Even as we move into gardening seasoning outside, I am keeping all of my indoor gardens going through the summer months. I've been surprised by how handy it is to have these gardens nearby and how it leads to me using crops like fresh herbs more often. The side effect I didn't expect was how much I enjoy having the actual plants and greenery around in my bedroom and living room: The gardens produce a calming tickling-water sound, like a creek, and I love the smell of the plants. If gardening outside isn't for you, you might find one of these indoor gardening sets that require almost no skill to be just the trick.
These commercial sets include everything you might need, from the seed cups and growing medium, to the lights, and the use a pump to recirculate the water at regular intervals. Small sets like the Aerogarden Harvest or Letpotcan sit on a countertop and large ones like Rise need their own space on the floor. Here are the tips I’ve developed to use these gardens more effectively.
Buy a level
Hydroponic gardens work by keeping the roots of the plant constantly hydrated either in a pool of recirculating water or by routinely “watering” them via a pump. For this to work effectively, the entire system has to be level. Usually, bigger kits like Rise will have leveling feet to help with this, but a system like LettuceGrow doesn’t, so you’ll need shims. You still need to ensure your countertop garden is level. When they’re not, the water will list to one side of the garden, and some roots might not get hydrated. If only one side of your garden is germinating, this might be the cause.
Grow the right crops
Hydro gardens grow crops in a tight space, with a finite amount of “sunlight” and no soil for roots to steady themselves in. While almost anything will still grow, crops that are going to require a lot of support like squash can’t flourish. Crops with a really long grow period, like pumpkins, also are not ideal for the system, since you’ll need to turn the garden system over before the pumpkin is done and it will grow out of the “sunlight.” Moreover, while smaller and smaller vegetable plants are always being bred (I recently grew actual tomatoes on eight-inch tall plants from Aerogarden), it doesn’t mean they’ll taste good. I’ve been really disappointed by fruit and vegetables grown in hydroponic environments; while they still receive nutrition, sunlight and water, they usually just don’t taste great. So while you can grow almost anything, I’ve found that simply growing herbs or simpler, short crops like peas is the best way to go.
Learn how to self-pollinate
Since your hydroponic garden won’t be visited by bees to do the work of carrying pollen from plant to plant, you’ll need to do that if you grow any type of fruit or vegetable. I’ve seen many of these gardens advise casually shaking the plants from time to time, but this is disingenuous. To achieve good pollination rates, you need to really vibrate the plants and do it often while there are flowers. The best way I’ve found to do this is with a real vibrator or massage wand and to use a smart automation to have it run for a minute every few hours. I specifically looked for one that plugged in and used a manual switch, rather than a button to be powered on each time. This way, I could leave the want plugged in and on, and just set an automation for the outlet it was plugged into. I just left it set on top of the garden, but you could also tape it to the back. As long as it’s attached in some way to the garden, it will vibrate it enough that the pollen will be freed and form a cloud of yellow dust that will settle onto the blossoms and pollinate them.
Grow any seed you’d like
Most companies that make hydroponic gardens sell seed packs or starts for those gardens, and they’re quite expensive. But the gardens provide everything a plant needs to grow: sunlight, nutrition, and water. You can always purchase aftermarket pods and growing medium and plant your own seeds. There’s nothing particularly special about the lettuce or herb seeds they’re using, and you likely have seeds or can purchase a packet of them, cheaply. While small “patio” vegetables are bred specifically for these purposes, you can usually purchase similar varieties online (although, again, growing them is mostly for sport as they don’t taste great).
Be vigilant about pest prevention
Plants will attract pests like aphids and gnats on their own with little work. Hydro gardens seem to worsen the problem, so you have to be proactive. Always ensure there is no standing water around, from a leaking unit or when you add water to the unit. Using traps nearby is a good idea—I like the Zevo flying insect traps that use UV light to attract the insects. You can consider adding nasturtium flowers to your garden—not in abundance, but in one of the growing pods since they work to “trap” aphids. The aphids are attracted to the nasturtium, and just hang out on it, avoiding your other plants; you just leave the nasturtium to do it’s work.
The secret sauce, for me, has been using smaller gardens for growing herbs, which I use consistently, making sure I am hacking the plants back on a regular basis to keep them from bolting. For larger gardens, I grow greens like lettuce, celery, celery, chard, and spinach. Using small, compact plants like these means that nothing is crowded out, there’s no fruit to be disappointed by or that will take too much time, and you ultimately end up pretty satisfied with the experience.
People think of mulch as something that provides a unifying look to their garden beds, but that’s not the reason you need it. Mulch, when done right, provides an insulating layer that protects your plants from extreme weather, keeps the soil from drying out, and provides nutrition back to your beds as it decomposes. It’s a lot of work to get mulch into place, so it can be frustrating to view it as temporary. But mulch breaks down—it's supposed to. A lot of people complain about their mulch blowing away, but fortunately this is a solvable problem.
The right way to mulch
The surface of your soil is vulnerable. It is exposed to the sun and can easily dry out. It’s exposed to the wind, which can blow it away if you don’t have plant roots anchoring it. We are now experiencing extreme weather conditions all the time, including heat domes in summer and extreme ice in the winter, all of which wreak havoc on your plants. A healthy layer of three to six inches of mulch can really make a difference.
You want to ensure that this organic material you choose is pulled away from the stems of your plants. (Mulch shouldn’t be up against tree trunks, either.) You want your plants to be planted into the soil, not the mulch, and each plant has a natural place it should be buried up to in the soil, as it comes from the nursery or grows naturally, and the mulch would smother the plants. Pulling the mulch away creates a well around the base of plants, which is perfect for watering.
Heftier mulch won’t blow away
Big box stores tend to sell bagged, dyed mulch. This mulch has three issues that make it a poor choice: the dye itself, which fades and adds a chemical to your beds; the lack of nutrition in it; and finally, people don't put enough of it down, and a light layer isn’t going to do much. This dyed mulch can look great at first, but again, that’s not the purpose of mulch, and the dye quickly gets bleached out anyway.Sometimes, people put down plastic before the mulch or landscape fabric, and this, too, is unadvised. The plastic will break down; it does not usually suppress weeds as well as you’d think; and it introduces microplastics to your beds. Getting rid of that plastic by taking it back up is a miserable process, too.
Instead, you want natural material to sit on top of your soil, and you want a hefty amount of it—ideally, three to six inches deep. I like to use wood chips because they have weight to them, create a uniform look, decompose slowly and are spectacular for the soil as they compost. They’re also free—I use ChipDrop to get them yearly and have been using them for 10 years without much issue. You can also use straw (not hay—there’s an important distinction), or leaves. In the fall, rake or blow your leaves into your beds instead of bagging them. Leaf mulch becomes amazing compost while supporting local beneficial insects as a place to nest over winter. Using a heftier amount of mulch, and heftier mulch, means it is less likely to blow away. Even if some of it does, you still have a substantial amount of it.
You may only think your mulch is blowing away
Mulch, when done right, decomposes in place, enriching the soil. It may be simply that what looks like disappearing mulch is really this process taking place. It can also be that it’s your dyed mulch losing color. You could also be washing the mulch away, if you water overhead instead of watering your plants at the soil line via drip irrigation.
Even if your mulch migrates, while your plant beds are now more exposed, it’s not really a problem for the places the mulch migrates to. It should just break down there, as well. The bigger issue is that your beds are left exposed to the elements and you lose the benefit.
How to keep your beds tidier
Curbing or edging your beds can help mulch stay in place and keep your beds looking uniform, whether you use plastic or metal or bricks. If you have a well-planted garden, the wind should be screened by your landscaping, as you want a healthy mix of understory, shrubs and then a canopy layer of trees. If you experience enough wind to be a problem for your mulch, you might consider that your landscaping has left your plants too exposed and introduce more of these layers. You can also consider ground cover, which is, hands down, the best way to reduce erosion, since it introduces roots to anchor the soil. I am reluctant to mention mulch glue, because I think it’s unnecessary, but there usually isn’t anything problematic in the glue itself. It’s a mix of bark dust and other wood products that are heated into a sticky adhesive you can spray onto your mulch to keep it in place. However, I fear it prevents the mulch from doing the thing we ask of it, which is to break down into compost.
Mulch isn't permanent
Mulch is a to-do item you should address yearly. Choose the right kind of mulch, and make sure you are applying enough of it in the right places, and replace it when you see it disappearing. Occasionally, take a peek at the soil below your composting mulch. It’s likely to be a healthy layer of humus full of happy worms and mycorrhizae.
If you have limited space in your garden, you have to make hard decisions each year about what you’ll grow. The most important factor in choosing what to grow is what you like to eat. If you like pizza, summer is a spectacular time—throw some stretched pizza dough on the grill and top it with fresh veggies from the garden, cheese, and sauce (or fresh tomatoes you grew). The level of satisfaction you’ll draw will be tremendous, so I humbly suggest that this year, you grow a pizza garden.
Choose vegetables for the toppings
A pizza usually starts with tomatoes, and if you like sauce, you'll want sauce or paste tomatoes. If you prefer to just have slices of juicy tomatoes on your pizza, you'll want larger heirloom slicing tomatoes. You can, of course, grow both. While tomatoes are obvious, consider what other vegetables you’d enjoy on the pizza, and remember that you don’t need to think traditionally. In my twenties, I had a pizza somewhere with grilled eggplant on it, and I’ve made that pizza every summer since. Classic choices like peppers, onions, and basil are a good place to start. But consider summer squash or zucchini, too. Once sliced and grilled, they’re delicious on pizzas. Spinach, oregano, arugula, or rosemary will all help produce a delicious pie.
While some vegetables do better together than others, there also isn’t great harm in planting most vegetables together, even if they’re not beneficial—with a few exceptions. You don’t want to plant fennel in your pizza garden, since it will negatively affect all other vegetables planted with it. You can keep fennel in a separate planter nearby. Also, if you love broccoli and cauliflower on your pizza, you’ll want to keep them on one side of your vegetable bed, and keep your tomatoes, peppers and eggplants on the other side. Your greens like basil, arugula, and spinach can live in between them. The major issue is considering the space each plant needs, which will vary. Zucchini will become quite large horizontally, so I like to have it hang off the edge of the bed. Tomatoes, particularly indeterminate ones, grow quite tall, so you need support for them. Basil prefers to be hidden between plants to grow prolifically. Onions can be interplanted with tomatoes, for instance, since they occupy different space—tomatoes are above ground, and onions below it.
A pizza garden is a late summer treat
A number of the items in your pizza garden need most of the season to grow. You’ll see tomatoes by the middle of summer, but peppers and eggplants take a bit longer to incubate. In the meanwhile, you’ll be able to enjoy your squash, arugula, and spinach in other dishes. Onions can be picked in their scallion stage, even though they’re not fully bulbed out. Just make sure you leave enough in the ground to reach a more mature state for later in summer.
Growing all these vegetables together will make for a really colorful bed with lots of height and texture variance, but it will also ensure that you don’t have one giant target for specific pests, as you would with a whole tomato bed or a big bed of basil. Those monocultures are like a glaring “open for business” sign for the pests that love that particular crop. Each summer, you’ll learn a little more about your bed, and where to arrange the vegetables in the pizza garden for the best space, access to the sun and ease of harvesting.
Gardeners always know their planting zone, and the local lore around the date it’s safe to plant outside. Around my parts, that’s Mothers Day. In more northern parts of the U.S., it’s Memorial Day. We use those dates to backtrack and decide when to start seeds inside. But these dates, while not arbitrary, are also not written in stone. The weather changes every year, and we’ve been seeing huge weather changes the last few years due to climate change. That's why I’m suggesting you watch the weather, not the calendar, for your summer planting.
