SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Gardening is getting an infusion of high tech as startups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere turn their technological skills to the popular hobby.
Among the latest offerings is a social gardening and food-growing app being developed by a San Francisco startup. And, an affordable hydroponics setup for the home gardener is just reaching the marketplace, developed by a Southern California startup with offices in Berkeley.
Beyond that, big agriculture is going high tech, too. The inaugural Silicon Valley AgTech conference in Palo Alto in May drew a big crowd of consumers and major agricultural companies.
"This is like the perfect storm," said the event's organizer, Roger Royse of the Royse Law Firm in Palo Alto. "We have venture capital, we have technology, and we have agriculture, but tech did not seem to be talking to agriculture until we started this group."
While the conference was more about technologies for large-scale farming, Royse said tech is coming to home gardening, too.
"There's a lot for the home," he said. "Everybody seems to be getting into this growing-their-own-food thing. It's become a community in itself, so there's social networks growing up around it."
Gardening apps have blossomed at the Apple and Android app stores. There are dozens of planners, calendars and plant guides available, including garden monitors and popular apps such as Gardening: The Ultimate Guide (free, iOS), and The New Sunset Western Garden Book ($14.99, iOS). Garden Manager (free, Android) sends alarms when it's time to water and fertilize your plants. With the Organic Gardening Planting Planner (free, iOS) or OG Planting Planner (free, Android), you can create your own garden and be alerted to planting and harvesting times and weather conditions.
Another gardening product soon to make its debut is an app from Earthwire, which is preparing to launch a social app for gardeners. It's a kind of a Facebook for the trowel and mulch set, according to its developers, a father and son team.
"We have built an interactive, mobile application that allows people to connect locally and regionally, communicate on what they're growing in their own backyards and form consortiums to grow that food and share it together," founder Drew Youngs said while taking a break at the AgTech conference.
Hydroponic farming has become a big business in growing fruits and vegetables and drawn interest from hobbyist gardeners. But hydroponics is a fairly demanding craft, requiring skills beyond those of the average gardener.
Hydroponics involves growing plants without soil -- in water, sand or gravel with added nutrients. Regular measurements of the acidity, electrical conductivity and temperature of the nutrient solution are necessary, as is care in adding just the right amount of nutrients. A startup called Sustainable Microfarms has developed a small system called the Genesis Dosing Controller that takes the guesswork out of hydroponics, allowing at-home gardeners to grow everything from lettuce and tomatoes to strawberries and peppers.
"We build a product that takes out the need for you to have any prior understanding of hydroponics or plant biology or engineering," said Sanjay Rajpoot, who started the company while he was still a student at the University of Southern California.
"The reason why hydroponic farming or at-home farming hasn't caught on is because it takes a lot of work, a lot of effort and costs a lot of money," Rajpoot said.
He said his system monitors the acidity, the concentration of nutrients and the temperature, and it automatically maintains the optimal level of nutrients to make sure the plants are always growing at their best.
At $750, though, it may be beyond the reach of some amateurs even though it's much cheaper than competing systems and runs on a 5 gallon to 100 gallon reservoir. On 5 gallons of water, you can grow five tomato plants, or 100 plants on 100 gallons -- a reservoir size that the company says is not uncommon.
"You are looking at a faster grow rate, less labor and higher turnover rate in comparison to soil growing," said Ryan Tjan, a company spokesman.
Business on 06/02/2014