Hi Everyone…I’m seriously thinking of jumping in with farmbot. I’m a jazz pianist, so farming is a new adventure for me although I do come from a farming family and I have room on my land for a large garden, I’m considering a green house.
I was wondering what the challenges will be to growing larger vegetables. I also like the idea of growing enough food for 1 person for a year for planning per farmbot…and then increasing needs per household size for planning.
I think temperature and humidity conditions must be considered first. You also need to understand greenhouse automation and “soil” conditions. Why don’t you search more about it and then about Farmbot requirements which is a little bit more detailed and require certain degree of knowledge.
Examples:
I’d get started with a simple patio or window garden, maybe a few herbs or a tomato plant or two. Build a little understanding of gardening from a ‘hands on perspective.’ Try out different seed suppliers. Get a feel for watering, weeding, etc. on a smallish scale.
Later you can start look into soil PH, fertilizer, lighting and temperature control. All variables that you will want to control.
Next, there’s pest control. There are plenty of ‘natural’ ways to control pests and then theirs the heavyweight chemical ways that should normally be avoided.
Another topic is monoculture vs multi-culture. I’m a fan of growing just one or two ‘crops’ per season with larger volumes of each crop. Plenty for me and enough for the pests, birds and animals and it makes canning, dehydration and other perseveration techniques much more efficient to have larger crops of similar veggies.
When you have a reasonable understanding of gardening on a tiny scale, then scale up to a raised bed or small patch in the back yard – and then with that behind you – consider automation.
I think some of the crops are quite temperature and sunlight sensitive. the ambient temperature can affect the quality of the edible plants.