As a fellow backyard raised bed hipster, part of the point for me is going out and tending it. I struggle to see the value in this unless it’s about scaling.

For me, playing with tech is part of the reason I have a backyard farm. So far I've just played with very basic things like sunken hose irrigation with timers hooked up to a rain gauge so it only waters when there's no rain, but I'd love to have the time to look more into the robotics side of things.

For those of us who sling CRUD sites all day long, the opportunity to dig into more machine/computer interaction is just fun.

Fair enough! I work at a robotics company, and I already feel guilt for not putting more effort into my existing homeassistant and networking setup. But if you were wanting to scratch an itch, I could definitely picture this being rewarding.

You will tend the robot instead.

When you start off playing Stardew Valley but end up playing Factorio/Satisfactory.

One personal (and open source) favourite of mine is Mindustry. I also heard of shapez.io.

Ah, the Minecraft Modpack methodology.

As a tech-crazed wanna-be hipster gardener, the value is pretending to do it "better" than the backyard raised bed hipsters.

Observe: "Using the manual controls, you can move FarmBot and operate its tools and peripherals in real-time. Scare birds away while at work, take photos of your veggies, turn the lights on for a night time harvest, or simply impress your friends and neighbors with a quick demo."

Maybe you wouldn't get a garden otherwise if you've got no skill, no experience living on a farm. This way you get to have a garden without know how to do it and without a choir part like watering regularly. Now you can water whenever you feel like it.

Some day I hope everyone has a backyard farm to supply at least some of their food. Some of those people will need assistance to do it.

You've described most of Eastern Europe for most of the last 100 years and many parts of Asia. I came from a Polish city of 100,000, and everybody I knew (who didn't completely surround themselves by concrete) grew at least some type of fruits and vegetables in their yards, no matter the size. We knew the next big disturbance is just around the corner. Outside of vegetables and fruits directly planted in our yards, we also raised pork, and at different times, chicken, turkey, ducks. Our neighbours raised rabbits. Most people "leased" a small plot on the outskirts of the city (in our case for strawberries). Community gardens were everywhere. Now, things are slowly starting to change to mimick the West. People are even starting to grow lawns for some reason. Sad state of affairs. It seems humans believe that progress means you outsource all of the labor to somebody or something else. In my opinion, the labor itself, is the lesson. The folks that need assistance in their gardens would generally get it from family, friends, and neighbours.

Community gardens.

This! I started bookmarking community gardens in Oakland. There’s quite a few and I hope more space can be allocated for them in the future!

My dream is to make gardens under geodesic domes. In UK there is Eden project with 2 domes: one has mediterranean climate and another tropical. Imagine being able to grow mangoes and pineapples almost anywhere (it maybe too expensive in some climates, but maybe just growing strawberries there would be nice). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWr67v620kY

I'd love to figure out how to do this in such a way that some or all of the warmth for them could come from waste-heat sources. Seems like such a waste to build a dome for growing local food and then have to heat it through the night with conventional fuels.

On a side note, check out forest gardening, namely "Plants for a future" is an excellent reference/book pfaf.orgyou, the author whom I had the luck to meet had a "huge" garden nearby in Cornwall

Same - I enjoy working in my garden because it's a break from my office tech job!

Robot aside, the UI to plan your planting is pretty great though.

I’m working on a different farming robot. Since my office is at the farm and half of my work is doing something outside with the machine, it’s a pretty idyllic setting for a job!

I thought the same thing. I could care less about the robot but a good garden planning app would be nice and let you track when you water, plant, harvest/ yield of crop from year to year

An app can't tell you that. You need to get out and observe every day. That's the fun of growing plants and raising animals.

I get automatic watering, especially in arid climates, but planting and weed plucking is excessive imo.

For a small bed like the one in the demonstration, surely that's more simply managed with a drip hose and maybe a timer?

Drip hoses are also better from a water consumption point of view since it goes straight to the soil— you don't lose any to runoff or evaporation.

Large farms put the hoses in the ground - the water never touches the air (well I assume some will seep to the surface, but not much), instead it is applied only close to the roots. You need to be very careful to apply your seeds just above the hose, but this is a solved problem: modern farming can place each seed to within 2cm of where intended over large fields even when the tractor is planting 50 rows at a time at 20km/h.

But automatic watering is a solved problem. You can set up an automatic drip irrigation system very cheaply.

That's exactly what I have and I'm telling you, it's still impractical. One, my greenhouse is a 24x13' footprint (which is pretty much the minimum useable with for a walk-in), with 3 bed rows 16' long, 2 or 4' wide. So I'd need 3 robot setups. Beds are long and skinny to facilitate human ergonomics. The shown examples are way too wide for raised beds, unless they are the walk-on type. So I'd still benefit from a robot which could straddle the bed and be easy to move from one bed to another.