Last frost dates are an estimate
Each spring is a gamble for gardeners: when you start seeds and when you risk planting them outside. Start seeds too early, and your plants become large, leggy and rootbound inside. Start seeds too late, and your plants won’t be large enough to produce crops over the short summer season. You’d think if your plants are big enough, you could just plunk them outside in your garden, but that’s where the biggest risk lies. These tender summer plants have temperature requirements, and spring is notorious for surprise frosts. Your plants won’t survive, or at best, will be stunted, if they go through a frost without some serious protection. To hedge against this risk, each planting zone in the U.S. has a last frost date, which is an average date that should be safe to plant outside. But that’s all it is—an average. Some years the frost date is well into weeks of warm weather, and some years, there’s a surprise May snowstorm.
Soil temperature is the most important indicator
The frost date was never meant to be more than a guide. The real indicators we should be paying attention to are soil temperatures, overnight temperatures and sunshine. The soil, at a depth of eight or so inches, does not rapidly shift temperature based on one day’s weather. Instead, that temperature represents the shift of seasons, and it slowly warms as the ambient temperature does. To sustain summer plantings, the soil needs to be at least 60 degrees Fahrenheit. While plants may survive in temperatures below that, they won’t thrive. You can gauge your temperature with a probe specifically for that, and while there are fancy ones, I prefer a simple, analog long stem thermometer for the task.
While daytime conditions are important, the temperature is always going to dip once the sun goes down. Your summer plants can’t tolerate frosty temps, so you want to wait until the overnight temperature remains steadily above 50 degrees Fahrenheit (although 55 is better). Of course, this will happen in tandem with the soil temperature, but not precisely, and even one night of frost or cold temperatures can be harmful for your plants, so it’s a delicate balance. Any weather reporting site like Wunderground or Weather.com will report on these overnight temperatures.
Look for the sunshine
Lastly, you want to look for the sunshine—this is less objective and more observational. Spring is still the rainy season, and plants benefit from all that free water. But they will still need sunshine to thrive, and so we’re looking for a mix of quality days of sunshine mixed with rain before you plant. Long stretches of overcast days will not produce happy plants, and instead, create conditions for virus and fungus. As rain splashes on the soil, microbes in the soil splash up onto the plants, where those wet conditions are perfect for fungal and viral growth and spread. If you’re really skilled, you’ll choose the last stretch of overcast days to plant everything, so it gets a gentle stretch of time away from the sun to settle into the new digs, and then gets a drink of sunshine so it can start to grow.
Extend the season
There are ways to start the season early by offering your plants protection outside, even if you plant them before conditions are met. There are greenhouses, both permanent and temporary. If you don’t have a greenhouse, you can buy a temporary popup to put over your bed. You can consider coldframes, which are outdoor beds with removable covers. There are insulating products like waterwalls for tomatoes, and there is always Agribond, which you can use to build low tunnels over your beds.
Whenever gardeners talk about seeding and planting and harvesting online, they’re usually talking about a median growing zone for the U.S. There are zones with completely different timetables, like the southeast or really northern states. When considering the advice, it’s smart to remember the local lore around planting and seeding dates, but it’s more important to just look outside. Our planting seasons are becoming more volatile due to climate change, and so we want to get the maximum amount of growing season possible. Rely on the indicators.
We humans go to a lot of trouble to keep our plants healthy indoors. And while some of us often jokingly think of greenery as our “plant-babies,” plants and humans are very different organisms. While humans may benefit from using coconut oil as a moisturizer, plants do not derive from the same benefits from it, whatever the collected wisdom of the internet might tell you. Please, stop using coconut oil on your indoor plants.
Coconut oil won't deter plant pests, but other oils can
I’m not entirely sure where the coconut oil suggestion originated, but there exists an online myth that you can rub your houseplants with coconut oil to deter pests. While scientific studies have shown coconut oil will repel some bugs, it's not a great idea to use it on your plants, for reasons I'll get to in a bit.
Instead, you should use a different oil, like diluted Neem oil (which you can pick up on Amazon for under $10). Managing pests indoors is an important aspect of plant parenting, as bugs like thrips spread quickly and are hard to control once they’ve established themselves. You can use neem oil proactively or reactively, but if you’ve got pests already, it’s important to immediately take action. Here's what to do:
Segregate affected plants to lessen the chances the pests will spread.
Manually remove any bugs and eggsyou can see. If the weather is warm enough, take the plant outside; otherwise, take it to the syou can do this in your shower. Carefully wash each leaf with a hose or shower sprayer, which will hopefully be enough to dislodge the rest of the eggs and bugs.
Dunk the plant pot. Fill a bucket large enough to fit the entire plant pot. Submerge the entire soil-filled pot and hold it underwater until no more bubbles rise to the surface and the pot sinks to the bottom of the bucket. (This means the soil is completely saturated.) Leave the pot submerged for 10 minutes, then pull it out and allow it to drain.
Spray the plant with diluted neem oil, making sure to evenly coat the leaves. After treating, keep the plant segregated for a few weeks and monitor it for any signs of unwelcome guests (and its a good idea to more closely scrutinize your other plants, just in case). Once you believe you’ve conquered the problem, return the plant to the rest of your plant-fam.
Coconut oil won't moisturize plant leaves either
Here's the real downside of coating your plants' leaves in coconut oil: The other use case I’ve seen for doing it suggests coconut oil will “moisturize” plant leaves and help keep them clean, but coconut oil neither cleans nor moisturizes a plant, and can actually harm it. Plants breathe through tiny pores or stomata on the surface of their leaves, and coconut oil can clog those pores and make it harder for the plant to get the carbon dioxide it needs. Beyond that, coconut oil can leave a sticky surface on the leaves that will attract dust, compounding the problem.
Instead, to keep plant leaves looking shiny and free of dust, you can purchase a product like Leaf Shine ($25 on Amazon); these are generally made from Neem oil and castile soap and are light enough that the plant will still be able to breathe.
Portable power stations are getting bigger, more powerful, and less expensive all the time. You'd expect a company like Anker (known for producing smaller backup solutions for mobile devices) to move into this arena, but you might not have expected this kind of leap from is DJI, which has been producing drones and cameras for the last 10 years.
That said, both drones and cameras need to pack a lot of battery capacity into small packages, so really, DJI is just bringing that knowledge and experience to the consumer power station—and while you could use these new units to recharge your devices on the road, they also work as backup systems for your home.
The DJI Power 1000 Portable Power Station, which sells for just under $1,000 on Amazon, has a battery capacity of 1024 Wh and fully charges in an hour and 10 minutes. Although I'd personally go with a more powerful power station, there is a lot to like about the DJI.
I’ve been testing a few power stations in the 1,000 to 3,000 watt hour range for the last month, as this is the minimum amount of juice you'll need to keep some of the basic household electronics going during a power outage, like a laptop, phone, and microwave, plus a heater, A/C or fan, or medical equipment like a CPAP machine. They’re also still light enough to realistically haul to a campsite.
The DJI 1000 sits at the low end of that power range, but has some features more powerful banks don't. I like the design, which features a slightly wider but lower body with two handles that extend off the sides. I found it easier to carry around, which is a significant benefit, considering it weighs in at 32 pounds. The face of the unit offers two AC outputs (continuous 2,200W AC output) and two USB-A and two USB-C ports (140W output). Both AC outputs can be used as a UPS in case of power interruptions. Those USB-C ports are no joke, either: 140W is a much higher output than most USB-C power sources, and can support USB PD 3.1 to power your MacBook.
Other stations offer at least as many ports, if not more, but lack DJI’s SDC and SDC lite ports. These “smart” DC ports which are specifically made to quickly charge DJI drones or a mini ecosystem of DJI dongles that provide input and output for other devices. These ports are what you'll use to connect the unit to solar panels or your car charger, but again, to do that you'll need to buy some proprietary dongles. For now, the only solar panel DJI offers is the Zignes 100 Watt Solar Panel, available only on their website, for $299; this is the recommended brand, but there’s no language that says other brands wouldn’t be compatible.
Most power stations offer car charging and solar panel connections out of the box, and while I enjoy the idea of faster charging (and possibly higher output in the future as hinted by DJI), having to purchase and keep track of proprietary cables does not appeal to me—if one went out (or went missing) during an outage, you'd be out of luck.
There's no app for managing the power station
Many newer power stations offer apps to manage the power going in and out and help you monitor what you’ve got in reserves. DJI doesn't offer one, which is curious considering the battery is designed to help manage your DJI devices, and DJI already has an app for device management.
Still, as a power station, the DJI 1000 does everything it should: It comes with a three year warranty that you can extend to five years, and offers an expected lifespan of 4,000 cycles or 10 years. The max input via solar charge is 800 watts, which feels appropriate for the capacity. DJI's marketing makes a lot of noise about how quiet the unit is (topping out at 25dB), but none of the power stations I've tried have had noticeable sound issues, including the DJI.
A best bet for existing DJI customers
On a basic level, a power bank is a power bank. As long as it outputs power, it’s doing the job, and at $999, the DJI isn’t a bad value. Still, at this price you can find a number of other power stations in the 1000w range that don't require the extra required dongles and will often come with additional output options—I like the Jackery Explorer 1000 ($999) or Anker SOLIX C1000 ($999).
Over the course of testing these units, I have found that 2,000W is a comfortable middle ground for ensuring you have enough power to keep a family’s worth of devices powered during an outage, run a heat or A/C source, allow for occasional microwave use, and the use of necessary medical equipment. For now, the DJI only comes in 500 or 1,000W versions. If you can afford a 2,000W unit and add on a solar panel or two to recharge in case of a multi-day outage, consider a pricier solution like an EcoFlow DELTA Max 2000 ($1,499) or Anker SOLIX F2000 ($1,999).
While I appreciate the occasional check-in from a neighborhood bird on my windowsill, I don't appreciate incessant pecking at the window's glass. During mating season, male birds will seek to claim the best nesting spots in town, and your window sill might seem like a nice location. Under the right conditions, though, your window becomes reflective, and that male bird sees his reflection and thinks he's got competition. All that pecking is him attacking the “other” bird to defend his spot.
And it’s not just pecking, sadly—that reflection can cause birds fly into windows, too, which can cause much more damage (to the window and the bird). But as we enter mating season, there are a few things you can do to protect those birds and your windows.
Since birds can’t perceive glass well, they merely see what is reflected in it. If it reflects the sky and clouds, birds don’t realize they’re flying into a barrier. If they see their own reflection, they’ll think they’re seeing another bird. The key is to remove the reflection—and there are a variety of ways to do that. Keeping your shades, curtains, or shutters closed can help, but the glass may still reflect from some angles. In fact, if you don’t obscure the glass in some way, birds can see large plants just inside the window and perceive them as safe, outdoor plants to fly into.
Frosted or patterned glass has less of a problem, and you can purchase film to create a frosted look on your windows You can also use soap or tempera paint on the window to cut the glare—both are temporary and removable. Decals or mylar strips may help, but not as effectively as a solution that covers the whole window. In order to best deter birds, the solution is to cover the whole window in a grid that is small enough to deter even small birds from trying to “fly through.”
Acopian BirdSavers are a paracord grid you hang outside your window, and you can purchase them or make them yourself. This is the method used by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Ultimately, if you have a pecking bird at your window and you want to protect the bird and stop the noise, the solution is to find a way to obscure the window from forming reflections.
I love cooking so much, I treat it like a sport, and look for excuses to make complicated or unique dishes. I think developing a menu for a bunch of people with differing allergies and preferences sounds like a good time. Until recently, smart cooking tech hasn’t appealed to me, because I assumed it was aimed solely at people who feel clueless enough in the kitchen that they want an assist from a machine.
But over the past year, I’ve interacted with cooking devices—from ovens, to grills, to fridges—that don’t just utilize smart tech, but incorporate AI and machine learning. While AI can’t remove all the labor of food prep or make you love cooking if you don’t, it can make the process of cooking easier by an order of magnitude...not just for novices, but for experienced cooks too.
AI can help you avoid undercooking (or overcooking) your food
For many people, the dislike of cooking is based in anxiety. It’s hard to screw up a salad, but making anything you can screw up can be intimidating—what if you undercook it and give yourself or others food poisoning? What if you overcook it and destroy an expensive cut of meat? I’ve cooked alongside friends with these common fears—friends who lack my ability to use visual cues to know if a proteins is done, or who have trouble trusting that a little pink is safe.
