Are you someone who enjoys technology and cannot get enough of gadgets? If you are then you may be the sort of person who wants to bring technology into everything and loves to be able to work out cool new or cutting edge solutions to certain problems you face. The good news is that polytunnel gardening is not exempt from the wave of technology we are currently bobbing on. For all you tech geeks out there – here are three technological gadgets for a polytunnel:
Having lighting in your polytunnel will allow you to use it more easily during the cold and unforgiving winter months – especially if you work and only have evenings and weekends to check on everything. Of course you could just run a connection from your home but for a far more eco-friendly and sustainable solution, consider a small solar panel. Solar lights do not cost the earth and with a little tinkering, you could use one of the models on the market designed for camping, for example, to rig up something perfect for your purposes.
If you have a scientific side and like to know exactly what is happening in your polytunnel at all times then it is likely that you already have a thermometer in there – at the very least. If you want to take things further then you could get soil moisture testers that will allow you to optimise your watering regime. On the serious side, you could actually gain some very useful information that will allow you to save water – which is crucial in drought prone areas in particular.
If you want to optimise everything in your polytunnel then why not go the whole hog and set up a 'raspberry pi'. A raspberry pi is not, as you may imagine, a reference to baked goods containing the delicious fruit but refers to small, affordable computers that can be used to program a system. Technologically minded individuals can program a raspberry pi to control, for example, a watering system in your polytunnel, the ventilation, or the opening and shutting of doors when you are away or busy. The great thing about raspberry pi controlled systems is that they can be used to control just about anything, so the limit to what they can do for you in your polytunnel is almost endless.
