High-Teching Your Successful Garden with Fathym IoT Ensemble

July 30, 2021 by Rich Kurtzman, Content Creator/Writer @ Fathym

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.

Gardening is a wonderful lesson in patience, in appreciation for where food comes from and a learning opportunity every day.

Few things are as rewarding as growing your own food. One truly reaps what they sow.

Here in Colorado, gardening can come somewhat easy. There are 300 days of sunshine a year, which is why they call us the “Sunshine State.” Oh, wait, that’s Florida? Weird.

All that constant and consistent sun makes growing some vegetables -- like tomatoes, for instance -- a breeze. Beets, carrots and squash are easy to grow even for the most inexperienced of green thumbs, too. No wonder gardening is an extremely popular tradition here in the Centennial State.

But others -- like peppers (unless you live in SE Colorado) -- can be difficult to grow here. And depending on your altitude, there are other variables that come into play as well.

At the root of gardening, it’s water and sun. Those are the two main factors which will be at the forefront of growing your own food. Which is one reason why there’s a move toward home weather stations.

But some people don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for a weather station. And others just want the adventure, the challenge, of creating their own weather station for a fraction of the price.

DIYers are the best. They’re innovative, ambitious and won’t let hurdles get in their way; they overcome obstacles. And if you’re the type of person who’s inclined to grow your own garden, you by definition are a DIYer in that arena.

So, if you are a tech. DIYer, maybe your thought is, “I should get a Raspberry Pi, and create my own weather station!”

But then what’s next? Luckily, Fathym and their IoT Ensemble make it extremely easy to upload that data to the cloud, make it accessible and then even store it for you. All for free! (At least, for your first device).

And that includes software which allows you to access the information on your home PC, a tablet or even from your phone.

Anyone can grow a garden but doing so effectively and maximizing your potential could be made so much easier with a home weather station.

That’s because maybe one of the most difficult factors when it comes to gardening in Colorado is knowing when to start seeds outdoors, when to start them indoors and then, when it’s warm enough to move those plant babies out into the wild of your garden bed.

With your home weather station, you could not only monitor the air temperature, but create a reader for soil temperature as well. Think, a meat thermometer adapted for this purpose. You could watch the weather patterns as everything warms up in March and April, and if you’re gutsy enough to plant before Mother’s Day, you could set up your home station to give you alerts if the air temperature is going to dip below 40 degrees.

A simple hoop tunnel -- using PVC pipe, bent over the top of the garden -- can be life-saving for the plants as you can drape a moving blanket and tarp over those babies, even if it’s going to snow.

After spring snows stop threatening, there’s always the chance for hail in Colorado, too. Similarly, while seamlessly sending data to the cloud via IoT Ensemble, you’d be able to monitor weather patterns and create an alert for possible hail. Use that hoop tunnel once again to save the plants with a tarp.

IoT Ensemble isn’t limited to home weather stations, of course, but could be used for a wide variety of DIY cloud purposes using Raspberry Pis from Sparkfun. Anything you can create and need the cloud for, Fathym has your back.

With a weather station at home, you’ll be able to not only reap those beautiful veggies, but reap all the data you sow, as well. Think of using this year’s data to help with next year’s garden, and then adding year after year on top of one another to better predict when to plant, when to compost, when to harvest and so much more.