Tools like a Combustion predictive thermometer can alleviate that anxiety. A smart thermometer probe, the Combustion can be used in almost any situation—a grill, a pot of boiling water, sous vide, the oven or the stovetop. The device has eight sensors along the length of the probe to get measurements of the inside and the outside of whatever you're cooking. Next, AI and a an algorithm are applied to predict when, precisely, you should pull the food off the heat. This means you don’t have to stand over the stove waiting and watching (the app and probe handle that part). It also means that you won’t overcook the food out of fears around food safety, which is something that 50% of people admit to doing.
Combustion specifically altered its algorithm late last year to ensure that food will hit USDA recommended standards, which go beyond simple temperature thresholds. For example, although you commonly think of chicken as being "done" when it measures 165°F, USDA has established you can achieve the same food safety by cooking for a longer time at a lower temperature, as you would using sous vide cooking. The Combustion thermometer can determine whether your food is “safe”, depending on the entire cook history of your protein. This can give the confidence they need to work with protein and, as they see better results, to gain confidence with their cooking. Even as an experienced chef, I love that Combustion does this math for me, so I don’t have to rely on external cues, like how a protein feels to the touch.
There are plenty of other temperature probes with feature's like Combustion's, including the ThermaPro (which i haven’t tested) and the Meater 2 (which I found underwheling).
When I'm grocery shopping, I often forget what is already in my fridge and pantry, and the result is a lot of extraneous purchases—most egregiously when I'm buying fresh foods with short expiration dates. Companies are working to solve this problem. Samsung’s latest fridges incorporate “Food AI,” and use cameras inside your fridge to tell you what you might need to buy more of. Part of their Bespoke line, these fridges come with with AI Family Hub+ and AI Vision Inside. It’s not just that the hub can recognize the fresh foods inside your fridge (up to 33 of them, anyway); it will also offer recipes based on those ingredients.
I haven’t tested the Bespoke yet, but videos of the fridge in action show clear enough imagery that you should be able to easily identify what’s in your fridge from the app, meaning you’ll never have to wonder if you’re out of butter or eggs while you're in the supermarket.
AI can help you figure out what to make for dinner
Newer technology is taking things farther. AI voice assistants are already embedded in many cooking devices. You can offer the assistant a list of ingredients, or a mood, or a craving, or just allow it to ask you questions, and it will develop meal suggestions for you.
Even if you don’t have an appliance that can have conversations with you, there are apps aplenty to provide suggestions on the fly. DishGen, MealsAI, and MealPractice all use AI models like Gemini as the underlying engine to produce suggestions based on the language you input, whether that’s a bunch of ingredients or a request based on your mood.
Using AI while cooking can actually be fun, and save you time
There are a number of “smart” ovens on the market from Tovala, Breville and June, but for the last few months I’ve been using the Brava, an expensive toaster oven with a brain. From a graphical interface on the toaster, you look up any ingredient, and it will generate a list of possible recipes. Choose one, and you'll be guided through inserting a thermometer probe, told where to put the food on the tray and where to put the tray. Then you push a button and walk away. The oven will send you a live video of the food cooking, monitor its progress, and turn off precisely when the food is done.
The oven relies on light technology instead of the normal heating elements you expect in an oven. It focuses heat only where it's needed, for as long as it's needed, specifically to the precise foods you're cooking. Instead of heating up an entire oven, food is cooked from above and below in a very small space. As a result, cooking times are routinely slashed by half, sometimes more. Last week I made sweet potato fries out of raw potatoes. They were perfectly crisped and baked through, in eight minutes.
While the Brava uses only very light AI behind the scenes right now, it’s easy to imagine that in the future, machine learning can help companies process the data coming back from the their appliances to create more recipes and refine the ones that exist, though the tech isn't there yet—I spoke with Brava product manger Zac Selmon, who noted how difficult it is to create a set of parameters to ensure everyone who makes a recipe gets the same results when so many variables involved can differ, from the ingredients, to the environment, to the cook. For that reason, Brava still uses a human team of cooks alongside its data engineers.
What’s surprised me about the Brava is how much I enjoy not having to think about what I’m cooking. It turns out the tedious part of the process, which involves keeping an eye on a dish as it cooks, is skippable; that the oven that cuts cooking time by half or more, even better: You can enjoy the prep and the results, and not worry about the in between.
As a self-certified control freak, I shouldn’t like surrendering the cooking or prep process, but it turns out I do. It saves me time and allows me to focus on the parts of cooking I really enjoy. I’ve gifted smart thermometers to a few friends, and the devices have altered mealtime in their homes too. They buy better cuts of meats because they are less afraid of ruining them. They take more risks, and are more confident.
In the future, AI tech will streamline the process more, giving you the ability to manage meal-making from your couch or deck while you spend more time with family and friends. No, a gadget isn’t going to turn you into someone who loves to cook, but it can make cooking a lot more manageable.
Birds were never my thing until I spent the morning in a friend’s garden, watching the hundreds of birds swarming her bird feeders. I immediately bought four feeders and constructed the buffet of any bird’s dreams, which has only grown over time. For a few years, I would just watch them come and go, or listen to them sing, but I never had any idea of what I was watching. This year, with the help of smart tech, I have really upped my game—and it’s made birding so much more fun.
Birdsong AI will identify birds in your area
Plenty of apps will Shazam your local birds’ tweets. The best-reviewed app by most birders is BirdNET, out of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It’s available on Android and Apple, and best of all, it’s free. It also appears that many other apps rely on BirdNET as the data backbone. Cornell Lab has their own app, called Merlin, which is also free and has a slightly slicker interface. Merlin relies solely on Cornell data sources and BirdNET brings in additional data sources, so it has a bigger library to work with. Both of these use AI to pair the birdsong you direct the phone at with the libraries' resources to ID the source. While there are other apps, like ChirpOMatic ($3.99), they aren’t free and aren’t nearly as well reviewed.
Still, these apps require you to have your phone, open the app and aim the phone in the direction of the song, all before the bird stops singing. I recently installed Haikubox ($249 including first-year membership) in my yard, which listens passively, all the time. Haikubox looks like a small power brick you keep plugged in. It's weatherproof, so you just leave it in your yard. The app records the birdsong, identifies it and then delivers notifications and reports on the birds in your yard to your phone. While Haikubox isn’t the slickest hardware or software out there (it requires two apps, one for reporting, one for updating; the UI isn’t very clear and sharing isn’t well developed), it is incredibly engaging. Within moments of setup, I was receiving recordings of individual hummingbirds and pine siskins, which I expected. But sounds I had not pinned down before suddenly had an ID and the updates have often made me run to the window or door to see if I could find the source of the song. Haikubox also relies on BirdNET and a combination of machine learning and AI. While the data is easy to download for your own uses, if you want to keep your IDs and recordings for more than a few hours, you’ll need to pay for a subscription ($60 a year).
Smart birdhouses get you up close and personal
My favorite birdhouse is one that attaches to a window; I can see it from my work desk. It’s clear, and scrub jays stop by for the mealworms I leave. Unfortunately, so do squirrels. A better solution for close up engagement is a smart birdhouse, the most well known of which is Bird Buddy, which won an innovation award at CES this year. I installed the latest version of the Bird Buddy last week, with a solar roof ($299). The cost of the birdhouse isn’t the only expenditure, it comes with a hook to hang the feeder, but if you’ve got squirrels, that’s an absolute no-go. I purchased a pole and squirrel baffle to mount the birdhouse and create a squirrel-proof zone. It took a week, but I was rewarded with my first visitors over the last few days. Bird Buddy has a well-developed app that allows you to get a live view of your own camera, or will deliver notifications of any visitors to your birdhouse with ID, recorded video and photos, all of which are made for sharing. While you wait, you can also tune into bird houses around the globe.
There are plenty of other smart birdhouses, including Birdfy ($249), which also debuted at CES this year. Birdfy has a broader-angle camera than Bird Buddy, and a detachable battery pack, which might make it easier to charge than the Bird Buddy. Both have solar panels, so charging shouldn’t be much of an issue.
Bird Buddy also has a hummingbird feeder coming out this August on pre-order ($359) which I’m eager to test; hummingbirds are one of the most entertaining birds to have in the garden, but hard to capture on film.
Sadly, none of these apps remind you to clean your bird feeder, which is non-negotiable unless you want to spread disease among the local bird population, so you’ll need to set up recurring reminders on your calendar. Depending on the weather, you may want to be cleaning your feeder at least every two weeks; when it’s hot out, you need to change hummingbird feeders every day.
You can buy custom bird seed for your area
Bird seed, it turns out, is not cheapand you’ll be surprised how quickly your local flock starts to go through the buffet. There are likely local birding stores, and you should visit them, because for all the smart tech around, they’ll know your local avian population better than anyone, and will know exactly what they want to eat. I was also charmed to find Happy Bird Watcher, which makes custom blends of seeds based on your zip code and ships them to you on a regular schedule.
Smart coops are here, too
Most people with chicken or duck flocks already have doors on their coops that open and close with the sun. Now, however, you can finally get a smart coop. The Smart Coop has cameras, feeders and doors that all report back to you via an app. You can get an entire setup including the coop and run for $1995, the coop for $1695, or just pick up the door and cameras for $399.99 and install them on a coop you have.
Standing fans tend to annoy me. I find I’m constantly getting up to adjust them; they’re loud; and they become absolutely filthy with no clear way to clean them. None of these issues seem like they’d be hard to solve—and yet standing fans have been around for a long time without much innovation on how to fix these pain points. Somehow, the DREO PolyFan 704s ($134.99) figured it out, and for that reason, I absolutely recommend it as the perfect standing fan for small to medium rooms.
The PolyFan, whose name refers to the dual motors powering it, stands 43 inches tall when fully extended, with a tapered stem and round base. You can adjust the stem by four inches to shorten it. The fan head itself is on a swing, and can be positioned at any vertical angle (but you won’t need to position it yourself—more on that in a bit). The fan arrives in a few large pieces, and assembly took less than 10 minutes to attach the stem to the base. The Dreo includes a small remote, which is certainly nice—but since you use your phone app for all the remote functions and more, you won’t need it. The PolyFan comes in two colors, a rose gold or matte silver. The tapered stem and rounded edges on the fan head, coupled with the matte finish, make the fan look more expensive than it is.
Multifunctional and cleanly designed app
The Dreo app paired quickly for me on the first try. All of the commands for the fan take place in two panes. First, there's a general pane that allows you to turn the fan on and off, get a temperature reading for the room, see upcoming scheduled runs, and use a slider for fan intensity. If you click on settings, you’ll be offered a second pane with more options for the fan, including a turbo mode, a natural mode and sleep mode. You can use a visual angle control to aim the fan in any 3D direction you’d like, and then control the horizontal and vertical oscillation. I didn’t realize how valuable this was until I experienced not having to get up to adjust the fan, and then it felt downright luxurious.
Impressive features for a fan
Like the Dreo Air Purifier Tower Fan I reviewed recently, the air Dreo produced is breezier than a normal fan. At lower speeds, it feels like a light, natural breeze. At a higher intensity, I felt cooler, but not like I was in a wind tunnel. Dreo uses a brushless motor and a dual vortex technology to achieve this, and while it’s not the same as the Dyson Hot+Cool’s cool air, it felt closer to that experience than a traditional standing fan.
The Dreo is impressively quite. Dreo says the fan never goes above 25 dB, and most of the time, it won’t even reach that. It rarely went over 18 dB in my use, but I rarely had it on max settings. You could easily leave it on while in a Zoom call.
I was impressed at how the Dreo air filled the room. You can oscillate the fan 120 degrees horizontally and 85 degrees vertically, which means you get a pretty wide angle swing, and the fan can reach 100 feet, according to the docs. None of my rooms are longer than 30 feet, but you could certainly feel the fan if you stood 30 feet away.
Fans collect dust and then become impossible to clean—I’ve broken many window fans trying to get them open to clean them. Dreo built a fan that you can take apart for these purposes. After only a week of use, I started breaking it apart. The fan comes apart into three parts, and all are easy to wash. It took a minute to take apart and a minute to put back together.
The Dreo blows other fans away
I know, it’s just a fan. But I suspect you’ve bought a lot of cheap fans in your lifetime under that premise and have ended up with old-looking fans gummed up with dust that you haul out every spring. The design of most tower fans has caused them to not be very stable, or to look anything other than cheap. Standing fans also tend to be top heavy. The PolyFan is none of those things, and performs better, is cleanable and quiet. For those reasons, I think it’s a good value. I’m also excited, after seeing these two products from Dreo, to see what else they produce in the future.
Kickstarter and crowdfunding platforms like it have generally been thought of as a place for startups to gain enough capital to bring projects to life. While it’s never been explicitly stated by Kickstarter, most people believe that the platform is for businesses or ideas that are just starting out. Recently, however, I’ve noticed several well-established smart tech companies using the platform to launch products. All of these companies—notably Eufy, Aqara and Switchbot—already have a library of traditionally launched, successful projects, a healthy customer base and name recognition. It led me to wonder the cause of this trend and if it has implications for the brands or consumers.
Crowdfunding platforms usually present equal risks for companies and consumers
Campaigns on Kickstarter follow a certain formula: a well-produced video pitch, fancy graphics, and perks. In the case of consumer goods, the perks are the product. Companies set a goal for their funding, and if backers meet the goal, the project moves forward. If it fails, everyone gets their money back. There are risks for everyone—obviously, the company may not hit the goal, and even if they do, they now have to fulfill the perks. Producing one concept gadget is different from making 5,000 gadgets and very different from 500,000. For the backer, there’s a chance they don’t get the product at all—the company may never be able to get the concept product to full production. The product could also be vastly different from what was promised in the campaign, could take longer to arrive, or just not live up to expectations. There’s no consumer protection—if you back a project, the creator is only expected to bring things to a "satisfying conclusion," which may not include fulfillment. The platform claims to be proactive about fraud, but the only possible repercussion for the creator not fulfilling the campaign is suspension from the platform—Kickstarter does not offer refunds. There have been plenty of cases in the past where backers didn’t get products they backed or refunds—just sad explanations about how companies got in over their head.
For established companies, there are fewer risks and more upside
The stakes are different for established companies—they already have a user base, they already have capital, and because of that, they have more liability and exposure. They know how to build, produce, launch and support a product. What’s the upside of Kickstarter for them? According to Switchbot and Eufy, using Kickstarter creates a long period of direct consumer feedback. Kickstarter users, whether or not they become backers, can view the campaign materials, and respond either in the comments, to the company directly or out in the public domain— and all the while, the company is listening and adjusting. According to Switchbot’s marketing manager, Anna Huang, “We love to receive feedback from users at the very early stage for such a niche product, which is primarily why Kickstarter is a good platform for us to reach our target users as early as possible.” Eric Villines, Head of Global Communications for Eufy’s parent company, Anker, says that working with the crowdfunding platforms is about honoring the voice of the consumer. “It allows us to innovate jointly with the customer—we're getting real-time feedback. We've had products that we've launched and looking at comments, what we thought was cool isn't coming across, so in real time we're able to adapt the marketing."
These backers are the first to experience the new product, which has benefits and risks—they can’t help but be a test market. Villines admits the hardware or software itself may be modified before going retail, based on backer response. “By the time we get to the end customer, we have a product that’s been thought through a little better; we've been able to fix from the original batch of backers."
For an established company, a success on Kickstarter isn’t an anxiety-inducing race to figure out how to scale; companies like Eufy and Aqara already have those systems in place. In fact, in most cases the “concept” in the campaign is already quite close to production-ready, and supply chains have already been established. Crowdfunding campaigns are less of a risk than a traditional launch or a startup campaign, since now they simply need to produce based on demand and have raised the capital to do so. Kickstarter can actually be a cost saver— Villines elaborates that these campaigns “eliminate the risk building in supply chain issues, reduces cost and time. Ultimately we're not producing more than we need. If you look at how companies innovate, it's a slow process. Crowdfunding allows us to more quickly bring our biggest and craziest ideas to the table in a way that if we were to fail, we fail fast and move on. "
Crowdfunding also appeals to companies because of the patrons themselves. “Compared to regular consumers on a larger scale, the native users of Kickstarter consist of a great amount of geeks," Huang says. "They are relatively more open to technology discovery with more willingness to give feedback and conduct discussions on a technical level, which helps us greatly to cultivate our products so that the products could be more than ready for regular consumers.”
Backers face less (but not no) risk with established brands
An established company that has produced products before is vastly more likely to get a final product shipped. That reduces risks to the backer overall. But these pools of early adopters are still getting the first version of the product, which will be improved based on their experiences. The tradeoff here is that they’re getting it at a lower price than the eventual retail price (usually). Still, waiting for a retail version might mean getting a product with less glitches.
Unlike most other Kickstarter campaigns, ones from companies like Eufy, Aqara and Switchbot already have established customer service channels to support the product, including the possibility of returning it. You don’t have to worry about the company having the capital to support refunds.
Crowdfunding is a marketing method that may have perks for consumers
Early adopters are going to be a test market regardless of how a product is launched, and for many, that’s part of the thrill. That companies are offering a more direct way to participate and offer feedback is likely a perk to consumers. For companies like Eufy, Aqara and Switchbot, crowdfunding isn’t about collecting capital to give life to a new idea, but a marketing method to support a product launch. Despite Switchbot and Eufy pointing out to me that they used crowdfunding for products in a new vertical, or those that are niche, both of them have already produced robot vacuums before, so the products they’re crowdfunding now aren’t new verticals. And none of these items could be considered "niche." Still, for consumers, compared to most Kickstarter campaigns, they could potentially get a less-expensive version of a product they've been coveting. They’re incredibly likely to get the product, and it will likely be close to what is in the marketing materials. And if they don’t, or if there’s a problem with the product, there’s an established company standing behind it.
The gardening world is full of old wives' tales full of purported methods to grow the biggest tomatoes or tallest sunflowers. One of those stories is that tea is beneficial for your garden because it creates nitrogen, and the tannic acid benefits the pH of the soil. In truth, while tea will compost in your garden just like any other organic matter and likely isn’t doing any harm, there’s no science to suggest that tea, itself, has any specific benefit to your yard, either. Absolutely everything you compost will produce nitrogen, and any acid will affect the pH of your soil (which isn’t always desirable). I consulted with many garden centers as well as Concentrates, a well-regarded farm supply known for their mineral and fertilizer supplement stock, as well as their considerable knowledge of organic farming. No one working there had ever practiced this or could figure out any particular way tea would benefit your yard.
Tea is just dried and processed plant matter
Growing herbs in your garden is probably one of the most rewarding crops, particularly perennial herbs. While many herbs, like chamomile and mint, can be used to make herbal tea on their own, real tea leaves come from a tea plant, camellia sinensis. While it’s unlikely your local nursery will sell it, you can order this flower online as a start and plant it in your garden. Once the plant flowers, you can harvest and dry the buds and make your own tea. No matter what you make your tea with, whether it be herbal or camellia, when you’re done drinking, what’s left is bound for the trash unless you compost it. If you’re making tea with what you grew yourself, you likely aren’t using tea bags, so you can just place the spent tea in your compost and go back to your life. It should compost just fine, and would count as a green part of your compost (which is made up of wet, nitrogen-rich matter balanced with dry, carbon-based matter).
If you buy tea, then you need to consider what the teabag is made of. While most teabags are compostable, some have polypropylene in them and those should not be composted. Remove any staples or string, unless you are sure it is 100% cotton string, and remove the paper tag in case it has any coating on it. If you’re concerned about the teabag, you can just empty it into your compost and toss the bag.
Consider where you put compost with tea in it
Your soil has a delicate pH. Most plants enjoy a neutral pH, and gardeners go to the trouble of measuring the soil’s pH to determine that its in the right range. Some plants benefit from slightly more acidic pH, but slightly is the key word there. Blueberries, azaleas and strawberries are examples of plants that benefit from that higher acidity. Any acid is going to make your soil more acidic, and real tea (not herbal) contains tannins, which produce tannic acid. Just like tea is a plant, tannic acid is produced by trees and other plants as they decay, too. It’s not that tannic acid is specifically bad, it’s that it’s not particularly beneficial, either. If you are adding it into the environment on purpose, you’ll want to ensure the soil pH isn’t becoming too acidic for what you’re trying to grow.
Compost made with tea should not be confused with “compost tea”
If you garden enough, you’ll hear the phrase “compost tea” and how good it is for your garden, but that phrase does not refer to actual tea. Rather, this is the drippings of your worms or compost, which can produce a highly nutritious water fertilizer for your garden. Many worm towers actually come with spigots to collect this brew for use, but you would never drink this.
I’m a big believer in growing your garden up using trellises, arbors and other supports. Growing up provides three exceptional benefits in a garden. First, it provides more room to grow. While some items naturally grow up, like bean vines, others, like pumpkins don’t traditionally grow up, but rather sprawl out across the ground, taking up a lot of space. Second, creating vertical points of interest in your yard makes the space so much more interesting. Lastly, it creates shade and sun. For the items growing on the support, they’re going to get more sun than they would on the ground, and on the other side of that trellis, shade is created. The shade is good for people and animals, who need respite in the summer, but also for your plants. It creates a microclimate. There’s a screen for wind, and the temperature on the other side is going to dip down a few degrees through the lack of sun.
The key to all of this is to choose the right support and the right plant. A trellis is simply a vertical structure that may be flat or accordion-style. An obelisk-type trellis has a smaller footprint, but more support, as they tend to be round or square, coming to a point at the top. Arches can be skinny or wide, but cross a space that people can walk under. An arbor has vertical and horizontal supports for plants such as berries, grapes or figs. Finally, a pergola or cabana is more specifically for creating a space under for tables, chairs, or whatever you’d want to do with the space. While all of these structures look nice on their own, they have open designs specifically so you can grow plants on them. Now you just have to decide what to grow.
Edible fruit like figs and grapes will provide fruit and huge, leafy shade
I always like to consider ways to grow food—if not for me, then birds and other local wildlife. Figs and grapes are two plants that love support and can be molded around a structure, but are going to require a lot of hand-holding (this is true generally of both, not just on a pergola). Figs and grapes both grow vigorously and need to be pruned yearly, and should be treated to prevent fungal infections like rust. These both produce fruit, which sounds delightful, but if you do not harvest it, that fruit will drop and make a mess and bring pests. You can work to reduce this problem by thinning the fruit, which means reducing the amount of fruit as a trade-off for bigger, better fruit. Both figs and grapes offer huge leaves that can also be used on their own for eating but will work to provide shade as well. While these plants are perennial, they are not evergreen, so during the winter, you’ll see the vines but not the leaves.
Passionfruit and hops are prolific vines that will cover your entire structure easily
Hops and passionfruit are edge-case edibles. Hops are essential to brewing beer, but even if you don’t, they are magnificently scented flowers on a very prolific vine that will climb on its own. The same is true for passionfruit, which doubles in size year to year and features gorgeous passionflowers. If you let it grow, you will eventually develop passionfruit, too. Because of how prolific these plants are, you really want to consider how you’ll handle them in fall. Passionflower really shouldn’t be pruned much, but hops can be cut almost to the ground year to year and will just come back stronger. Even in the short summer season, they can cover your entire pergola.
Consider the birds
If you’d like to fill your space with hummingbirds, bees and other beneficial pollinators, you need to give them something to eat. Floral vines like jasmine, trumpet vines, honeysuckle, clematis and cup-and-saucer vine all provide scented flowers that attract these pollinators while providing shade on the structure. In fact, there are enough varieties of these vines that you can choose multiple honeysuckle vines, each with a different bloom time, and have an entire season of flowers, with different-colored flowers. Vines all have different rules about when and how much you prune them. Clematis has three different pruning groups alone, so you’ll want to make sure you look up how to prune your specific vines.
