Can you imagine a day when machines can garden? In many ways, that time is already here. When growing indoors, you are already relying on technology to help create and maintain a healthy growing environment—artificial lighting, carbon dioxide, ventilation, cooling, humidity, and optimal pH and TDS are all regulated by various devices, sensors, and solutions. As some growers are painfully aware, these wonders of technology can may malfunction, causing disaster for your crop. For this reason, you still need a human at the helm to control and monitor activity. That is, until now.

The Grobot (from PurGro) is a grow room and reservoir controller with robotic actuation that enables you to control and monitor every aspect of the growing environment from anywhere around the world via a computer-linked interface. Installing a Grobot also means that if anything goes wrong in your garden, the  system can instantly notify you that something is amiss. It even allows you to check on your growing environment through a series of cameras, allowing you to keep an eye on your crop when you can’t be there.

 This robotic growing controller allows you perform a wide variety of necessary functions for maintaining a healthy growing environment.

This robotic growing controller allows you perform a wide variety of necessary functions for maintaining a healthy growing environment. Functions like emptying and refilling the reservoir, adding nutrients in controlled ratios, pH control, CO2 augmentation, temperature control, humidity control, security alerts, remote viewing, lighting controls, water levels, and dozens of other tasks that would ordinarily require a human touch can now happen while you are miles away.

All in all, the Grobot is very easy to install and has been accurately monitoring and maintaining the environmental parameters of this high tech indoor garden for five weeks. Since not all growers are IT guys, you will be very glad to know that the team at PurGro can help walk you through any questions you might have about setting up the system and the remote networking, and have you automated in no time.

Words can’t describe how James Bond it feels to slide out your smartphone, hit a couple of keys, and know that you just mixed the perfect reservoir for your garden. If you are serious about growing, but want to step away from the garden occasionally, it could be time to give robotics a try.

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Q:

The power company has been promoting smart meters where I live, and there is talk of converting the grid here to a “smart grid.”  According to the power company, this is going to benefit me, but they are rather vague about how exactly.  Doing some research, I see these things are hugely controversial - there is reportedly even a moratorium on them in California.
I don’t want one, what can I do?

Last week I introduced new growers to the soil vs. hydroponics debate, and gave my two cents on where to begin. This week, I want to provide some more guidance for those of you just getting your feet wet with indoor growing. Whenever you hear growers talking about hydroponics gardening, you hear a bunch of new terms and lingo that can be confusing to newbies. In particular, you’ll hear people talking about pre-veg, veg, and bloom, which are the growing phases of your crop.

Realtors know that the three most important factors in a home’s value are: location, location, location. The same can be said of your indoor garden, whether you are a small-scale hobbyist or a commercial grand master grower.

Growers often ask about basic general hydroponics equipment and indoor gardening tactics that are guaranteed to create healthier, faster-growing plants that give you more flower per watt and put smiles on your face every harvest.

Harvesting is the payoff moment of your hydroponics gardening season, and we’ve been giving you harvesting tips that are timely and timeless.

Be sure to check out Rosebud Magazine (the print version) for harvest information we don’t have room for here.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, except in the world of hydroponics.That’s how I felt when I heard that major hydroponics manufacturer-distributors like Hydrofarm abandoned their loyalty to growers and hydroponics retailers by selling hydroponics equipment at Kmart and Sears instead of only selling via hydroponics stores.

A friend of mine conducted an interesting experiment in his hydroponics garden- he created a customized soil mix and grew his plants without using any nutrients additives.

Everything his plants needed to eat, they would have to get from the soil.

Hydroponics gardening is fun and rewarding, but sometimes you might feel like your plants are asking too much of you. It seems like you have to be in your hydroponics garden every day, or have someone to stand in for you, if you want assurance of hydroponics success.

And one of the main things that concerns you is how can you even leave your house or wherever else your garden is, and still be in the know on what’s going on back there under the lights.