Is indoor gardening with Apple Home easy? – ēdn Small Garden

Edn’s Small Garden can take the guesswork and extra work out of growing plants indoors, but is the Seed Pod system and smart features helpful enough to make it a good value for you? For me it is!

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
00:38 Why I wanted this garden
01:38 In the box
01:42 What’s a seed pod?
02:46 Setup
03:07 Apple Home integration
04:49 The light on top
05:58 Edn mobile app
06:33 Seed Pod Subscription
07:42 Is the Edn Small Garden worth it?

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#smarthome #indoorplants #applehome

so maybe like me you’ve tried to set up
plants indoors but it’s hard to know if
you’re watering them too little or too
much and if you can get them enough
direct sunlight well the Eden small
garden seeks to solve this with some
smart technology and the results were
both a lot better and a little bit worse
than I expected but best of all it works
with apple home I’m Eric whe Lander
welcome back to my channel if you’re new
here we talk all about Apple and smome
Tech so if you’re into either of those
things consider subscribing and speaking
of subscribing thanks for supporting my
channel because I purchased this Garden
myself thanks to you so give this video
an old green thumbs up and that supports
this video and the channel now I work
here in a home office most the day with
the door closed to keep the cats and the
kids out of my workspace and well it
does have ventilation if I’m in here the
whole day I can kind of feel what I
think are the CO2 levels getting a
little bit High just from me breathing
the air and I would get headaches
towards the end of the day so I started
to add potted plants in here to take
away some of that CO2 and that
definitely helped but it’s always a
struggle to know which plants work well
and if I’m getting them enough sunlight
as well as if I’m watering them too much
or too little and the Eden helps solve
those problems with some smart
technology both does apply lighting to
the plants with a light right above the
garden as well as a water meter to tell
you what the level of water is and you
can check all of that in their mobile
app now in the Box you get the garden
unit itself as well as a power supply as
well as some basil seed pods now what’s
a seed pod you might ask seed pods are
these prepackaged containers of both the
soil and the seeds for a specific plant
that come from Eden now these go in the
10 plastic container spots for each
plant plant in the garden now you can
grow a mix of different seed pods or all
of the same at the same time like I
chose to do and there’s nothing stopping
you from filling these containers with
your own soil and your own seeds but to
me and what I’m trying to do that kind
of implies a level of knowledge about
gardening that you probably don’t need
all the handholding of this product but
for me this was the perfect option
because I would have no idea which seeds
to pick and how many to plant in each
pod and maybe the ideal kinds of soil
Etc but of course there’s a subscription
in 2024 for SE pods and we’ll get into
that in a little bit because there are
multiple ways to slice this that I think
still come out to be a good deal Now
setup was very straightforward in one
way for the Eden and then also a little
bit tricky with my Wi-Fi I’ll explain
how I solve that in a minute you also
want to add initial amount of water
during the setup process which you pour
through a little vent in the side of the
container and that gets me to the Apple
home integration you can add the light
at the top of this Garden which acts
like the sun for your plants into Apple
home now when I tried to get it on my
Wi-Fi the garden was failing to connect
it seemed like it was getting online but
my phone then wasn’t seeing it and one
of the things I tried that was
recommended with some research online
was to make sure that both my phone
and the Eden smart Garden are on 2.4 GHz
but my phone was going over to other
frequencies and what I’ve done is I
actually for these kinds of cases made a
specific Wi-Fi network in my home that
just does 2.4 GHz use that connection on
your phone and then I restarted the
setup process in the Eden app and
everything worked perfectly so you might
not hit these same issues but if you do
just keep in mind that that 2.4 GHz
Spectrum is something to keep in mind
here during the setup process and this
is great just to have another way to
control the Eden smart garden light if I
need to turn it off for whatever reason
in my office maybe I’m filming or
something and I don’t want to have the
light on I can certainly make that part
of any kind of scene but by default when
you set up the smart Garden it’s going
to keep that light on a schedule so it
sort of simulates the Sun and comes out
at a particular time of day and goes
away at another time of day so with that
though you want to be careful if you add
it to Apple home which room you put it
in because if you just ask your homepod
or other versions of Siri to turn off
all the lights then it’s going to turn
off the Eden Garden light as well and
then your plants won’t get their
sunlight you want to be mindful of
trying to keep it on the plant schedule
which may or may not fit with the
lighting of your own schedule and Eden
recommends you keep this light on for 12
to 16 hours a day and the light is very
bright now mine is scheduled to go 12:00
a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and it’s far away
from my bedroom so I don’t have to worry
about that for interrupting sleep but if
it would be for you that’s another thing
to keep in mind of whatever times you
want to have it on it’s probably not
when you’re sleeping another thing to
keep in mind with the light is you want
to keep an eye on how much sunlight you
actually get in that area from the sun
because if you’re in a base like me and
don’t get a lot of light where the
garden is then you’re probably going to
want to put the light on for more than
12 hours a day which is the default out
of the box so I ended up extending the
time it’s on from 12:00 a.m. to 300 p.m.
and that really accelerated the growth
of the plants I have in the garden
because previously they weren’t really
keeping up with the pace that Eden set
as where it thinks my plant should be at
a particular time now that is a great
feature of the mobile app is that you
can go in the mobile app and not only
see whether your lights on and adjust
the lighting schedule you can also go in
and see the water level so you know when
you need to water the plants and you can
get notifications about that as well as
the progress of the plants in their life
before they’ll really at a certain point
get too big for the garden and you need
to prune them use them for food or
whatever or then transplant them to an
outdoor Garden where they can grow
bigger but the fact that my plants
weren’t staying on Pace with what Eden
suggested at first made me concerned
about the concept of a subscription
because the Eden seed pod subscription
automatically reorders you new seed pods
when Eden thinks you’ll need them based
on the amount of time you’ve had since
you planted the last one and that just
seems like it might not work out if for
example my growing pace is a little bit
slower than what Eden expects then I’m
going to be getting more seed pods than
I actually need now you don’t have to go
with the subscription to use it if you
do use the subscription then it’s $20
for a set of 10 seed pods as opposed to
30 and then you also get free shipping
now when you purchase the small garden
up front you can for an additional $40
add in three sets of seed pods with
different focuses on lettuce or flowers
or combinations of both and so that’s
what I did with getting a bunch of
different flowers so I have plenty of
seed pods for the time being I’m not
going to do the subscription and we’ll
see down the road if I decide to go that
direction but so is the Eden small
garden worth it for your smart home well
if you are like me and you don’t know a
ton about gardening or you want to grow
plants in an area that doesn’t get a lot
of natural light this Garden makes that
very straightforward and easy I love
that I know when I need to water the
plants over about the 6 weeks that I’ve
had the plants so far I’ve only had to
water it I’d say about three times so
it’s great as well if maybe you’re
traveling you’ll know if you can top up
the plants with water before you leave
or when you get back but potentially
needing to have that light on so much
well with modern-day LEDs it probably
doesn’t use that much energy it’s still
going to be an extra light in your home
which might distract from things like
sleeping or otherwise that you might not
like also this whole seed pod concept
well it’s great in one sense because it
holds your hand and helps you get the
right plants set up it’s also kind of an
expensive thing which is way more
expensive than just getting some potting
soil and some plants from your local
store and the company lists the price on
their website for the small garden in
certain places as $300 would then
discounted down to $200 and I don’t know
if I would consider it worth it for $300
at the time we recording this video but
$200 which is what it cost me makes
sense so while the cost are high if
you’ve struggled to find a way to
integrate indoor plants into your life
this could be a way to make it very easy
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thanks again so much for watching and I
hope to see you in the next YouTube
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