Seasonal edibles provide short-term growth but high interest
A great idea for a pergola or trellis is regular vining beans. Beans like scarlet runner or hyacinth beans are edible (but really meant to be grown for their looks) but there’s a whole world of shelling beans that grow prolifically for a season; then, after you harvest the beans, you cut the vines down. These are all annuals, meaning they only live for the season. If you allow the beans to just drop, they will reseed on their own and might eventually perennialize. You’ll want to ensure that you’re choosing pole beans, not bush beans—that information will always be on the seed packet. Most green beans are pole beans, and also grow prolifically in one season. We’ve previously covered how pumpkins and squash can be trellised; if you just grew them alone, they’d provide a lot of shade. You don’t have to choose just one option: You can grow multiple things together, like beans and pumpkins.
Don’t grow invasive vines
Although some people love them, vines like ivy or wisteria can do real damage to a structure and take over a space. Akebia is not technically invasive, but can grow out of hand too easily. Obviously, don’t plant kudzu. Other problematic invasive vines include wintercreeper, porcelain berry, and oriental bittersweet.
Plants need good soil, water, food, sunlight and pruning
Depending on the structure of your trellis or pergola, your plants might be fine on their own finding the support, but if not, consider loose garden ties to train the plants onto the structure. You want to ensure these are never tight, or they won’t allow growth. You need to plant the vines into good soil that is loose and loamy, and has some nutrition in it. If the pergola is planted on the ground rather than a cement or rock base, you can work the soil around the pergola to aerate it and add fertilizer with a broadfork or shovel. If your structure is on cement, you’ll need planters, and they need to be appropriately sized for the plant—so larger than you imagine. You’ll fill them with potting soil, and since potted plants dry out more easily, you’ll need to ensure they get watered routinely and fed yearly with fertilizer. The nice thing about planters is that you can move them around, so if a plant isn’t getting sunlight, you can move it where it will.
If you’re looking to meet people in your neighborhood, buy a robot lawn mower. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been amazed at the traffic generated by using my Mammotion Luba 2. People stop to watch it work, they bring their kids by, and cars have slowed down, backed up, and then pulled over to observe. But the best outcome I discovered by using a robot lawn mower is this: If you can share your robot lawn mower with your closest neighbors, what was a good value becomes a great one.
Robots don’t care about property lines
I live in the city on a street with reasonably sized residential lots of 3,000ish square feet, and almost every house on the block has a lawn. The lawns vary in size, but all are large enough to need a lawnmower, and many people on the block use a lawn service. Since our lots are small enough and the Mammotion Luba 2 is built to handle a lot more space, I found myself wondering if I could make the Luba think additional houses on the block were all part of the same map, and mow them, too. Spoiler: It works. The more houses a single robot can mow, the more value you’re getting from a robot lawnmower (and I generally feel they are a valuable buy, anyway).
An interesting aspect of robot lawnmowers came from a conversation with the team at Husqvarna, who pointed out that robots aren’t great at perceived boundaries like property lines, which is why lots of lawnbots have needed buried wire to mark perimeters with precision. Now that most bots are wireless, we teach the bot where the boundary is by walking them around the perimeter the first time and mapping paths between the different areas. A single property can have multiple mapped areas, just like your home has many rooms for a robot vacuum to consider. Your next door neighbor’s lawn can be just another area, and you can map a pathway to it. Even the street itself is just another area for the robot to cross to get to another mapped area, just like a sidewalk or driveway. At a minimum, robot vacuums are a great way to keep a hellstrip (the narrow space between your sidewalk and street curb) mowed and looking uniform across many properties.
Get permission and line of sight
Once I got permission from my neighbors to test this out, I parked the GPS tower for the Luba in a spot that gave line of sight for the two houses across the street and the house next door. Remember, you place that GPS tower with the mapped areas in mind, but if you plan to use it on multiple houses, that mapped area just expands, and you may need to consider a new location for the tower.
Using the remote control, I walked the robot over to the new areas to map and continued adding mapped areas in each of the yards, naming them and making connection pathways between the mapped areas. So, my neighbor across the street had her yard mapped with pathways between the areas on her property, and then my next door neighbor had the same. I did not make a pathway between the homes, which I’ll explain in a moment. At some point, all four homes, two on each side of the street, were mapped, and once the robot was in those spaces, it mowed the areas as well as it would the main home it was mapped to.
Safety concerns
While on a lawn, the safety of the robot isn’t really in question (the biggest threat is someone walking up and nabbing it). It also isn't a major safety concern for people or pets while cutting the grass—it just moves too slow. But unattended in the street, it can get run over, and it's more likely to encounter people and dogs on sidewalks. The bottom line is: The robot is safe on your lawn, but when you map a walkway and ask it to leave your lawn, it can engage with the rest of the world, which could be a liability, a risk to your investment, or just a hassle. A better way to handle it is to manually walk the robot over, using the remote, especially across a street.
Scheduling is key to success
Now that it’s all mapped, remember that multiple people probably won’t have access to the controls for the robot, because the association lives on one phone. With some robots, you can add additional users, and for others, I’m sure that’s coming. Until then, one solution is scheduling, which would mean that as long as the robot is in mapped area or there’s a walkway mapped to it, it will run a set scheduled mow. If there’s no walkway, you’d need to be responsible for walking the robot over, but it’s not more labor than taking the trash to the curb. A second solution is keeping a cheap tablet with the robot, with the app loaded, so that anyone who wants to use the robot can walk over, grab the tablet and use it to walk the robot to their property and mow and then return it.
Robot lawn mowers range in price from about $1,500 to $5,000. The Mammotion Luba 2 we used for this experiment is $2,899 and while I think that’s a reasonable price to pay for a robot lawnmower, it would be a lot less when shared with a few neighbors. You all agree to maintain the robot collectively and share in the expenses, such as new blades, as needed.
Eufy is a company that, in general, makes products I really like. They make some of the best security cameras in the industry, enough that after testing lots of brands, Eufy’s Solocams are what I keep installed at my house. Anker, their parent company, makes some of my favorite power banks, and I really like my Eufy doorbell. Like a lot of companies making smart tech, they also make vacuums.
The Eufy Robot Vacuum Omni S1 Prois interesting in a number of ways. Even though Eufy is a well-established brand that has produced and launched many products including other robot vacuums, for this model, they went back to Kickstarter, where their goal was blown out of the water in hours. Second, instead of going for the compact tower design almost all companies have chosen for robot vacuums lately, the S1 has a giant retro tower look to it. Despite my brand loyalty, the interesting design and the vacuum's decent performance, however, I think the Omni S1 Pro isn’t a good buy—there’s a disconnect between the robot Eufy thinks they built and the one I tested. Currently priced at $999 on Kickstarter, the S1 will become available for retail purchase later this spring or early summer at a much higher price.
Unique design, but no unique features
Generally, robot vacuums and mops now come with a dock and tower that will refill the clean water, empty the dirty water and vacuum, and clean the mop. These towers are impossible to ignore due to size, but brands generally try to make them generic-looking enough so they’ll blend into the landscape of the room around them. Eufy went a different way with the S1. The tower is tall enough you might mistake it for a stick vacuum, and bears the word “MACH” right on the front, which is also the name of the app. Made of molded transparent black plastic, the contents of the tower are veiled, but only barely. While it’s likely made of the same materials as other brands, which are also molded plastic, the see-through plastic occasionally looks cheap. Despite the vertical size, the tower also doesn’t take up much less horizontal space than other robots have. The footprint is about the same, but you can’t tuck this under tables and counters as easily.
The robot itself is like a lot of other modern robot vacuums, with a roller, rotating sweeping brushes and mop brushes—and to its credit, Eufy ships the S1 Pro with plenty of replacement parts, including extra rollers, brushes and filters. But Eufy has promoted this robot as a premium floorbot, with a premium price. In the marketing for the robot, you routinely see words like “groundbreaking” used. In fact, the marketing materials used to say “The World’s First Floor-Washing Robot Vacuum with All-in-One Station” until I asked what was different from other floor-washing robots, since they’re pretty common now. The language disappeared from Kickstarter but remains on the Eufy website. The problem is, it’s not groundbreaking: While this robot was being developed, floor washing robots became routine, and the technology surpassed what this robot offers, with other brands offering extending brushes and mops, on board video, voice assistants and direct connection to water lines. While the S1 includes a lot of features I like on other robots—like a place for cleaning solution built into the tower, and an easy way to divide and merge rooms in the app—most of the other premium robots have that, too.
Easy installation, and a well-designed app
Most robots come ready to roll out of the box, and the S1 isn’t any different. After unboxing, it just needed to be filled with water and have a few brushes popped into places. In the case of many robot mop combos, you can add cleaning solution to the clean water, but recently, models like Roborock have added a bay for cleaning solution to the dock, so you always have the right amount. As I mentioned, Eufy included this feature, but it relies on Eufy branded cleaning solution in a sealed bottle that you install—to replace it, you’d need to purchase more from Eufy, while other models allow you to choose any solution you want to use. The MACH app is separate from the Eufy Clean app, and I’ve previously talked about how every one of Eufy’s products uses a different app (Clean, Security, Pet, etc), so this was just one more to add to the bunch. Still, it’s a good app, and has the same user interface as most brands. A map is made using LiDAR the first time the robot goes out, and then you can break it into rooms, dividing and merging spaces as you like and naming them. Of all the robots I’ve tested, the S1 mapped the space better than any other (and I’ve had six or seven robots map the same space).
One aspect I did really like was that you can set cleaning preferences per room, instead of doing so per run, and you can also set a priority of rooms rather than let the robot decide. If you want to wash the kitchen floor multiple times but the hallway only once, you can, and you can ask the bot to always clean the bathroom last. The app has schedules, and the same general settings you expect, including the remote control. The app lacks two features I’m seeing in many robots these days: pin and go, or “spot cleaning,” and onboard video. While I don’t think video is all that useful, it’s still a feature you’d get in other models. Pin and go is actually very useful—you can just drop a pin on your map and the robot cleans that spot specifically.
The S1 is just okay
As a floor cleaner, the S1 does an okay job. This is how I felt about the Eufy X10 Pro Omni I reviewed a few months ago. It vacuumed up a lot of debris on the floor, but after three passes on my kitchen had missed a deliberately left onion peel in the dead center of the floor. The S1 does not hug the wall; it lacks those extending arms other models now offer. As a mop, it certainly cleaned up surface level spills, but the rotating brushes did not dig into grime at all, leaving the white tile looking dirty. On 11 ventures out, I’d let the Eufy run at max settings, the highest level of suction and mopping, going over each space two times. In each instance, I would then ask my Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra to make a single run afterwards, and I could watch it grab everything the S1 missed. It happened over and over.
Bottom line: there are better robots for the price
Earlier this week, I spoke with Eric Villines, Head of Global Communications at Anker about the S1 launch and why they chose Kickstarter. I appreciated how proud the team at Anker seemed to be about the way the Eufy encourages innovation, working like an incubator with at least half the staff devoted to research and development. When teams produce great concepts, crowdfunding allows Eufy to find innovative ways to move those products forward. One of the reasons they like crowdfunding for products like the S1 is that it creates a long runway of feedback from enthusiasts and funders, which Villines said usually impacts the products a lot before launch.
To be clear, Eufy doesn’t make bad robot vacuums; they work just fine. But they seem to only work fine—not great. The S1 is positioned as a premium robot vacuum, but for the current $999 price, i think you can do better with the Roborock S8 Pro, at the same price. When the S1 moves to its full retail price in the mid-$1000 range, I think you’d do better with the Roborock S8 Maxv Ultra at $1799. I am also eagerly awaiting the new S10 from Switchbot; if I were shopping for a robot vacuum right now, I'd wait for that to launch, since Switchbot has already made a really great vacuum before.
Not everyone was born to camp. I participate due to peer pressure from friends and a dog, who are all enthusiasts of the great outdoors. Whether you relish the great outdoors or just tolerate it, there’s so much smart gear to improve the experience. While bringing smart tech on a camping trip might feel counter intuitive, the right tech can make nature more accessible, safer and even more comfortable.
