Gardyn Review: Easy Gardening at a Great Price
MSRP $849.00
“Gardyn takes everything I love about smart gardens and expands it to include many more plants, but the app controls are a bit fiddly.”
Average
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Grow 30 plants at once
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Fully automated watering and light exposure.
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A bit of daily maintenance
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Tons of options for plants.
Against
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Expensive
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Most of the extra features are locked behind a paywall
Do you like to cook? Even if you don’t really consider yourself a chef (and yes, I know that term is reserved for the pros, just do it), there’s something about being able to spice up a pre-made jar of marinara sauce or achieve that perfect combination of spices that will transform dinner from ordinary to extraordinary. Who says you can’t eat well on a Thursday night?
Fresh ingredients are the key to great dinners. Like I said before, I’m a fan of smart gardens. If you live somewhere where there isn’t a lot of space, or you just don’t think you can keep plants alive, smart gardens take the guesswork out. When Gardyn reached out and offered me a chance to try out his Gardyn 2.0, I jumped at the chance. This thing is huge: it can hold 30 plants and pretty much does all the work for me. All I have to do is sit down and pick the fruits.
Well, mostly.
Buckle up to set up
Gardyn took me over an hour to put it together. There are many different parts that all have to fit together, and some that don’t. Enough as nice as it should be. I had to be careful with the LED grow lights as they seemed flimsy and needed support while setting them up. I suggest at least two people put this together; trying to do it myself was a real bear.
It also takes a bit of time to set up your plants. Gardyn has 30 different pods, which is a ridiculous amount. Although there are no actual requirements for placing them, I would take the time to group the plants by type. Also consider the final size of the plant once it has finished growing, as well as the amount of sunlight it needs.
I found that the Gardyn’s top row grows significantly slower than the others, mainly because it doesn’t have the same amount of LED exposure. If you’re growing something that doesn’t need as much light, place it on top.
The app needs to be refined.
It’s rare that I hate an app as much as this one. While the Gardyn is a fantastic device on its own, the app is held together with duct tape and a prayer, neither of which is enough. It mostly works, but there are a few small issues that can be irritating.
Let’s take lighting planning as an example. By default, there are three separate time periods when the lights turn on and off. I prefer to leave it running overnight when I’m out of the room, rather than during the day when it flickers on any nearby screen. It’s pretty easy to set up, at least at first glance, just select the time period.
But be careful not to overlap any of them, because if you do, your app will crash. There is no warning or error message, just a complete shutdown of your phone’s home screen. The easiest way around this is to remove all three preset times entirely (by selecting them and tapping the trash can icon at the bottom), then add your own times again.
The water schedule doesn’t work the same way and doesn’t seem to have the same problem. I recently increased the amount of water to six times a day from the default three (every four hours, five minutes at a time).
One thing worth noting is that the app has its own built-in smart assistant called Kelby, which will alert you when it’s time to refresh the water in the tank, add plant food, and more. However, most of Kelby’s features are locked behind an incredibly expensive monthly subscription.
Membership costs
You can sign up for $39 a month and cancel at any time. You can also sign up for a one-year membership for a total of $408 or a two-year membership for a total of $686. Considering that the Gardyn costs $849 (or $999 for the Gardyn 3.0), the price seems like a little high.
There are many things included in the membership that help offset the costs. Users receive 10 yCybes each month with free shipping and save up to 60% on all future yCube purchases. That’s nothing to sneeze at; a yCube is around $5, so it’s essentially $50 a month in cubes alone.
Although the membership is expensive, it is worth it on a monthly basis.
There is also a live view feature in the app. You can check your plants through the two built-in cameras, but their resolution is too low to make out much detail. There’s also a time-lapse feature that’s currently in beta, but again, it’s locked behind a paywall.
The downside to hoarding all those yCubes is that your plants should last for over a month. You will accumulate a lot of dice. The main value of the membership lies in Kelby; The AI is impressive, especially when it comes to plant care. The wizard can even identify specific plants based on a series of color-coded dots on each bucket and provide feedback on your Gardyn.
Still, while it’s not a cheap membership, it does include enough benefits to make it worth your while, especially if you’re a valued user.
Herbal Options
One way that Gardyn stands out from the competition is the sheer number of plants it offers. I’ve seen optional yCubes that contain plant species I’ve never heard of. Some options include:
- Breen
- Chervil
- fairy tail eggplant
- rear trout
- hon tsai tai
- Tokyo Bbekana
The biggest draw is that the Gardyn can grow plants that are much larger than those offered by other smart gardens. He can grow tomatoes, peppers, and more, all of which usually require a significant amount of land. However, Gardyn manages to produce a significant yield despite its hydroponic nature.
Growth is slow. I have installed my Gardyn for just over six weeks and not a single plant is ready to harvest. They are still growing steadily, just not at the rate I was hoping for. When I grow something in my AeroGarden, it feels magical in terms of how quickly the plants sprout.
Those same varieties grow much more slowly at Gardyn, but I hope that means they will last much longer. However, I am getting a little impatient; the bright colors of some of the plants make me want to try them, but there aren’t enough of them for a decent harvest.
Daily use
Gardyn has become a topic of conversation in my house. When guests arrive, they are always surprised by the veritable wall of plants that greets them in the lobby. There’s little I have to do once it’s set up; it is mostly automatic. That’s a huge plus, especially as we enter one of the busiest times of the year.
Thanks to the massive water tank, refills are rare, although you still need to add plant food.
The tank is huge. It can hold several gallons of water at a time, which means the number of refills required is minimal. Just be prepared to spend five to ten minutes refilling the tank. If you have a hose that can reach it, great. In my case, I fill a pitcher with water and pour it into the reservoir when it’s time to refill. It takes a long time, but it’s easy to do.
The only manual labor required is adding plant food. This is done semi-regularly, but it takes less than five minutes.
Community
One of the most notable things about Gardyn is its community. There are many enthusiastic fans of the system who have found solutions to almost all the major problems of the platform. For example, there are dozens of 3D printer recipes for yCube setups, as well as instructions on how to set up Rockwool and use your own seeds to grow anything you can imagine.
If you want to grow a plant that Gardyn doesn’t offer, this is the way to go. If you’re not getting the results you expect, check with the community. Almost all types of plants have been tested and their growth patterns and configuration have been optimized.
Is Gardyn the future of gardening?
Gardyn is by far the most advanced smart garden I’ve ever had my hands on. It’s an impressive piece of clever technology, but it leaves a lot of room for improvement. They sent me Gardyn 2.0, but Gardyn 3.0 was released shortly after I set mine up and seems to have improved some features.
Gardyn is pretty much everything I want, but the good news is that the main problems are mostly software based.
I have high hopes for the platform. Although my plants aren’t growing as fast as I’d hoped, it’s a long-term project that I’m looking forward to tweaking and experimenting until I get the results I want. and when do i do it? That will be a delicious salad.
editor’s recommendations
Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn