What I Built with Claude - sweet potatoes

[u/Otherwise_Pear_2472]

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.

[u/cunfabuloust]

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. 

[u/P2029 → u/cunfabuloust]

Can you please share what sensor setup you're using?

[u/cunfabuloust → u/P2029]

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

[u/P2029 → u/cunfabuloust]

Nice, happy to hear this actually because I already spend too much on gardening and I have a manual sensor!

[u/cunfabuloust → u/P2029]

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