A smart tent
Even those who brave the Pacific Coast Trail bring tech along with them (according to the hikers I follow on TikTok, which is as close as I’m getting it). That tech needs power, and your tent is a passive way to collect it. While there have been a lot of concept products, very few seem to have made it to market for consumers. A Green Origin has two for sale (below) that have a flexible solar panel that’s made to attach to the tent itself. The Dragon V1 Solar Tent has been successfully funded on Kickstarter and should ship soon. It, too, has a solar panel, but it’s integrated into the tent itself. In the future, even these flexible panels will likely be obsolete; fabric with energy-harvesting technology woven into the fabric itself will be used for tents as well as clothing.
Coolers used to be a race against time managing refrigerated and frozen food with ice cubes. Now, many coolers carry on-board power, meaning they can keep the cooler at a temp that ensures safe food handling, and no more ice management. In some cases, these coolers can also act as chargers or speakers, or allow you to manage the cooler via an app. Being able to designate each section as a fridge or freezer means you can use the power you need, and keep food at the right temperature.
When you gather with friends at night to cook, eat, or just relax, you'll probably want a little light—and you've got a couple of options. There are lots of solar lanterns on the market, which just need to sit out during the day to recharge. But for a little more ambiance, bring a power bank with you and string up some LED lights, as they require less energy to run than other lights.
Generally, we think of having wifi anywhere we go now and when it’s not available, we fall back to our cellular signal. When you don’t want to blow through your wireless plan, you can rely on a backup device that provides a signal through the 4G network and you pay as you go.
Going “off grid” has really changed now that there are so many portable power stations that give you a way to charge up while you’re away through a solar panel. 1,000-watt units are enough to power most of the devices you’ll use while away, while still being light enough to move around.
From the beginning, I’ve been skeptical about robot lawn mowers. I imagined a robot mowing down my flower beds, and wondered why someone wouldn’t just pluck the robot off the lawn and keep walking. Heck, I don’t even think you should grow a lawn, so it’d be a leap for me to recommend a lawn mower. However, there is no denying that robot mowers are here to stay—and so I enlisted the lawns of every neighbor on my block and began testing a fleet of lawnbots.
The process has won me over for a few reasons, and I’m now a person who would recommend a robot lawn mower to most people with a lawn, if you find the right one for your space. A robot lawn mower all but eliminates the noise of mowing, removes the chore of mowing altogether, and can give your lawn a year-round consistent look. For medium to large lawns, I'd recommend the Mammotion Luba 2. It mowed with accuracy and consistency, rarely deterred by irregularities like dips, hills, holes or obstacles. At $2,899, the price is out of reach for many people, but if you regularly pay for lawn service, and/or have neighbors who can share the bot, it might just be worth it.
Robot lawnmowers aren't just outdoor robot vacuums
It's tempting to compare robot lawn mowers to robot vacuums, but while robot mowers have definitely benefited from everything we’ve learned from robot vacuums over the last 10 years, that may be an unfair correlation. I recently spoke with the engineering staff at Husqvarna, an originator in this space, and they helped me understand the additional challenges that robot lawn mowers face outside in the elements. Inside your home, LiDAR is likely all you need to navigate, but outside, robots need GPS. If you want your bot to mow up to the flower bed but not into the flower bed, you’re talking about precision that comes down to inches. The same is true of boundaries, where your lawn might meet a neighbor’s lawn. For this reason, most lawnbots once relied on buried wire to define the spaces they worked within. It’s only in the last few years that these bots have gone wireless, trusting the GPS to keep them on the straight and (sometimes) narrow.
Luba 2 assembly and installation
The Luba 2 requires a fair amount of assembly: There’s the robot itself, which needs a few parts like the bumper connected and screwed in, and then there is the GPS tower and the dock, both of which need some assembly, too. It took an hour to unbox all the components, assemble them, and then find an appropriate place for the base to live and get everything installed at the site. There are also additional components to consider, like a garage ($149 on pre-order), which is just a cover for the robot since it is otherwise exposed to the elements, and a wall mount for the GPS unit ($79 on pre-order)—both of which take time to assemble, too.
The Luba 2 features four equally sized tough wheels across a long, low body. (More later on why this particular shape makes the bot more resilient and results in those highly treasured lines in the lawn.) While the robot is mostly okay in the elements, Mammotion is clear that the garage does help protect your investment. Among other things, it helped conceal the robot a bit when it was docked—and even the most weatherproof device could benefit from shelter. The GPS tower does not need to be installed at the same location as the dock, but if you position the dock right, it can be. The tower needs direct line of sight to the sky, and always needs to have direct line of sight to the robot. Sometimes, this is best served by the tower and dock being in two different locations, but in my case, I was able to locate them close to the house, together, without it being a problem. This has an additional benefit of allowing both the robot and tower to share one electrical plug. If you separate them, you’ll have to snake the cord for the tower back to the outlet, and I struggled to understand how you’d do this safely without burying it, or the robot would go right over it. Pro tip: once the robot is up and running, you’ll never pick it up—there’s a remote control function. Assemble it close to the location you’ll place the dock, because it is a bear to carry around.
Lots of settings allow you to fine tune the look of your lawn
Most interactions you’ll have with your new robot mower takes place in the app, and I was worried that my wifi wouldn’t be sufficient through the yard, or it would be a bear to pair. That wasn’t the case, and this is the only lawnmower I’ve tested that paired on the first try. The mesh provided by some new Nest Pro wifi points covered my neighbors' whole yard well enough to work (remember, I was mowing their lawn), and I found that even at the farthest reaches of their yard where the signal was weak, the Luba 2 responded just fine. Each time you want to use the robot, you’ll need to connect to it, which means you need to be in range. Mammotion, like a lot of these robots, relies on a mix of Bluetooth, wifi and 4G. You won’t be controlling the robot from your vacation home (although you can set up schedules for that). Inside the app, you can control how short the grass should be cut and what pattern you want the robot to take across the lawn, from a few zigzag patterns to checkerboard. These settings don’t just affect the lawn's appearance, but how effective the lawn is mowed. I tried all the settings over the course of a month and it turns out, a randomized zigzag produced the best mowing results. Each time you send the robot out on an unscheduled run, you can choose how many times it should circle the perimeter and how it should approach obstacles. The Luba offers options that favor bump and go, LiDAR or both, and generally, I found the best coverage with bump and go only, which surprised me. When I just let the robot experience obstacles by bumping into them, and having to navigate around them, rather than seeing them with LiDAR and trying to avoid them, I got smaller areas of avoidance.
The Luba 2 makes a number of passes on the lawn, so even cutting this long lawn down, it's unbothered. By the time it makes a second pass, the clippings will be obliterated into the lawn. Credit: Amanda Blum
Telling the mower where to cut is a lot of fun
Unlike vacuums, which just venture out from the dock, visualize and map the space on their own and then go about cleaning, most robot lawn mowers including the Luba 2 require you to manually map the space. The robot goes into a remote control mode, and you walk behind it and navigate the perimeter of the space. This part was strangely fun. You can map additional “no go” zones within a space, but I generally allowed the robot to figure that out on its own, since it would bump into a raised bed and navigate around it. If you had a flower bed without a defined wall, you’d map it as a no go zone. You can map as many spaces as you want, and then connect them by building walkway paths between them. When you want to mow, you just choose the areas you want, and the mower will navigate to them using the walkways.
Concerns about security and safety are probably unwarranted
One of my concerns was that someone would steal the mower, and to be honest, makers of these robots don’t help in that area. The units light up at night like a beacon, with bright lights on the GPS unit and the robot itself. The garage helps hide it a little, and I turned the GPS unit so the light was aimed towards the house, but in the darkness, it’s still quite easy to see. I live in an area where people do swipe things from entryways, and yet, in five weeks, the Luba 2 was more a curiosity of the neighborhood than a target. The first week, I watched it each time it ran, out of concern for the robot and flower beds—and more interesting than the robot was the neighbors reaction. Everyone would stop walking and stare. They’d take pictures, and minutes later more people would arrive and they’d all stare together. Cars stopped and reversed to double check that it was, in fact, a robot. They’d talk to each other about the robot and ask questions.
This led to the second concern I had about the robot, which was liability and safety. While on a lawn, it’s likely not to encounter other humans or animals, certainly not at the rate it moves (about half the speed of a human mowing). However, as it navigates sidewalks and driveways between mowing areas, it might encounter them. The Husqvarna team helped explain that this is the main distinguishing feature between vacuums and mowers—that for the latter, safety had to be the first priority. For that reason, all robots have a giant kill button on them. The Luba 2 has a big “STOP” button on it that’s easy to hit. Also, the mower itself is actually much smaller and less threatening than it is on traditional mowers, it’s just a few very small blades in the dead center on the bottom of the robot. The moment the robot is lifted or moves from a flat position, the mower stops. I tried a number of times to create scenarios where the blades could encounter a dog, cat or kid, and each time, the mower simply stopped.
The Luba 2 is able to navigate terrain better than other lawnbots
There are a few assessments you should make before you get a robot lawn mower—like how big your lawn is, and how level. Some mowers are better at inclines, and some are better for small lawns that require navigation around a lot of tight spaces. The Luba 2 comes in models that can accommodate from 1,000 square feet up to 10,000 square feet. It’s not terrific for navigating around very tight spaces—it struggled around my path lights, for instance. Where the Luba 2 really shines is in navigating bumpy spaces. Some lawn bots struggled with even a small dip or hill, but the Luba navigated those easily, and even a big trench. This is because of the larger body with the wheels on all four corners. It was able to distribute weight in a way that the wheels were never bothered by terrain or inclines. According to the team at Husqvarna, the weight of the mower affects how well you’ll see those lines in the grass after mowing. Of the mowers I’ve tested so far, only the Mammotion has produced them. In fact, at some point in the future Mammotion plans to offer lawn printing, where you can customize what you see on the lawn.
The best features (and the ones that didn’t matter)
The Mammotion has some features that felt extraneous, like offering live video of the mower in action. It’s novel to watch the feed for a moment, but ultimately not very useful. One of the most useful features, the ability to manually control the mower via remote control, doesn’t get talked about much. Although the bot only got stuck twice in sixteen runs, rather than picking it up and walking it out, I just used the remote. Remember, the mower is heavy. What no one mentions about robot lawn mowers and should is the blessed silence. I have lived between two mow happy men for years and during the summer mowers run constantly and the noise is insufferable. Robot lawn mowers are so quiet you have to strain to hear them cutting. The cuttings themselves are so chopped up by the blades that there’s no cuttings to move off the lawn. Rather than long blades of grass, it’s just diced up and left on the lawn, and you can’t really tell, even after a big chop. Both neighbors have been really happy with the results of the robots. A little line trimming to clean up around obstacles is all that’s needed.
Bottom line: the Luba 2 will make you confident in robot lawn mowers
Ultimately, the Mammotion won me over to robot lawn mowing. After the first week, you’ll only watch it when it leaves the dock and check back to make sure it returned. Then, you’ll grow to trust that it just does it on its own. The cost is stunning, at $2899, but when I started to think about what people pay now for lawn service, it started to make more sense. While landscapers do more than mow the lawn, taking the lawn off your plate might make the rest of the your landscape manageable for you to handle. Also, don’t overlook how much labor mowing the lawn really is—if you live alone, removing the labor might be worth it, just like not having to clean your floors inside. With the range of the Mammotion, I was able to map it to the lawns of four adjoining neighbors, meaning you could easily split the cost of the bot with others.
Searching for music on the Sonos interface has always been a little frustrating, involving a lot of subpanels and too much back and forth. Today, Sonos is promising to alleviate some of that pain with a new home screen interface across the Sonos app and desktop experience. News of the upcoming changes leaked earlier this month, but now we’re able to see actual screenshots and get details of how this rollout will actually look.