It's open source and designed to be modular/expandable. What's stopping you from building one to fit your needs?

Here's some pictures[0] of people building larger scale ones:

- 10x20' inside a greenhouse

- 1.5x18m outdoor

[0] - https://forum.farmbot.org/t/photo-contest-post-your-best-far...

Maybe you need 1 robot with wide legs?

> small hipster raised bed farming in back yard

As a small hipster raised bed farmer (or rather, gardener), I actually looked into this at one point - the $1500 price tag put me off of it really quick. There's no way that kind of investment makes sense unless you're planning to sell the vegetables to recoup your investment - and it's doubtful that the machine will realistically last more than five years or so, so you'll have to replace it at some point in the fairly near future.

i don’t think this is an investment kind of project. it’s a hobby, more for people who enjoy the tinkering as much as some people enjoy playing in their own gardens which often costs far more than they’re getting in return via food. simply an early open source iteration with hopes for community improvements as more people with varying needs begin to contribute.

this seems like its definitely not a project yet for people who don’t enjoy that as a hobby.

I think you pay to get hands off garden.

In that case, you're better off just buying your produce at the grocery store.

i mean, how many hobbies can you say that about? most of them i imagine.

hobbies are about tinkering and learning. we usually put far more in financially then we get returned financially. hobbies are expensive.

Like home made beer. Unless stuff at the store is really bad and/or super expensive. But in terms of gardening I'd bet on hydroponics.

But you can watch it grow.

Slightly off topic, but what is it about raised beds? Why not till and fertilize the soil you already have?

There are a few advantages: the beds are raised do you don't have to bend over as far to tend them. The beds make it obvious where the place to walk is. The beds mean instead of rows of plants you have a contained solid mess which in turn means more plants per area (this is good for some plants, bad for others). Tilling is bad for soil and should be avoided whenever possible, the beds make it easier to not disturb the soil in ways that need tilling to fix. The beds allow you to have the type of soil best for the type of plant you are trying to grow - fertilizer doesn't change soil types.

Nothing magical about it, there are some advantages to raised beds, but other than the ergonomics everything can be done in any other type of garden if you try.

Why is tilling bad for the soil? Genuinely curious as I've seen it as an option for my terrible salty clay soil at my house.

Because it destories the root structure built up in the ground over the years. Those roots then break down quickly, and in turn the whole microbe profile is different. Sometimes tilling is still the best thing to do, but it isn't a good thing and should be avoided.

On a different note, tilling also costs large amounts of energy. The less tilling your do, the less CO2 you are putting into the atmosphere (even if you do the tilling by hand with a shovel you are still emitting more CO2 than if you just sat in your easy-chair)

>Because it destories the root structure built up in the ground over the years. Those roots then break down quickly, and in turn the whole microbe profile is different. Sometimes tilling is still the best thing to do, but it isn't a good thing and should be avoided.

Does this still apply when talking about farming? I just started growing food this year, but once I've harvested the first crop and am planting the second crop of the season, the roots in the ground are surely going to break down quickly in any case, because I've harvested all of their tops, no?

>even if you do the tilling by hand with a shovel you are still emitting more CO2 than if you just sat in your easy-chair

I'm sorry, what? By that logic I should also never exercise.

> Does this still apply when talking about farming?

I think many farmers have moved towards using various types of something called “cover crops” rather than tilling. These cover crops have different impacts depending on which are used: some have incredibly prolific rooting systems that dig deep and break up the soil on their own; some pull nutrients from deep in the soil and grow massive green above ground so farmers let these grow to pre-seed levels and then plow it over, and leave it so it decomposes and re-releases those same nutrients to the surface, and also draws all the micro biome critters in which then fertilize the soil even more; some plants fix nitrogen levels and some bloom various types of flowers which pull in pollinators. Some do a premise mix of multiple types of cover crops.

I think tilling is still done sometimes but it’s only for certain situations but is avoided most of the time these days.

I just got into gardening a few years ago, so I’m still learning most of this as I go along, but from what i’ve read, tilling is phased out except for certain situations.

I can say with absolute certainty that by my third year of working on soil, my gardens soil absolutely does not need tilling at all, it’s fluffy and soft for at least two feet down with plenty of life in there. But much of the surrounding area is pretty clay tough. Honestly it was super easy, just needed like a season of building the soil properly.

Another Ive noticed is, many of our home/hobby gardening techniques which our parents generation adopted were really only useful for enormous factory level farms and were actually not good for small or home gardens. These two situations need entirely different things but marketing and such over the years really steered that generation into doing a lot of the wrong things.

I don’t know your situation, tilling may be the best option for you, but it also may be to just dump a bunch of compost on top, let it settle, then plant some rooting cover crops and let it do it’s thing for a couple months. The latter may be much much healthier for your soil.

