succumbed to fungus. The kitchen was filled with an earthy scent, which was not unpleasant. He sterilizes the seeds in diluted hydrogen peroxide.
Our wheeled garden is on the move. This rolling rack now keeps the afternoon sun off the kitchen island at dinnertime, reducing the need to lower the blinds.
I played with LEGO while Dwight worked on the apartment garden. It's a lot of work to keep all the plants happy. He recently acquired some new epiphytes, Tillandsia (rootless air plants). Here, the automated misting system is providing them with the moisture they need to thrive.
Consolidated houseplants so they could be hooked up to our irrigation system. Periodic misting runs automatically but Dwight prefers to initiate watering himself, even when we’re traveling. Two cameras provide visual and auditory evidence that the system is operating correctly.
This week I’ve been prototyping systems for maintaining water levels while rooting plant cuttings. This morning I built a “production” system that includes a float valve connected to a water supply to top up the tank automatically.
The problem: maintaining water levels for rooting cuttings while we’re away, traveling. The solution: siphonic action. The blue container represents a reservoir that will be topped up via a float valve. Prototype 1, here, has too many points of failure. Next up: straight runs from the reservoir.
Arranged drip irrigation tubes in large planters on a roof deck of our building. Once the plants establish themselves, they hide the tubes.
Met with two members of our building’s garden club to plan improvements we’d like to the irrigation on a roof deck. Updated a document that will be part of a request for quote. We were treated to delicious home-made scones, and I left with three more for later.
On Sunday mornings houseplants receive extra care and attention. Here, they’re lining up to take a gentle shower. All the plants happily survived six weeks of drip irrigation while we were in California.
In Minneapolis I lay on the couch, grouchy, nursing a cold, periodically flushing out radiation. From Palm Springs Dwight remotely watered our apartment garden. The plants look good to me, but doubtless he’ll see issues when we both return to Minneapolis at the end of the month.
On Sundays, Dwight makes sure all the plants are properly watered. Most of these plants have automated watering and misting. Plants in other areas are watered manually and get rotated through this area.
Walked around roof decks with Dwight giving planters the finger test to verify they’re getting enough water. Plants are thriving, thanks to our building’s gardening club.
Admired a modest shrub Dwight had transplanted for our building’s gardening club. We support replacing some lawns and mulch with native grasses and other plantings, but many of our neighbors probably prefer things as they are.
9:30 a.m., Salema, Portugal: Dwight watered all the houseplants in Minneapolis where it was still night. Misters are on autopilot, but he prefers to run watering zones manually. The system has been reliable, but I find myself imagining additional fault-tolerant features to minimize the possibility of returning from a trip to racks of dead plants. I do need to improve the moisture sensors.
Spent the morning mapping and logging issues for each of eight irrigation zones on a rooftop deck on our building. Used a Google Maps satellite image that shows every garden bed and planter.
I love the name of this device: Time-of-Flight sensor. It measures distance by bouncing a laser beam off a surface. Today I started figuring out how to use it to measure water depth in a tank for our indoor garden. As always, software is the challenge. I’ve previously used ultrasound for this application, but stray reflections off the side of the tank have been a problem. A prototype will tell me if the narrow beam of a Time-of-Flight sensor does a better job.
Upgraded the water supply line to an industrial pallet, part of our “garden on wheels.” It doesn’t look like much, but it brought together disparate parts. The line is flexible, tough silicone tubing (sold for beer production) threaded through a PET mesh sleeve for protection. The line assembly passes through a grommet then a rigid plastic tube to a central distribution point inside the pallet. Cycled to a hardware store for clamps for the rigid tube.
After exploring just about every other possibility, finally figured out why water wasn’t reaching one set of drippers in a planter in our building. Stayed away from kink puns. [gallery]
Added a 4th misting zone (M4) to our apartment garden. All the tech in the photo sits in a large, slide-out disaster pan. Normally it's out-of-sight. Misting keeps plants happy and greatly reduces the population of spider mites. You can see how the garden has evolved in a new post: As the Apartment Garden Evolves.
Dwight and I have become the "Drip Irrigation Mavens" for our building's gardening club. We built dripper harnesses (6 drippers per planter, tubing, manifold) for two planters as a demonstration, and plan to roll out to six more planters this week.
Sunday morning: While listening to BBC’s Gardeners’ Question Time, Dwight misted plants to highlight cobwebs. He found none thanks to two types of beneficial insects he'd ordered online. Thursdays: He volunteers at a teaching/research greenhouse at the University of Minnesota.
It was another warm, sunny day for microgreens in our apartment garden. Outside, it was a different story.
Our houseplants went walkabout while I napped. This cluster now diffuses the setting sun. With the switch to daylight saving time and seasonal changes, the sun was shining straight at Dwight during dinner. Most of our plants are on wheeled racks or this wheeled industrial pallet.
Replaced the plant irrigation system pump with a much more powerful model. We’ve been adding plants to the top of racks, and the water pressure had been inadequate. Now we have to reduce the pressure on the drip irrigation emitters to prevent overspray.
Watered our plants back in Minneapolis without getting out of bed in Kona.
Worked on unobtrusive plant up-lighting, using honeycomb filters to eliminate glare. Then, the sun reminded me there’s nothing like natural backlighting. No artificial light in this photo.
Turned our indoor garden pallet on wheels upside-down and started installing electrics and electronics. I'll install 14 feet of lighting track inside the pallet. It's highly adjustable and maintainable: lights and electronics snap in place.
There were frequent "rain showers" inside our home as I finished up expanding our homegrown automated plant misting system into three separate zones. An ultraviolet water purifier minimizes the possibility of Legionnaires' Disease from inhaled, contaminated droplets.
