Gardyn Studio 2 overview: this sensible backyard turned my black thumb inexperienced

I can’t develop something. A number of makes an attempt to create a cottage backyard, first in Idaho and now in South Carolina, have introduced disappointment. Each are difficult climates, however the place others have succeeded, I’ve been left with little greater than a pile of cherry tomatoes for my huge efforts (these issues are bulletproof).

I’d all however given up on the thought of ever efficiently rising my very own meals — I can’t even hold these pots of herbs you purchase on the grocery retailer alive for greater than every week — till I met the Gardyn Studio 2.

A wise indoor backyard, the Gardyn Studio 2 is an automatic rising platform that deploys AI to do what I did not do: watch over and correctly maintain my crops.

It really works by means of a mix of hydroponic watering, automated lighting, a digicam that captures plant pictures, and algorithms that analyze the crops’ progress levels and adapt. An AI assistant referred to as Kelby, which requires a subscription, manages the sunshine and water cycles, sends alerts once I have to intervene, and processes all the information from the Gardyn’s sensors and digicam to assist your crops develop.

It’s a formidable, albeit very costly, system. Within the three months I’ve had it in my dwelling, I’ve grown a sunflower, a full kohlrabi, plenty of basil, lettuce, inexperienced beans, chard, and another tasty unique veggies I’d by no means heard of. I’m at present engaged on strawberries, cherry tomatoes, lavender, jalapeño peppers, and buttercrunch lettuce — in December, in my eating room. For this reason I like know-how.

Everybody loves the thought of rising their very own meals, however few of us have the house, time, or experience to dedicate to the duty. It’s a bit like baking; it’s lots more durable than it appears.

Gardyn Studio 2 is designed to deal with these issues. It prices $549, with an non-compulsory $25 monthly subscription (or $19 a month with a two-year plan). That will get you Kelby’s help, new seed pods each month to maintain your Gardyn rising, and reductions on plant meals, amongst different perks.

My Gardyn began producing inside 6 weeks, and I used to be in a position to minimize my household of 4’s weekly produce shopping for in half, simply masking the month-to-month subscription. Plus, I actually take pleasure in that each time I’m going to get one thing from the Gardyn, it’s recent and prepared, not wilted in my fridge. I’ve additionally discovered I generate far much less meals waste.

The Studio 2 is Gardyn’s latest mannequin and is a smaller model of its flagship product, the $900 Gardyn Home. The Studio has house for 16 crops (in comparison with 30 on the Residence) and is a redesign of the first Studio, which launched in 2024. The Studio idea addresses buyer suggestions that the Gardyn Residence produced an excessive amount of produce for smaller households to maintain up with, and its footprint was too giant, founder and CEO FX Rouxel informed me.

The Studio 2 makes use of new columns that require much less upkeep, an upgraded digicam with larger decision, and a wider discipline of view to higher monitor its fees. There may be additionally a brand new dawn/sundown lighting mode for the massive 60-LED lamp that helps the backyard develop.

The columns are what make Gardyn distinctive amongst indoor plant techniques (none of which I’ve tried). It’s a patented vertical rising, hydroponic system that Rouxel calls “essentially the most compact option to develop meals at dwelling.”

Proprietary yCube seed pods that use rockwool as a rising medium match into the columns, which sit on a big water tank with a pump inside and a gorgeous wood lid. The strip of LED lights with a digicam inbuilt sits in entrance of the crops, dealing with the wall (so it’s not going to be snapping photos of you, solely the crops, each half-hour).

Gardyn comes with straps to anchor the system to the wall, as absolutely grown crops might trigger it to topple. A button on the backside allows you to flip the sunshine on or off shortly, and you too can schedule it within the Gardyn app.

Assembling Gardyn was easy and took about 20 minutes. It got here with a starter equipment of 16 seed pods referred to as the Chef’s Favorites, together with herbs similar to thyme, basil, and lemon balm, in addition to celery, collard greens, inexperienced tatsoi, spinach, salanova, and yellow chard. There was additionally a sunflower.

I inserted the pods utilizing the app to find out one of the best place for every and sat again and let Gardyn do the remaining. Apart from topping up the water based mostly on Kelby’s prompts within the app and including some plant meals, I didn’t need to do anything till 4 weeks in, once I was informed to scrub the tank and verify the roots.

One problem of Gardyn is discovering an acceptable spot for it. At 1.4 sq. toes vast and about 5 toes tall, it takes up numerous house. Whereas the kitchen can be the logical place, the sunshine is just too vibrant for my open plan house. You possibly can alter the timing of the sunshine, however Gardyn recommends 14-16 hours of full gentle per day. I ended up placing it within the eating room simply off the kitchen.

As soon as the crops began to bud, Kelby informed me to trim a number of to encourage stronger crops, and inside a few weeks, I had my first harvest of younger sprouts, which made for a scrumptious, if uncommon, salad.

Harvesting obtained extra labor-intensive as issues began to actually develop; the inexperienced tatsoi was going like gangbusters and began blocking the sunshine to a few of the herbs. I did a little bit of strategic reconfiguring of the pods, together with plenty of harvesting — it was nice as a bok choy substitute.

I can see why individuals needed a smaller Gardyn, though I believe if I had extra crops I used usually, it might be a bit simpler.

I did have two pods that by no means sprouted, and my bull’s blood beets didn’t appear to be doing a lot, so I swapped them out for 3 new pods, together with inexperienced beans, cherry tomatoes, and strawberries. (These wanted to be began outdoors of the Gardyn as they will’t take plant meals till they sprout). These will clearly take longer to proffer their items, though I obtained at the very least one serving of inexperienced beans inside a month.

It’s going to take some fine-tuning to find out which plant lineup works greatest for my wants. At this level, I’m leaning in direction of a mix of herbs, salad greens, cherry tomatoes, and chard. I can see that after getting a strong rotation that matches along with your culinary habits, Gardyn might substitute most of your recent produce purchases.

I’m additionally experimenting with transplanting the mature crops into my backyard. Nonetheless, on the market, they are going to be at my mercy and away from the watchful eye of Kelby. I used to be shocked to seek out Gardyn’s AI assistant was very helpful. It principally did what I’ve did not do in my time as a grasp plant killer — regulate and maintain the crops, roping me in to assist from time to time so as to add water, plant meals, skinny the sprouts, harvest, prune roots, and different actions to encourage progress.

Now, in case you are extra attentive and attuned to crops than I’m, you might do a lot of this your self, however in case you are a newbie or a failure like me, Kelby feels pretty important.

Rouxel defined that the AI fashions crunch knowledge from temperature, humidity, and water sensors, together with pictures of the crops, to compute how briskly the crops are rising and to optimize variables to advertise wholesome progress. “It’s like having a private grasp gardener in your aspect 24/7, at all times monitoring what’s happening, taking motion the place it could, and when it can’t, it lets you realize what to do,” he says.

In the event you choose out of Kelby after the free month’s trial, you possibly can proceed to develop crops and automate the watering and lighting on a schedule you could customise, in addition to purchase new yCubes instantly from the Gardyn app beginning at $5 a plant.

I’ve loved utilizing the Gardyn, and every thing I’ve grown has tasted scrumptious. It does require some upkeep, however far lower than rising something from scratch on my own. It stays to be seen if my plan to transplant veggies into my backyard shall be profitable. Whether it is, I might be much more inclined to take a position on this. However for anybody who likes the thought of getting freshly grown greens, fruits, flowers, and herbs of their dwelling, Backyard actually is a foolproof system.

Photographs by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge