The CNET Smart Garden comes to life
Check out the smart garden in action.
Planting time
We got our hands dirty the past couple of weeks. We built a smart garden bed and a smart irrigation system in the Spring, but we couldn't plant much outside yet, it was too cold.
This week, we dove back in, and brought our smart garden to life. Click through to see the CNET Smart Garden built from nothing to our current smart bed of veggie seedlings.
The completed garden bed
We really did start with nothing. We built our smart garden bed from scratch using railroad ties and a whole lot of dirt.
This is what the garden bed looked like at the start of spring. Notice the small lines of hosing. That's our customized drip irrigation system.
The smarts of smart watering
Our drip irrigation system gets its smarts from this gadget connecting our hose to our outdoor faucet. This is the Orbit B-hyve Smart Hose Faucet Timer. You can control it with an app, set up schedules and it'll monitor the weather for you so it won't water when it rains.
Harvesting lettuce
We were actually able to plant lettuce at the start of spring. Here are the results. Everything else, we planted over the course of the past week.
Growing veggies
Specifically, we planted seedlings of tomatoes, bell peppers and jalapeños. We also intend to plant the super spicy Carolina Reapers in our garden, but those seeds need a little more time to grow into seedlings.
The completed smart garden
Here's the garden now, complete with all of our veggies except for the Carolina Reapers.
Testing time
The lettuce grew in fine over the course of a rainy spring. Now, the garden will get its real test to see if smarts can help us grow veggies over the course of a hot summer.
Keeping watch
We're also using a smart cam and smart lights to help scare away pests. The Netgear Arlo Pro 2 watches for motion at night.
Illumination
If our camera senses any motion, it triggers our Philips Hue Outdoor lights to start flashing.
Smart garden living
We even met a couple of friends while planting in the smart garden. Hopefully, our garden will be smart enough to scare away any that want to snack on our growing veggies.