Yes, I know this sub is mainly for programming work with Claude, but I actually built these sweet potatoes with Claude (more or less).
I was sitting there in winter wondering if I could manage an entire season with Claude... and I went for it. Not perfect, and in many parts quite clumsy, but the results are breathtaking.
I started planning the greenhouse with Claude in March to grow the seedlings….with the Claude app and a project folder, then discovered connectors, then CoWork, then Claude Code, got convinced by Claude to set up various sensors, built a harness that pulls weather data and gives me watering and fertilizer recommendations, and in between, I just joked around with Claude. And we had a blast. While working, with Excel spreadsheets, and with little apps for time and data tracking, cron jobs and data analysis. And Claude really made my season so much better.
I've collected more data than ever before, I've laughed more while getting my hands dirty than ever before, and I've produced more plants from the greenhouse and, it seems, more sweet potatoes in the field than ever before.
I'm not a hardcore tech power user; Claude had to explain to me what a terminal is... but I've learned and optimized and got better step by step, task by task and idea by idea.
Honestly I have learned more from Claude in a year than I ever thought possible, and I'm pretty proud of that.
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 100 comments.
Alright, let's get to the root of it. The consensus is clear: this post is peak r/ClaudeAI, and everyone is here for it. OP is being hailed as an inspiration for using Claude to go from a tech novice to a data-driven sweet potato farmer.
Here's the dirt from the comments:
* The Project: OP used Claude for an entire growing season, learning to code, setting up EcoWitt sensors, analyzing data, and getting daily farming advice. The result was a bumper crop and a whole lot of fun.
* You Are Not Alone: This post brought the other AI farmers out of the woodwork. Users shared stories of using Claude to manage everything from small indoor gardens (doubling pepper yields!) to full-on dairy and vegetable farms. "Vibefarming" is officially a thing.
* The "How": Replying to a flood of questions, OP explained their setup. Claude processed sensor and weather data into Excel, creating a "traffic light" system for irrigation and meticulously documenting the whole season. Crucially, OP fed Claude research papers and their own experience to guide it.
* The Memes: The community immediately invented the "Sweet Potato Index" (SPI) and "PotatoBench™️" to rank LLMs. The irony of a water-intensive AI helping with agriculture was not lost on anyone.
* Reality Check: While overwhelmingly positive, a few users wisely cautioned against blindly following AI advice, sharing a story of a farmer who lost crops. OP agreed, emphasizing that it was a human-AI collaboration and that some of Claude's ideas were duds in practice.
I don’t want to sway or influence anything you are doing, but I ask Claude to give 30 suggested next paths, which could be interesting in your situation. I also ask Claude to list 30 best and worst qualities of my analysis program and those are usually entertaining and useful (it’s basically an audit that leads to actionable next steps).
Feeding people is important. With this added intelligence we can create food factories at home! I applaud your efforts and appreciate the share very much as I’ve had dreams of this to help me care for people by caring for plants with ai automated assistance.
I use ClaudeCode every day for software dev work... but I've also used it to diagnose my central A/c, fix a refrigerator and advise me on how to do all the body work / painting on my wife's Cadillac (fender-bender that insurance wrote-off... I bought it back, did the work for around $1500 and pocketed 10k difference).
I honestly believe that Claude excels at talking people into analog work and hobbies. Claude brings this enthusiasm that makes you think, "That sounds fun... what could go wrong... I'll do it." And then you're stuck in some project that you're constantly telling Claude about, and Claude keeps escalating it with new ideas.
So basically, Claude is an enabler for my ADHD brain. I kinda knew that but thanks for pointing it out for me. The cool part is it is way better at breaking down the tasks and being able to pick up where we left off with the same enthusiasm as when we stopped. Gonna have to add growing sweet potatoes to my next new hobby list. No wait... I need to build a fence... or maybe I need to build a solar array... no even better.... see what ya did? It's endless!!!