Rolling out globally on May 7, the new interface will emphasize customizations and easy access. While Sonos has the ability to integrate with over 100 streaming services, you likely only interface with a few routinely. The new design will allow you to choose which services you see, and allow you to easily change those preferences. Here are some of the other big changes:
No more tabs
The most painful part of the Sonos navigation process is going to go away. The new home screen will bring all your content to one screen, and you’ll be able to easily jump back into recently played content, your libraries, and recommendations.
a new search, home screen and system interface are comingCredit: Sonos
Pin and group services to match how you listen to streaming
You’ll be able to group rows of content together, so you can have a section for podcasts versus music versus audiobooks. Sonos promises these will be easy to rearrange on the fly.
Easier search across services
A little cloudier is the promise that you’ll be able to search for a piece of content or creator across all your platforms. Sonos already does this, but hopefully what they’re promising is a better experience. I’ve often been frustrated with the search results being inaccurate or not finding all the content I’m looking for, even when I know a service carries it.
A new location for system access
Continuing the “tabs be damned” theme, you’ll be swiping up from the home screen to access your system and a visual overview of what’s playing, on which speakers, at what volume, so it sounds like this will replace the system tab.
Mostly, what the new app experience aims for is faster access, and eliminating the many levels of tabs. The new experience will support all S2 products, which includes newer Sonos products like the Arc, Beam, and Era speakers. Usually, the earlier Sonos products like Play 1, Play 3, and Soundbar are included in all apps, leaving out only legacy products like the Bridge.
An air purifier can dramatically improve the air quality in your home, reducing allergens and dust—assuming it is the right size for your space and you change the filters often enough. And smart air purifiers should have two big benefits over traditional dumb purifiers: They can tell you precisely when to change the filters, and they can tell you precisely what’s being pulled out of the air. The Dreo Air Purifier Tower Fan ($269.98), like the Dyson Hot+Cool I reviewed last year, tries to do everything an air purifier should do while also being a fan. And while all the features on the Dreo work well enough, I’m reluctant to recommend it based on two factors: size and value.
The Dreo is large, but the app is easy to use
The Dreo stands at nearly four feet tall, with a silver fin and a spinning tower. It’s not unattractive, it’s just imposing. Air purifiers work best, as fans do, in the middle of the room, but you won't want to plop this down in the middle of your living room—and it’s not just large, it’s also heavy, weighing in at nearly 18 pounds. (More on that later.) It required no assembly, though; it was ready to go once I pulled the plastic off. At that point, I simply plugged it in and paired it with the Dreo app—and the pairing process was flawless. Additionally, you can add Dreo devices to your Alexa or Google Home hub. While a lot of newer products use Matter to bridge products to HomeKit, Dreo is not HomeKit-compatible at this time. (I did find some suggestions online for workarounds to get Dreo working with HomeKit, but I haven't tested them out.)
The interface of Dreo's app uses a lot of white space, and it doesn’t attempt to do too much: It simply tells you the air quality, the temperature, and how much filter life you have left. You can view the data over the last twenty four hours or thirty days. The app lets you set up schedules and turn the tower on and off by activating the fan, the purifier, or both.
With products like this, it sometimes feels silly or unnecessary to have the additional smart functions, but the ability to turn a purifier on and off remotely from another room, or even away from the house does have some benefits. Yes, you could use them in an automation to respond when the air quality goes over a certain threshold, but being able to turn them on and off remotely means you don't have to go into the space where the purifier is working—and it means you don't have to keep track of all those tiny remote controls. This is a real advantage over the (non-smart) Dyson Hot+Cool, because there are a few features that can only be activated by the remote, rather than the buttons on the face.
The second reason a smart app proves its worth is that it reports back on when to replace the filter. Generally, the rule on purifiers is to replace them every six months, but that is just an estimate. If it's been particularly smokey or dusty, the filters see more use; if it has been clear, you might be replacing them too early. I was a little horrified to see my filters at 75% after only a month of use, which means I'd be replacing them far too infrequently. (The filters for the Dreo, by the way, run about $39.99.)
Where the app falls short
Here’s where the app fails this purifier: Dreo only offers a very basic ug/m3 measurement, which is a common way to express how polluted the air is. As I write this, the Dreo is reporting 10 ug/m3, which it considers “excellent.” This means there is ten micrograms of pollutant per cubic meter of air in the room. What it doesn’t do is tell you what makes up that pollutant. In comparison, the Dyson Hot+Cool isn’t smart, by which I mean you can’t do much with the app—you control it via the buttons on the face or a small remote you will probably lose (at least I did). But the Dyson reports on the face of the machine what actually makes up the pollutants it filters, such as gases, particulates, and VOCs. I didn’t consider this an important feature on the Dyson until the Dreo was missing it.
One evening, for example, the Dreo app reported “poor” air quality in the room when the up/m3 spiked to 270. I’d like to dig into why it did so, but without that additional information about what the Dreo was pulling out of the air, I can only speculate it was related to the dinner I was cooking in the room next door. However, you can glean some additional information from the PM rating it delivers, which refers to particulate size (particulate material, specifically). I placed the purifier in my office because I was doing drywall work in there, and I was able to watch the purifier bring the PM down significantly from the time I turned it on to a few hours later, and I could even observe how much cleaner the air was after.
It has a quiet fan that feels like a real breeze
I’ve been playing with a few new Dreo products, and one of the aspects I really enjoy is the quality of the breeze the fan produces; it feels less like a fan and more like a genuine breeze. This is likely due to the dual motors powering the Dreo fan, which is also very quiet, even at max fan and purifier settings. Dreo reports that the tower maxes out at 38 Db, and I was never able to measure it going higher, but in sleep mode, it goes down to 25Db.
One thing in particular I liked about the Dreo fan interface is that you can adjust the strength from 1 to 10 with a slider, and it doesn’t jump in power, but softly rolls to the next setting. There’s a sleep feature in case you won’t be intimidated by this behemoth in the bedroom, or you can set it to auto to cycle on and off on its own. The tower can oscillate up to 120 degrees.
Is the size of Dreo justified?
I found myself staring at the Dreo often over the last few weeks, trying to figure out where it would fit in. A dentist's office, maybe, or a classroom—large spaces where large appliances wouldn't be conspicuous and the design might feel industrial and cool. But this is where the main issue I have with Dreo became evident: When dealing with purifiers, you want one that is meant for the size of the room you're using it in. This is important because a purifier basically exchanges the air in the room, and you want that to happen often enough that it's meaningful for the people who move in the space. A small purifier would eventually clean the air in a whole house, but it would take a lot longer than it does to clear the air in a single room. If there's a wildfire nearby and smoke is a big problem, you want the right size purifier for the space you have to turn the air over every thirty minutes or less.
The Dreo didn't advertise a suggested room size for this purifier, so I asked them directly, and their response was "150-300 square feet." I sought clarification because there's a big difference between 150 and 300 square feet, and in either case, that is an incredibly small amount of square footage for a purifier of this size. I have five purifiers in my home from companies like Medify, and they are effective for larger spaces in a vastly compacted size; but those are just purifiers (not fans), so perhaps it's an unfair comparison. The Dyson is made for a space at the top end of that equation (290 square feet), but it does so at a third the footprint, all while having a heater on board, too. Both the Dreo and Dyson filter down to .03 microns, which is an average size for purifiers, although some like Medify filter down to .01 micron, which is important for virus control.
The Dreo is fine, but you can do better
The Dreo works just fine. The fan is breezy, the air purifier clearly pulls particulates out of the air, and the price isn't bad at $269.98. But you simply can't overlook the size of the unit; it is a major obstacle for being functional in a home. It feels like an appliance meant for a more industrial space, but it's not built to handle that type of square footage. While the Dyson Pure line is generally more expensive, for less than $100 more, you can grab a Dyson Pure Cool Gen 1 ($365), which is just the fan and purifier. If you've got the money to spare, though, for $749 you can get a Dyson Hot+Cool, which I get a lot of use of year-round, since it functions as a room heater, fan, and purifier all in one.
Gardening is proven to be beneficial for your physical and mental health. There’s sunshine, and exercise, and all the fresh fruits and vegetables. Still, gardening can be a lot—and smart devices can take some of the burden off your garden responsibilities, keeping you free for the stuff you really enjoy. These devices don’t just free up time—they can often give you valuable data, which means you can treat your garden more appropriately, based on its needs. This year there are lots of new entries into the market that can make the great outdoors a little smarter.
Compost monitors can make composting easier to understand
At a basic level, composting is just piling up your organic scraps; if the ratio of nitrogen and carbon are about the same and there’s enough heat, you get compost. This is sometimes aided by worms. Still the market of composting devices is huge, and I think most people still just pile organic materials in and cross their fingers. A device like Monty, which has just been released in the states, can help make it less confusing. Monty looks like a smart probe; you stick it into the top of your compost pile and then pair it with the Monty app. I found Monty really only works when the compost pile is exposed and not in a compost container. Once the Bluetooth pairs, Monty will give you insight into the status of your compost and how to correct anything that’s going wrong.
Smart weather stations mean hyperlocal weather data
You can, of course, get the weather report from your local newspaper or weather.com and you might get lucky and have an official weather station relatively near you. But if you live a bit aways from the airport, where those stations are usually located, the weather will not be hyper accurate. Most people don’t know (I certainly didn’t) that there exist a vast network of private weather stations. You can access this network if you get a device that relies on weather data, like a smart sprinkler system. I found a station a block away, and that kind of hyperlocal information about when the rain started and how much wind there was really fine-tuned my irrigation system. I was excited to try it out for myself, so this year I added a Tempest. Installation took less than a minute, and I mounted it to the top of a fence. I get alerts when it starts to rain and what the wind looks like, a really accurate heat index, air quality reading and more. An added side benefit was that if you sync it to Wunderground, which is easy to do, you get Wunderground access, ad free.
Wireless soil sensors make accurate irrigation possible
Soil sensors are a tricky thing. The environment (wet, dirty) makes it hard to keep the sensor accurate over time. Even smart sprinkler systems have generally required underground wire to the sensors, which means digging. There are a few brands that make wireless sensors, which means you can get hydration levels from the different garden areas across your yard, and adjust your irrigation appropriately.
Much like a robot vacuum surfs the ground looking for detritus, there are robots that traverse your garden looking for weeds—namely, the Tertill. As tickled as I am by smart tech, my main issue with Tertill is that it requires a lot of space between plants, which I don’t have. Still, if you maintain a pristine garden with some roominess, having a robot handle weeding sounds fantastic. Farmbot takes it a step further and automates absolutely everything. A robot on a track continually runs over the top of the garden, analyzing what’s growing using “Farmduino,” a modified Arduino running on open source language. It measures soil moisture, nutrients, even soil height, as well as the health of your plants and weeds. It can be attached to almost any raised bed, and requires no programming knowledge. I haven’t tried it, and after seeing it a few times on social media, I was highly skeptical. However, in digging into the documentation, I think it could provide accessibility as well as help people learn about gardening. While unrealistic for a home user at scale because of cost, the idea is great.
Robot lawnmowers work better than I expected them to
While grass lawns are terrible for the planet, your soil, local beneficial insects and the water table, people still have them. Robot lawnmowers are an exploding vertical, and having tested a few of them in the last few months, I’ve been surprised by how effective they really are. They’re expensive, but if you assume you mow as much as you vacuum, the pricing starts to make sense.
There’s a lot of controversy around the role of citrus in the garden: Can it be composted? Will it deter pests? It turns out that while citrus is probably not altogether harmful to your garden, and can—in limited circumstances—be helpful, it's very likely not worth bothering with.
Citrus is problematic as a compost ingredient and mulch
Worms don’t love citrus, and if you are vermicomposting, you don’t want to work against the proletariat. However, the idea that citrus doesn’t compost well is a myth—everything on Earth will eventually break down, and citrus will do so at roughly the same rate as other kitchen scraps, although it’s advised to separate the seeds, fruit, and pith from the peel before you do. Not only is this more work than I’m willing to do for my compost, but it points to one of the problems with composting citrus: The good stuff is largely in the fruit, which will be gone by the time you compost. The seeds will ferment and sprout, and the peels deter your composting worms, so there's no real upside.
