Pico – automatic care for your pet plant
Do houseplants always die with you and do you still want to keep a certain orchid or other sensitive plant alive? Then the Pico is a great solution.
What is Pico?
You can best think of the Pico ($40 plus $10 shipping) as a kind of incubator for plants, an automatic plant caretaker. The unit consists of a pot with a water reservoir, an LED lamp to illuminate the plant and some electronics that ensure that the plant receives dosed water and the right amount of light.
The grow lamp is also the lid. You pull up the lid, fill the pot with soil and your plant, fill the water reservoir with water and connect the grow light to a USB cord.
As the plant grows, you can set the LED lamp to a higher setting. The maximum height that the LED lamp supports is about 20 centimeters. This is also the maximum height of plants that you will grow in this system. The Pico is therefore especially interesting for smaller plants. The system consumes a maximum of 5 W, which equates to approximately two kilowatt-hours per month.
What is the use of the Pico?
Plants grow between 3-5 times faster in this pot, due to the lighting and the dosed amount of water that is given. That makes the Pico an interesting gadget for people who have little daylight in a house or apartment and still want to enjoy plants. You can grow vegetables, herbs and ornamental plants in this pot.
Another nice feature is the ability to connect multiple Picos together.
To buy or not to buy?
The Pico is a nice gadget for people who really don’t have green fingers. For about € 40 per pot, you no longer have to worry about whether you water your plant on time or not. That makes the gadget especially useful for young urban professionals who sometimes forget to water their plants on time. Another possible application is to grow plants in a room where there is no daylight. For other cases, this gadget is quite expensive and it is smarter to go for other solutions.