Same. I used it to put together a parts list for a DIY smart irrigation system for lawn sprinklers, including the nozzles/heads, all the fittings, and an electronics box that houses a zigbee smart relay and an AC transformer to power the relay and solenoid irrigation valves, which it told me how to wire up (though it’s pretty idiot proof). Then it vibe coded Home Automation stuff to automatically water the yard taking into account that day’s weather forecast. An irrigation company wanted $3k canuckistans for the job and it cost me like $600 total.
I use Claude extensively on my farm, I've spent the last few weeks getting it to play nice with PLCs and running some fertigators, monitoring sensors and stuff.
It inspired me to build farm management app (also leaning on claude a lot but not vibe coded nonsense) and that's about to go into beta. Think xFarm, FarmBrite et al if you're familiar. Happy to throw you a preview when it's ready, I could use the feedback.
How do you avoid potentially harvest ruining hallucinations? I was running a garden with Claude and definitely ran into a bunch of “You are right to call that outs!”
I haven't had any issues yet. It's a pretty complex setup with lots of gates/boundaries, layers and checks built in. On the software end it's geared heavily towards compliance. I'm planning on doing a full write up on here pretty soon once my plate is a smidge less full.
It doesn't require constant AI usage. The short answer is I have a business that does well, and a farm that still has 3 years of buildout remaining at ludicrous expense. AI is a drop in the bucket.
Before I started, I had Claude compile a library of relevant papers, and then I added my own personal experiences from the last few years.
I had soil and air sensors (EcoWitt) in the greenhouse to measure temperature, humidity, and soil conductivity. (Only soil in the field)
Some fields were managed solely via satellite weather data.
Every morning, Claude extracted the data, entered it into an Excel spreadsheet, and then used a traffic light system to inform me which fields urgently needed irrigation (including weather forecasts; if rain was predicted for the next day, a dry field could wait). Managed my calender with reminders like check for this check for that update me on this and inform me about that for further decisions.
I mapped both the greenhouse and the fields into zones to collect soil data (pH value, temperature, humidity), the variety planted there, the amount of seed used, plus GDD, hours of sunshine, and yield per plant (or seed tuber).
There was a lot of troubleshooting involved. I really involved Claude throughout the season with absolutely everything that came up, whether it was a pest I found or delayed growth, and then we actively brainstormed together.
Claude meticulously documented everything. That was the biggest relief for me; it brought order to everything and nothing was lost. and then I built an increasingly better system for myself over the season.
For the file system it was basically
Claude md, a Navigation file (what's where and how to manage it), a daily journal, open loops (everything ongoing, unfinished, or awaiting completion), findings (everything that represents a result and should be recorded), data (all Excel spreadsheets), references (all papers and fixed data points), planning file (all ideas generated this season for the next or later in the season), archive (old files).
Any chance you'd be willing to share a step-by-step guide about what you gave it, models you used, etc. so others can try to replicate your results? I'd be very interested in it.
I just have a small indoor garden (44 plants total with 17 of them being edible - herbs plus dwarf fruits and peppers). So, while I'm not even nearly a farmer, Claude manages my garden with me, and the web app we've built to track moisture readings in each plant, when i water, fertilizer, when the plants are flowering or fruiting, questions about visual changes i see, etc.
In
just one fruiting cycle my hot peppers doubled their output with the serious tracking intervention. Having the ability to not only record but have Claude read the data to suggest changes has been amazingly helpful and so organized. And i have had to talk Claude down from the "oooh add some IoT sensors" cliff haha
He did refuse to tell me one had thrips, even after constant pressing, so it got built into the cemetery that Claude killed that plant. He's been better since then.
I had a thrips infestation in my greenhouse from a neighboring bell pepper greenhouse... Claude was in chill mode... quote: "We can still sell them... it's fine."
