I’d imagine that gardening is one of the hobbies that you probably thought would never be affected by all these technological advancements that we’ve been making over the last hundred years or so.
I mean, plants are a part of the earth. They have been there since the dawn of time, haven’t they? When we garden, we just plant natural seeds, and then we just let them grow naturally.
They’re in our garden where they can get sunlight, we water them, and they grow in the natural soil. I mean sure we use things like shovels, rakes, and plastic pots, but they’re just tools and not exactly advanced ones.
Some of us use pesticides, which are often high in chemicals, and I suppose that’s not exactly natural, but it’s also inadvisable if you want your plants to be healthy. The big point here is that for the most part, electricity is not often a presence in gardening.
And you would think, well of course not because what use is there for it? I suppose in a sense you could consider it a positive aspect of the hobby that it’s something you don’t need to rely on electricity and technology to proceed with, but is there really no use for it?
Perhaps we can benefit from some of the more advanced technology that we have these days, without actually impeding upon the natural, healthy approach to gardening. Many people have actually found good use for drones in gardening:
Why Drones?
You might be wondering what purpose a drone could serve as it pertains to gardening, but it will make a lot of sense if you think about it. Drones can cover a lot more ground than you can.
There’s a company in the Netherlands known as Applied Drone Innovations (ADI), and they have been developing a system that allows for self-navigating drones to seek out and pollinate plants.
The system is highly advanced and is capable of seeking out specific plants in a garden, such as tomato plants, for example, and pollinating them by shooting out a jet of air, which will cause the vibrations necessary for active pollination.
It has primarily been developed for large scale agriculture, in farms, and for people with big vegetable gardens. Being mainly the area that it’s used in right now, you can see why this is so beneficial.
For an area that is much larger and more difficult to ensure that pollination remains ongoing in, drones that can do it automatically allow for farmers to focus on other aspects of taking care of their crops.
But is it also useful for you in your garden? Yep, there are uses for drones on small-scale gardening too:
How You Can Use Drones in Your Garden?
The best use of drones in a smaller garden is for monitoring purposes. You can use your drone as a way to keep track of specific trends and what areas individual plants do well in or where they are causing problems.
It’s wise for gardeners to keep a journal. If you want your garden to progress, you should keep track of what’s working and what’s not working. What can be measured can be improved upon, and it’s easier to reach a goal if you can see the impediments to it.
Also, when it’s not the right season for some plants that you usually like to grow, if you have a journal you can check back on how those plants thrived during the next season, so you don’t lose any of your knowledge or ability.
So, a journal is hugely helpful, but a lot of gardeners don’t have one, and in a lot of cases, it’s because they don’t have the time to dedicate to manual monitoring. It is where the drone comes in handy.
You can do a bit of work on the drone yourself to update it to something that will fly within the confines of your garden, guided by a GPS and also gather footage of your plants that can be analyzed.
You may even go as much as to include an infrared camera so that you can get a good indication of if the plants are thriving and which ones require a little bit extra of your attention.
In addition to that, monitoring is a big part of Integrated Pest Management. It is a practice that enables you to deal with pests in a comprehensive manner sustainably. You need to be able to monitor your garden and keep a record of observations, and using a drone makes that easier.
IPM is something that every gardener should be pursuing, and a lot of them don’t because it’s so time-consuming, but drone monitoring can help a lot in cutting down that time.
Conclusion
Overall, this doesn’t change the fact that gardening is still primarily a natural hobby and one that is technology free for the most part, but there are ways to use some tech in a very beneficial way.
Drones are the future of a lot of different industries, and you can get ahead of the curve and put them to use in your garden!