I haven’t automated my garden. Let’s be clear about that up front. But I’ve thought about it. A lot. Enough times standing out there with a coffee, watching the sky cloud over five minutes too late, to know there’s a better way.
If you’re the sort of person who forgets to water plants until they’re wilting, or who remembers to fertilise only after everything smells weird, automation starts to sound like a reasonable idea.
And it doesn’t have to be complicated. A few cronjobs, a handful of scripts, and a willingness to trust a schedule more than your memory.
Automating Irrigation (In Theory)
Start simple. Picture a soil moisture sensor connected to something like a Raspberry Pi. Add a script that checks the moisture level and the local forecast. If the ground’s dry and rain isn’t expected, trigger the irrigation system.
0 * * * * /usr/bin/python3 /home/pi/scripts/check_irrigation.py
This would run every hour. The script checks a few conditions, maybe queries a weather API, and decides whether or not to water. It’s not fancy. But it works—on paper, anyway.
Reminders You’ll Actually See
Even more basic: a reminder system. Plants need feeding on a schedule. You don’t always remember that. But cron does.
A script could fire off a notification every two weeks:
0 9 */14 * * /home/pi/scripts/fertiliser_reminder.sh
Hook it into your email, or a messaging app like Telegram. It could be as polite or as annoying as you want. Whatever gets the job done.
Weather Warnings for the Lazy
The smarter move is knowing when not to water. Imagine a cronjob that checks the forecast each morning. If rain’s expected, it gives you a heads-up. Or better yet, skips the irrigation job entirely.
0 7 * * * /home/pi/scripts/weather_alert.sh
It’s the kind of thing that sounds unnecessary, until you realise how often you’ve soaked the garden just before a downpour.
All-talk, no action
I haven’t built any of this. But the pieces are all there, waiting. A Raspberry Pi. A few sensors. A bit of Python. Cronjobs keeping everything ticking along quietly in the background.
Maybe it’s not about being high-tech. Maybe it’s just about not forgetting to water the basil.
And if all it takes is a few lines of crontab to make that happen… well, that’s worth thinking about.
“Cronjobs in the Garden” — Because ‘set it and forget it’ beats ‘oops, again’ every time.