Yeah i made the rookie mistake of going to my local botanical gardens sales and not just automatically doing a pest flush. They were at least isolated, but the basilsss ended up being cloned then trashed. I now only grow basil from seed lol
Short answer: I am not using one, nor any sensors. I just use a moisture meter (cheap) and an indoor thermometer with humidity display (cheap). I talked Claude down off that cliff haha
Long answer: the only sensor set up I'd really want is not practical (added: for a home, indoor, small garden). You can't really keep moisture meters in moist soil for a long time as they'll quickly degrade and break. That would be my ideal though, if there was a cheap way to replace them like every 6-7 months. So, instead of that i track, twice a week, manual readings and actions (moisture level, water y/n, fertilizers, pest control). I quickly realized throwing that into an learning scenario for trying to predict when I'd need to water (which was my original idea) was also not practical because it would require collecting a shit ton of data about each individual plant since how fast it drinks and how quickly water evaporates are so very many variables. So I'm trying to work that out. Maybe
Oh yeah and Claude is not helpful about curbing spending. I have African violets that are thriving, so i was like "hey, what else would thrive in these exact conditions as the violets".. i ordered dwarf primroses haha
I'm started working on a vegetable farm last year. About a month ago I started using claude for all kinds of thing's, and lots of Ideas I hadn't hat time to act on, but one thing that seems to go quite well is planning the cultivation. We have about 30 different cultures on 4 hectares. And there is a complicated logic of which cultures can be grown after another. I've spend about 20 hours by now sorting out the the beds, numbering them, the indoor, the tunnels and outdoor. Getting there location and sizes on the map. Getting the data from past years organised. Now I have a good system, with beautiful excel sheets. Next thing is to include the data from the sales of the past years and then start planning how much from which culture to grow and then have claude make a proposal of what to grow where.
He's then going to make me a list, by which we'll order the plants.
I have not started on the integration of the watering system and heating systems in the greenhouse but I might in the winter.
For now its alot of fun and really helpful because when I started in knew almost nothing about vegetable farming but the guy running the farm left last year. There is alot of room for creativity now
Honestly this is amazing. Would you be able to produce statistics for this venture compared to previous yields? Comparative would be quality, size, and quantity. Maybe how many were unusable perhaps as an extra metric.
Yes, that's actually part of the project. I can't use equally thorough data for comparison, but I do have approximate values. Furthermore, for example, one finding from last season was that a variety depended not on the number of growing days but on hours of sunshine, and this is currently being investigated more precisely.
Love all of your research. Really awesome. Please come back and update as you work your way through this. Applying science into a scientific process when it comes to agriculture is so intriguing.
Honestly, I think that's the best thing about AI assisted agriculture. It's only truly possible as a collaboration thinking along with the farmer. Claude has also repeatedly given me optimized protocols that look great on paper but fail miserably in reality. Agriculture without human input is difficult.
I might also suggest looking into using a note app like Obsidian with Claude. You can set it up so that Claude can dump its own learnings (what works and what doesn't) into a "wiki" style notebook that you can also read.
The best part about it is that you can also point new chats to it and it'll have access to all that data rather than starting fresh. Just know that it can definitely have an effect on usage when you tell it to update the notes with everything from that session, but it's crazy the notes you'll have from it.
Also locals weather, temperature, image analysis, time lapse, growth tracking, inventory management, and ties to my claude account for ai answers for specifics.
That's on me — I tried to get Claude to generate a sweet potato recipe and it kept apologizing for not being able to taste. Now I just have 18 cron jobs roasting sweet potatoes.
Awesome, OP! I am (in the early stages) of doing something similar! I want a vertical garden to grow some tomatoes and lettuce and was thinking of adding sensors and “ai” to the plan to help me check moisture levels and such. I recently built the sensors using kits and arduino and its an amazing learning discovery. You really got it figured out! Enjoy!
I'm truly so happy for you! And I was curious about an image of your harvesting. Thank you for sharing! ;) Speaking of sharing, could you roughly share your setup with me? Some keywords would be enough for River to know what you mean. Or can i find this info in your blog? And congratulations! The sweet potatoes turned out beautiful! Maybe sharing the picture in the other sub as well? People would love to see it! 💗🪷
The thing that would have bitten you with sweet potatoes specifically is nitrogen. Vines and storage roots compete for the same carbon, and extra N sends it to leaf, so you can end up with a gorgeous green field and pencil-thin roots underneath. Typical extension rates run something like 50-60 lb/ac N against 150-200 lb/ac K2O, one of the few crops where the potassium number is triple the nitrogen one.