While it is also true that citrus fruit is a good source of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, the building blocks of your soil, it won’t be a shock that it is highly acidic. That can shift your soil pH, and that’s not a good idea, unless you are using it in limited ways, and under plants that want that acidity, like blueberries or azaleas. Even in those cases, you want to monitor the pH, because while those plants will enjoy a higher pH, it’s only a slightly higher range. After that, the pH works against your plants' objectives.
Citrus can deter pests, but only at levels that you won’t achieve with kitchen scraps
There was a summer when a neighbor's cat had taken up residence in my yard and started using the vegetable garden as a litter box, and as a preventative measure, she spread citrus peels all across my garden. This, too, is an old wives' tale. Citrus, it’s true, can deter some pests, like rats and mice. They don’t enjoy citrus oil, which is in the peels. However, the concentration of oil needed to be effective is higher than you will achieve by just throwing peels around, even indoors. Moreover, those peels dry out quickly, and then the oil is non-existent. Also, the fact that the compound in citrus peels, d-limonene, can be toxic if ingested by animals was concerning in this case. For what it’s worth, the cat was undeterred, and I had a rotten garden year.
I've also seen citrus mentioned as a slug deterrent, but this is also largely a myth. Slugs are attracted to citrus (slugs are attracted to most edibles), so you can use it as a makeshift trap and then dispose of the peel and the slugs. If trapping is the goal, though, beer traps work more effectively without negatively affecting the garden bed. Ultimately though, as someone who lives in a place where slugs are prolific, your best defense against slugs is Sluggo, which is, thankfully, organic.
While d-limonene is part of many mosquito and tick repellents and can be effective, the concentration you'd need to be effective would require a commercial juice production in your home.
Finding gardeners who practice using citrus in gardens is hard
For two weeks, I polled gardeners near and far, including many master gardeners, published authors of respected gardening books, and owners of nurseries, and not a single one had ever used citrus in the garden. I couldn’t find a single person with hands-on experience, good or bad. This is likely because whatever benefit you might derive from citrus is easily had with other modern garden materials.
Insurance costs are rising due to inflation just like the price of everything else, and people look to reduce those costs through savings programs and discounts that insurance companies often offer. At the same time, homeowner enthusiasm for smart tech is rising every year. Since smart tech can work to prevent the kind of costly events that result in insurance claims, it makes sense that there’s an emerging trend of insurance companies offering discounts for specific smart tech in the house. A study done last year found that a third of homeowners would switch homeowners or renters insurance companies to get discounts for smart home discounts, and another done by Nationwide showed two thirds of American households already have smart tech in their home.
Leaks and break-ins are two of the most common insurance claims
Smart tech can do a lot for the resident of the house in terms of convenience, but when when done right, they can also dramatically reduce risk. Twenty percent of insurance claims are for water damage, and that’s not all attributable to Mother Nature—plenty of homeowners experience internal leaks from plumbing, and smart tech can do a lot to prevent extensive damage. Whether you use a water leak monitor with a shutoff valve like the Moen Flo, or actual sensors on the floor that detect water, an early alert to a problem can prevent a major disaster. Smart security systems can help to prevent break-ins just like traditional security systems, but have two additional benefits. First, you get earlier alerts, since instead of waiting on a neighbor to hear your alarm, you’ll get alerts to your phone. Smart security systems also come with a lot of sensors to prevent your own family members from creating vulnerabilities, like open windows and doors. And while smart tech can’t prevent events like wind and hail, it can alert you to a problem early so you can work to protect your home in time.
Smart tech can net small savings on insurance costs, but may still be worth it
Most insurance companies provide small discounts from 5-13% to use a security system or smart device they’re associated with. Allstate offers a 5% discount if you use their Canary home monitoring. Hippo offers 10-13% off if you invest in Simplisafe, Kangaroo or Notion smart security systems. Other companies offer the discount on the devices themselves. Amica offers 20% off a Moen Flo and other leak-detection devices. One of the best offerings may be from State Farm, who gives subscribers a Ting smart plug and three years of monitoring, plus a discount on the insurance itself. The device specifically monitors your electrical system, looking for causes of fire including faulty wires. Ting’s subscription includes $1000 of coverage in itself. Since this all comes at no additional cost to the State Farm subscriber, it’s a good deal.
Your current insurer may offer a discount for devices you already have, like leak monitors, energy monitors, security devices and fire alarms. The first step should be contacting your current agent to find out if you qualify or what programs exist. If you’re not happy with what they offer, it’s time to shop around. These discount programs and partnerships are going to only grow in the future as insurance agencies recognize how smart tech can hedge against claims.
I’m someone who knows a thing or two about robot vacuums. I set up a new one for testing a few times a month, and although each bot is a little different, they all share some common traits. While it’s true that some bots are better and some are not, a big factor in performance is actually you. How you set yourself and your bot up for success can make or break how clean your floor gets and thus, your continued affection for your robot vacuum.
Segment based on traffic, not “rooms”
Newer robots will map out your space using LiDAR and then double-check with you to make sure they got the rooms right. They are surprisingly accurate in nailing the division of spaces, and then you can ask the bot to care for one space or a combination of them, or set a schedule for them. But consider the living room, for instance: Do you need to vacuum and mop under the couches every day? Probably not. But how often do you need to sweep and mop the high-traffic area people walk along or under your feet where you drop things? At least once a day, am I right? So divide the space based on how often you want to clean. You can do this by editing the map, which usually allows you to divide or merge spaces. My living room now has two “rooms,” one for the high traffic area and one for the “yeah, let’s get the dust bunnies once a week to be a responsible adult.” You get to assign names to each room, so you can use your voice assistant to send your robot there to clean. At least three times a day, I send my bot to “Blueberry’s path of destruction” to get rid of the paw prints between the doggie door and the kitchen.
Don’t buy third-party cleaners and accessories
These floorbots require maintenance. Their rollers get shredded, the sweeps need to be replaced, and the vacuum bags need to be changed out. The branded ones are expensive; Amazon is chock full of third party options that are always cheaper. While mileage will vary, I’ve found that these aftermarket options are incredibly disappointing. On every bot I’ve bought third-party bags for, the robot has trouble recognizing that a new bag is in, and will tell me to change it every week. The rollers are never as high quality and get ruined faster. While I’m not actually convinced there’s anything special in the branded cleaning fluid, I would not make my own or replace it with anything but cleaner specifically made for robot mops.
Keep the max settings on
All bots now have various levels of intensity for mopping and vacuuming. I have played with all the intensity levels, and the only benefit to them is lower noise output. Since it’s never low enough for me to watch a movie or have a business call while the bot is going, it’s not much of a benefit. Of course, there’s less wear and tear on the bot, too. But generally, when the bot is on a lower intensity level, I find myself needing to return it to spots at a higher intensity. My life got easier when I left it on max intensity all the time. Particularly with mopping, I can see no benefit for anything but the highest intensity setting.
Turn off obstacle avoidance
The days of bump and go bots are largely in the past. The upside is fewer scuff marks and knocked over tower fans. The downside is that LiDAR often is more cautious about avoiding obstacles than I’d like it to be. For instance, most robots now have a pet setting, so your bot will avoid possible piles of poop, as well as your pet. I live in a poop-free zone, and I’ve yet to find a find a pet that would allow itself to be consumed by a slow moving robot, so the benefit was lost on me. I noticed the setting meant a lot more floor was left unswept, so I turned it off. Then I went a little mad and turned off obstacle avoidance altogether, and my floor went from 80% clean to 95% clean overnight. My robot doesn’t bump into things, but it has become more aggressive on getting corners and tight spots, and that is highly appreciated.
Soil accounts for almost 10% of the Earth’s surface, and yet for most people, when it comes to gardening and plant care, it remains a mystery. We vaguely know we should improve its health and avoid putting chemicals into it, but from there it becomes murky. Do we till it or not till it? Do we cover it? Do we add stuff like sand to it?
For now, let's focus on that last part. While there is a lot of casual advice on how to use sand in your yard, it should only be done sparingly, and only when you’re using the right kind of sand. Sand isn’t necessarily bad, but it is only one part of what makes soil effective, and using it can have some side effects that you should watch out for.
Your lawn isn’t a golf course
Golf courses are the platonic ideal of lawns (although we don't recommend you actually grow a lawn), and golf courses do use sand as part of their maintenance programs. This is likely why casual lawn connoisseurs picked up the idea that they should do the same, without the context or specifics of how golf courses utilize the resource, so let’s clear up those misconceptions.
Sand should only be used on a residential lawn to level out a dip or protect an exposed tree root. Even under those circumstances, the kind of sand you use and how you use it are important. To level out your yard, you’d use the sand only where needed, and then as sparingly as possible. Using a lawn leveling rake will help you find those low spots to fill and will ensure a final product that is mostly even. Also, you could just use fine compost instead, which will still level out the lawn, and also provide actual nutrients back to the soil, while providing a good substrate for lawn seed you put down.
To protect tree roots that are above ground, combine sand and soil in a one-to-one ratio, creating a mud, and then compact it around the root in layers, building up the ground around the root over time. The goal is to simply protect the root from being damaged by lawnmowers, yard tools, people, pets, etc. You can also just use compost.
You’re probably buying the wrong sand anyways
The kind of sand you use is really important, too. On golf courses, they use special round sand, and it’s often dyed to match the lawn. You don’t need to do that (and I don’t recommend using dyes since it just adds chemicals to the water table), but you do want to get the right kind of sand.
Sand is mostly made of silica. Construction sand, or brown sand that you buy, has aggregate in it, and may only be 20% silica. It’s used to provide structure and support in construction, but those ragged edges on the particles that are good for construction are bad for the lawn. Even “play sand,” which has been filtered and washed, is not primarily silica. Store-bought sand can also have high sodium levels and you wouldn’t pour salt on your lawn, so you shouldn’t put salty sand on it either. Sand, even when it’s appropriate, can acidify your soil, so you’ll want to monitor the pH to ensure you can counteract the acidity if necessary. Golf courses might use local beach sand, which you and I don’t have access to.
What you need is “lawn sand,” which is likely going to be obtained through a local stone and soil yard. You can find it locally by Googling “lawn sand" plus the name of your city.
You’d be better served by amendments than top dressing with sand
Golf courses do occasionally top dress with sand, but they do so for reasons that likely don’t apply at home.
Sand can be useful for treating fungal infections in lawns, but home lawns don’t generally suffer from the same problems. The greens on a course are subject to a lot of scarring through walking, putting, and driving, and as a result, the soil is naturally scarified—this just means the soil is scratched up. Golf courses also routinely dethatch the lawn, and that process aerates the soil and scarifies it. At that point, a light top dressing of sand is likely to penetrate into the actual soil, not just sit on the lawn.
Your home lawn doesn’t suffer from the same problems, so sand isn’t the most effective way to deliver nutrients to your soil—lawn treatments are, and your local garden center can help you with the right amendment (like fertilizers or other top dressing mineral treatments that are designed to augment your soil) for your specific lawn.
A couple situations where sandy soil is actually useful
There’s a use for sandy soil in your garden that people don’t talk about enough, and that’s carrots. Some vegetables, like carrots, benefit from a sandier soil, which is looser and more aerated. Carrots even enjoy a little acidity, so while you do need to watch for pH levels due to the sodium, you might benefit from a deep, sandy bed for your carrots to grow in. This will reduce the twisty appearance and stunted growth some carrots have in compacted soil. Sand has a nice side benefit of getting hot, since it’s silica, so as long as the pH is in check, it can be a positive addition to parts of your garden soil.
Another practical use for sand in the garden is for added traction on sidewalks. While sand might have sodium in it, it contains far less than the salt frequently used to keep sidewalks from getting icy. That sidewalk salt is bad for pets' feet, it’s bad for the water table, and it's bad for your garden, because as the snow melts, it makes its way into the beds that line your sidewalk. Sand can work as a reasonable alternative to help provide a little traction.
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