I guess it depends on a plant, but it's not only about roots. Top layer of soil has highest concentration of organic matter and it builds up over time when plants and possibly animal excrements decompose. By tiling you kill fertility a bit, that's why most farms have to use fertilizers.

I guess it depends on a plant, but it's not only about roots. Top layer of soil has highest concentration of organic matter and it builds up over time when plants and possibly animal excrements decompose. By tiling you kill fertility a bit, that's why most farms have to use fertilisers.

It applies to farming in general. You really need to consult an agronomist for better answers (which can be very specific/different depending on which part of a field you are asking about )

I was hoping you would notice the exercise connection. I don't have answers to that, just an interesting consideration.

"Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don't need it: if you are sick you should not take it." Henry Ford

It disrupts the fungal life and dries it out, while also increasing erosion and weed pressure. It’s not that you can’t ever till, but it’s generally to be avoided.

In the case of clay, deep mulch will do wonders, and the earthworms will gently improve the soil over time.

I'm not sure if you know, but is there a way to promote earthworms in my soil? It's pretty compacted after the build and apparently they don't like that, so I'm trying to aerate and let my grass grow longer to break up what it can before I trim and let the roots die. For the garden I'm also planning on planting plants with deep roots, like sunflowers, to improve the soil.

Yes. As someone growing and raising between 60 and 100% (depending on year) of my family's food on a run-through clay and hardpan soil (150 years of cotton and tobacco did it), I can definitely say that you can turn compacted and dead clay around. Like the parent said - deep mulch is one way. In my case, leaves, grass clippings, forest duff, soiled animal bedding, etc. Really anything organic. You effectively want to "build" the topsoil, which will over time (4-7 years depending on what you're starting with) create enough organic matter to entice insects, earthworms, fungal growth (critical to soil health), voles and moles. All of these creatures will aerate the soil for you. No work required. If you want to do a test, throw a tarp down (or some other large covering) over an area, and check back on it in a week or two. You should have some moles already going to work on aerating your soil, and in turn, you should see at least some earthworm activity.

Also, don't forget the weeds. Almost all of the plants humans label as weeds, have very deep sub-soil penetrating roots (most are also more nutritious than the stuff we've bred for us or other animals to eat). If you want to rebuild your soil, let the weeds grow and then either use them for compost which you'll later top-dress your soil with, or just chop them and leave them be for the cover crop effect, or work them in slightly, up to you.

> If you want to rebuild your soil, let the weeds grow and then either use them for compost which you'll later top-dress your soil with, or just chop them and leave them be for the cover crop effect, or work them in slightly, up to you.

This has been my primary approach. Letting the grass and "weeds" grow relatively tall then trimming them down every month or so, letting the clippings rest where they are more or less.

Where do you live? Earthworms are not native everywhere and they can be a harmful invasive species if introduced to the wrong place.

If you have a new house, developments are horible, just enough soil to grow grass. You might be stuck buying good compost and soil and tilling that in deep, then letting grass grow for a few years before trying anything more.

Seems to be the case I'll have to play the long game. They bring in this disgusting but shapeable soil to surround the foundation out here in central Texas. I remember growing up finding earthworms and fishing all the time, so they should be native.

> should be native.

The word you’re looking for is “naturalized”. Not native, but they’re already there, so...

Hm why do you make the distinction? Is the implication that the earthworms were brought in at some point or does native not work as a word in this context?

Maybe try making something like a "broadfork" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadfork

Also, try asking a coffee shop for leftover ground and sprinkle it around...

This broadfork is interesting. I have a garden fork that could probably serve the same purpose. I'll give it a shot.

Also thanks for the recommendation of using coffee grounds. I have a couple local shops nearby I think would be willing to offload that on to me haha.

I live in an area which has been urban for ages. The soil, more than a few inches down, is full of toxic chemicals, including but not limited to lead.

Raised bed, you know what you get.

Texas checking in -- the dirt in my backyard is full of clay and totally unsuitable for growing anything other than grass and weeds. Many places are like this.

That makes sense, and maybe I'm sweeping aside many places similar without thinking about them. In the Midwest I've always had good luck in the ground.

The back loves raised beds compared to the alternative.

Finally got a home and am finding the same thing here in central Texas. At least with the crap soil the builders use to form the land around the foundation. My plan is to attempt to grow more deep rooted plants so their roots can break up the soil and die off when I trim them. Then aeration and topsoil composting. Still a work in progress so I have no idea if it'll work.

The clay soil usually has a low organic matter content. So bringing mulch, grass clippings etc. does improve several key factors for the plants to thrive. The problem with putting a layer of rotting grass/weeds on the top is that at least in some locations it will make a perfect slug/snail farm. So I prefer to burry it in shallow pits/trenches. Also probably any preferably dense plant cover protects the top layer from being backed by the sun and becoming brick-like.