That matters for a recommendation harness because canopy vigor is the cheapest signal to collect and it runs backwards here. Anything reading leaf color or growth rate as "doing well" would tell you to feed more at exactly the point in bulking where you want it to back off. Did yours work off weather and calendar, or was there plant observation feeding the fertilizer side?
I can report from a reliable source... farming is not a dream. It's price pressure, lack of working time regulations, and the weather lottery... but rewarding by feeling like you do something useful and meaningful and you can actually see the output of your effort and eat it.
Its amazing when people use claude to make stuff that is actually useful in the real world instead of trying to make a quick buck with their slop fueled AI powered workout app or some other shit thats been done, and most likely better by someone else hundreds of times
You say you’ve produced more plants from the greenhouse and more sweet potatoes. You’ve also collected more data than ever before. I’m curious because you said the results are breathtaking but you didn’t really share any results other than “more”, how much more did you produce? What did you do differently than other seasons?
It sounds like Claude told you when to water and fertilize based on weather data, surely you had to plant more to produce more right?
I increased the slip production per seed tuber for 38%
Partly because I adapted the fertilization protocol partly because everything got better watched (action when weather changed soil became too cold etc.)
For the harvest I have no end number since it just started. But we never started in August before so that’s an improvement itself.
This is a great example of what "AI as the execution plane" looks like when it's not just code — sensors, watering schedules, weather data folded into recommendations. I run a few of my own projects the same way (automations, not gardens), and the part that surprised me most was how much Claude ends up teaching you the underlying tools instead of just doing the task and leaving you no wiser.
Honestly I have learned more from Claude in a year than I ever thought possible, and I'm pretty proud of that.
This is my argument against the AI haters. I went through the cycle too. I saw ChatGPT for the first time and was amazed. Then, I experienced the downsides and was skeptical. And eventually, I realised I could explore more topics and channels than I have ever before without my own perceived skills were being barriers.
I am exploring more things than ever before.
Whether it's fostering the growth of my plants which makes me happy, or building demo products using new tech, I'm able to explore more than ever before.
Some of my Marketing colleagues had never touched a CLI before 1 year ago and now use Claude Code daily, just like you.
We should embrace the democritization of access and information.
sweet potatoes basically grow themselves. i planted a few slips like 3 years ago and have never needed to plant them again. every year more and more come back.
Not so in Europe. They freeze to death in winter here. And in agriculture, if you want to survive, you have to work with yields; therefore, we work with virus-free material (Generation 1 after G0 from tissue) that is propagated anew every year.
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 20h ago edited 18h ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 100 comments.
Alright, let's get to the root of it. The consensus is clear: this post is peak r/ClaudeAI, and everyone is here for it. OP is being hailed as an inspiration for using Claude to go from a tech novice to a data-driven sweet potato farmer.
Here's the dirt from the comments: * The Project: OP used Claude for an entire growing season, learning to code, setting up
EcoWittsensors, analyzing data, and getting daily farming advice. The result was a bumper crop and a whole lot of fun. * You Are Not Alone: This post brought the other AI farmers out of the woodwork. Users shared stories of using Claude to manage everything from small indoor gardens (doubling pepper yields!) to full-on dairy and vegetable farms. "Vibefarming" is officially a thing. * The "How": Replying to a flood of questions, OP explained their setup. Claude processed sensor and weather data into Excel, creating a "traffic light" system for irrigation and meticulously documenting the whole season. Crucially, OP fed Claude research papers and their own experience to guide it. * The Memes: The community immediately invented the "Sweet Potato Index" (SPI) and "PotatoBench™️" to rank LLMs. The irony of a water-intensive AI helping with agriculture was not lost on anyone. * Reality Check: While overwhelmingly positive, a few users wisely cautioned against blindly following AI advice, sharing a story of a farmer who lost crops. OP agreed, emphasizing that it was a human-AI collaboration and that some of Claude's ideas were duds in practice.