The timeline

I finally got my watering to work consistently. All it took was replacing the MOSFET with a switch relay and some persistence in getting the damn ESP8266 to connect to the network for more than 5 minutes. I also had my first crop: green beans (or as they seem to be called in the US, string beans). Still waiting on the tomatoes, but I fear the aphids may have undone the good work so far. So, here's the setup: Two window boxes featuring, from left to right, carrots, green/string beans, tomatoes, and strawberry. The white PVC pipe has drill holes to provide water with a length of flexible tubing entering it on the left, supplying the pipe, and the right end of the pipe emptying back into the reservoir. A design issue with this simple setup is that the pipe is too high - it can easily erode un-mulched soil. In a better-designed setup, I would have the reservoir lower than the return so that the pipe can sit on the soil. The reservoir: Nothing fancy here. A 12v DC pump su...

Tech aside, I had my first experience of pests the other day. The tomato plants were looking a little yellow on the lower leaves. Flipping the leaves over resulted in an army of little white aphids being exposed. A quick spray bottle of dish soap (washing up liquid, folks in the UK) and a rinse a short time later seems to have slowed the invasion. Another dose in a day or so will hopefully keep the blighters at bay. Positive news, bean pods are appearing, so at least one of my crops will produce a yield. Carrots continue to grow, but they're a little rangy, probably from the limited sun that my functional-but-ugly setup can receive in its out of the way spot. Not to say there isn't direct sunlight, but between the beans and the air conditioner condenser, there's a windows of about 1.5 to 2 hours of direct sunlight on the carrots. Still, for an experiment I'm relatively happy so far. Nothing died, but the time that the auto-watering has been able to run has been li...