For your cabbage worm problem, it seems that Nasturtiums will repel them and other pests. Since Nasturtiums are climbers, I would grow them on a tree or trellis by the Farmbot bed, however they will grow along the ground too.
Alliums (garlic, chives, onions, leeks) are great for repelling cabbage worms too. However, don’t grow beans and peas in the same bed. Beans do best in a three sisters plot anyways (which is very low maintenance to begin with).
If you do want to have beans in the same plot then use Thyme.
Hi! As a new member, may I add something here. Farmbot-idea relies on “mimicing nature, but on the modern way”. So the balance between pests and cultural plants should be handled via balance between pest - predators etc. It should also be be relatively easy, given the fact that there should not be any limitations what to grow. But we need to figure out, how to mimic the mother nature in fully. It means, we need to have soil biology in the system, (all trofic levels from bacteria, fungus up to protozoa and definitely all kind of insects). If this works ok including diversity of plants, maybe birds missing (at wintertime anyway), this should work fine.
The robotic part could be implemented mainly to seed, weed out, maybe thinning, watering and fertelizing if needed and taking care some extra servicies. So I would not first start to figure our “silver pullets” ie how to destroy or take away nasties. Given the right balance and diversify, this should not be a big issue.
Yes knowing soil make-up and biology would enable us to know what would be best to grown in that soil. Or that knowledge will tell us what to do to get the soil more ideal for crops.
Companion planting really gets into figuring out what plants attract either or both predatory insects or/and pollinators. I am planting a lot more garlic and onion. in my back yard to get the slug population lower. I lost about 5% of my tomato crop due to slugs.
Spray vinegar near baseboards, in any cracks, and on counter-tops where they may be traveling. You can allow vinegar to dry on surfaces or wipe with a clean cloth – this eliminates their chemical trail and will deter some of the stragglers. Repeat several times a day.
I know this is an old post, but there was a recent kickstarter release for OpenAI OpenCV AI Kit : OAK—D– OpenCV.AI. I have one of these, and it has prebuilt models for image detection, I am in the process of setting up my Farmbot, but plan to hook the OakD up to the forward facing arm, and build a custom integration. I will let you all know how it goes