The timeline

After the mediocre performance of my vegetable garden last year (50% of the plants produced), winter is the perfect time to reflect on what went wrong. First, I started the project with a simple idea and absolutely zero experimentation. Second, the methods I chose did not work as I had hoped they would and my fall back was too simple. Third, minor tech troubles exacerbated the issues caused in the previous two steps. To address item one, I have started prepping my solution as of the end of November 2017 with an eye on March 2018. This is giving me time to test and refine as I go. On item two, I had to look at what worked and what didn't. The pump system worked well, but needs to be reconfigured to deliver water at the soil level; even a moderate drop of four inches resulted in erosion and root exposure over time. The planters were acceptable, but the height differential was tough to deal with. New planters will be needed. The right microcontroller was not available immedia...

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...