It’s spring. If you have a green thumb or even if you don’t and you don’t give up on wanting to grow flowers, plants and vegetables at all costs, you know that we are entering the busiest time of the year. A garden is one of the few places left where we can still give free rein to our creativity. But also a balcony and the interior spaces of the house, thanks also to hydroponics, can become a green experimentation gym.
The automatic thought goes to smart gardening, that is, to that offer of gadgets designed to make it easier to care for greenery. Although the combination of sensor and digital development has made some agricultural processes more accurately measurable, not all so-called smart products are really useful, especially for those who have accumulated some experience in the field.
That’s why the short guide that we offer you (indoor and outdoor) will be more analog than usual. Let’s start from the basics, indeed from the seeds. This is the best time of the year to start growing. To start we recommend the blue bell or morning glory, zinnia and strawberries (perfect to plant in April) but also beans, green beans, chickpeas, peas and broad beans. For the more experienced there are also packages of rare vegetables in the sense that they are no longer found. When buying a sachet of sealed seeds, a tip is to check the germinability by pouring the seeds into a glass of water and after a few minutes discard those that remained on the surface. To have a broader vision for beginners, an indispensable app is Plantsnap which helps you to identify with a photo the flowers and plants you find around. For each of them a rather complete guide on sowing is offered.
Those lucky enough to have an outdoor green space must then equip themselves with a brush cutter, lawn mower, and edge trimmer. The first is for bushes and thicker tall grass, the second if you want an English garden and the third is used, let’s say, to finish the job of the lawnmower. You can find them with internal combustion engines or powered by batteries. The former are usually more powerful and have greater autonomy. The electric ones are less noisy and more suitable for those who are not experienced.
For technologists, an advice is to rely on robotic lawnmowers. An example? Robomow RT300 is almost completely autonomous and covers an area of almost 300 square meters. It is not cheap, the list price is 799 euros but on the other hand there is no motorbike to struggle. Also for those who intend to delegate the fatigue of the fields to technologies, sensors can help to keep crops under control.