Just noticed that, in my absence yesterday, my water bottle had been repurposed for plant propagation. Occasionally, with permission, Dwight comes home from his volunteer job at a greenhouse with cuttings that would otherwise be composted.
Took delivery of a wheeled, recycled plastic industrial pallet for our indoor garden. Dwight will come up with a system of risers so the plants can be at different heights. I’ll be concealing lights, irrigation tubes, wiring, and electronics inside the pallet.
Spent the afternoon soldering sockets onto cables for moisture sensors for our indoor garden.
Looked up at the ceiling of our "indoor garden." Up-lights were projecting shadows of palms, gently swaying in the breeze from the ceiling fan.
Boxes of irrigation parts waited to be taken downstairs to the mail room. I upgraded our houseplant irrigation system and sold the old parts on eBay to benefit Doctors Without Borders. Everything went. Boxes and packaging materials were rescued from a dumpster.
Spent my Sunday afternoon with a crimper, a heat gun, and a soldering iron. Built the wiring harness for up to seven capacitive soil moisture sensors for a 3-level rack of houseplants. The box holds a microcomputer that wirelessly communicates with our home automation hub.
Circuit boards mimicked a fern as they waited for their red, moisture-resistant coatings to cure.
The prairie grasses on our balcony are looking happy. Today I upgraded the irrigation system electronics: it delivers water via 48 micro-drippers; moisture is measured by capacitive sensors in the soil at three points; the system communicates wirelessly with a Hubitat hub.
Did a science experiment: measured soil moisture with an inexpensive (as little as $2 apiece) capacitive sensor wired to a cheap Arduino computer which communicates wirelessly with our home hub. If I deploy this system, the biggest expense will be waterproofing the circuitry.
Finished building the latest controller for watering and misting one rack of houseplants. It communicates wirelessly over a Z-Wave mesh with a Hubitat home automation hub.
Worked on expanding our houseplant irrigation system. My work (automated irrigation and lighting) is almost invisible. Dwight’s work (interior landscape) is very visible. The chairs are meant for the balcony, but, particularly in this hot weather, we’re happy to sit here.
Rewired this manifold for an irrigation system for a rack of indoor plants. The system has been performing well for two years. Next, I’ll replicate this system for a second rack of plants. When we start traveling again we’ll be able to water our plants from anywhere in the world.
In heavy rain, picked up three cart-loads of plants from a garden center for our balcony. Being contrarian paid off: there were plenty carts, and no lines at the checkouts.
Right now, we’re not going to warm places, but we can bring warm places to us. Thank you, Dwight.
Dwight transformed a Honda Fit-load of twigs and branches into winter interest on our balcony.
Our patio furniture is now inside for the winter. Dwight is the gardener with the vision, I designed and built the lighting and irrigation.
Our tomato espalier experiment is going well. However, we’ll still be walking over to the local farmers market on Saturday.
Cycled under glorious tree blossoms, stayed in the moment, didn’t take a photo. Instead, here’s my latest science project: logging the weight of a tray of microgreens. A load cell is connected to the cloud, an app graphs results. logging the weight of a tray.
Spent the morning streamlining our houseplant irrigation system. (This is the “after” picture.) Rain and lightning made it a good day for plumbing.
Carefully clamped an electrical project box before drilling holes in it. Last time I wasn’t so careful, and ended up at Urgent Care.
Tested prototype 1.0 of a plant misting system supplied by a high-pressure pump.
Used ultrasonic sound waves to measure the depth of water in the tank for our houseplant irrigation system. Drilling holes in the little project box attached to the top of the tank resulted in a trip to UrgentCare yesterday. My thumb and my pride are healing well.
While Minneapolis dug out from a snowstorm, our amaryllis provided a pop of color.
Built a fully working prototype of a water flow meter using $25 of parts, including an Arduino microcomputer. It behaves exactly like a meter costing ten times as much. I'll build a "production" version of this and incorporate it into our indoor irrigation system.
Built my latest manifold for watering house plants. It’s smaller, with 5 zones controlled by solenoid valves; each zone can have 8 adjustable drippers. We can adjust the duration and frequency of watering for each zone via the Web.
Used grow lights for the first time today. We’re still experimenting, but the plan is to produce a continuous supply of microgreens and herbs. The white rectangle in a small zippered bag wirelessly logs light levels and surface temperatures in a spreadsheet.
Prepared for winter. Took down the irrigation system I'd built for our balcony plants. Gave the 250 feet of tubing and 48 drippers a shower.
Rain has set in, so we canceled a 4-day trip “Up North” and went plant-shopping instead. It’s a start.
Successfully prototyped a pressure balancing system for watering indoor plants. The highest plants are over 6 feet above the lowest plants. I was able to adjust the system so that each dripper gets similar water pressure.
Completed a controller for our indoor plants. We can control irrigation and three sets of grow lights over the Internet. The controller turns the water pump off when the tank is almost empty or the Internet goes down (after a preset number of minutes).
Assembled a grow light stand where we'll grow herbs, baby greens, and microgreens. Each set of LED lights is connected to the Internet. I'll be adding drip irrigation and will create IFTTT applets to control the lights and the irrigation.
Prototyped a drip irrigation system for about fifty plants on our balcony. I’ll create IFTTT applets to control the pump based on reports from the moisture sensor. Next on my shopping list: a 30-gallon tank.
With 40+ miles per hour winds, and blowing snow, it was a perfect day to organize our nest, hang pictures, and enjoy this amaryllis. The plant was regifted to us by a friend, concerned it is poisonous to her cats. We were happy to give it a home.