Can a man who can’t keep a cactus alive grow some chillies?
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy set up Genuinely set it and leave it! Low power consumption | You still need a level of growing knowledge It’s quite large Is it smart? |
Dear Reader,
This review is part confession. I have for many years been guilty of killing so very many living things! I’ve tried (and failed) to get into growing bonsai trees on more than one occasion, I couldn’t even start to count how many pots of herbs have withered and died on my watch, and yes, it’s true – on one occasion I even managed to kill a cactus! Gardening and any sort of plant-care just somehow do not form part of what I can make myself take an interest in, even on the odd occasion that I’ve tried and this meant that when I saw the Botanium pot, it piqued my interest.
The Botanium is a hydroponic pot which automatically waters and cares for your plants, making growing easy for even the most green-fingerless of would be horticulturalists! Its a sleek design, standing at 25 cm tall.
Set up
Getting the growing started was pretty easy. First you take some of the “growing medium” (fake soil for the rest of us!) and wash it through, taking any dust and detritus out of it before you add it to the top section of the Botanium. Once this is ready to go, you can fill the main bottom section with water and add a few drops of nutrients (provided with the set). Plant a seed of two in the growing medium, plug it in and you’re a gardener!
Hidden away inside the vase is a pump at the bottom which feeds water jets at the top. The Botanium sprays water into the top at regular intervals, keeping the growing medium at the right moisture for growing, with any excess water working it’s way back down into the bottom section to be re-used. As a result, watering and maintenance is kept to an absolute minimum with a top up once a month even in the hottest parts of summer. Even I could manage that much attention!
Optionally, the Botanium team provide a grow lamp too. This allows you to grow in a relatively dark corner of your house if necessary, and as an LED bulb, it doesn’t cost a fortune to run, but we’ll get to that later. It’s quite a sizeable bulb, so you’ll need a good sized lamp to make use of it if that’s how you’re going to set yourself up.
Dear diary
1st June 2023
Botanium set up with growing lamp attached to a smart plug programmed to be on from 0600 to 1800 every day
13th July 2023
3 seeds have grown well. 2 were removed to let the strongest one grow without competition.
Water added to top up the tank.
22nd August 2023
The remaining chilli plant has grown more, but my more green-fingered wife tells me it’s “spindly”
18th September 2023
It’s growing, but progress is slow. Certainly no “fruit” showing yet, but we’re further along with a live specimen than I am used to!
Is it any good?
So, after a few months there’s good news and bad news. The good news is, even I have been able to keep my chilli plant alive and well. The bad news is, it hasn’t produced any chillies and it remains relatively small. I think this is my failure to understand what I’m doing rather than any fault of the Botanium system, but it does suggest that having that little extra bit of knowledge about growing is still if not necessary, certainly is preferable.
I’m led to believe that I should have pinched off some leaves early on in the growing process, and I suspect I maybe should have added some more of the feeder supplement that comes with the system to help my plant along. For this review, I have literally planted a seed, set up a smart plug to make the light go on and off at appropriate times and left it to either work or not without any assistance from me beyond a little water top up after a few weeks.
I would say, this isn’t really a smart device. Automated, absolutely, but it doesn’t provide any active feedback or data and doesn’t connect to any other systems. It’s great at what it does, but if you were looking for something that sends data out to your favourite smart-home service, then this isn’t the device for you.
Is it worth it?
The Botanium is a clever piece of kit in that it’s capable of watering an appropriate amount to keep your plants alive, even if you’re as rubbish at looking after plants as I am. From my first go at growing, I learned that a little more reading about the crop your growing, to make sure you maximise your chances of success is definitely a good plan – which more often than not is probably a case of properly reading the information on the seed packet, but a few minutes with your favourite search engine will give you the tips you need for sure!
The Botanium itself uses a genuinely insignificant amount of power and the growing lamp is also pretty efficient. According to the monitoring socket I’ve had mine plugged into, it’s used 3.1kWh of energy in the last 30 days while being in use for 12 hours per day. This means it’s probably cheaper to go and buy some chillies from your local supermarket, but where’s the fun in doing things the easy way?! The lamp is only really required if you’ll be growing in a room without natural light, so in most cases your energy consumption for a Botanium will be very low.
At time of writing, the Botanium itself is around £60 to purchase (including the required growing medium and plant food) and the grow lamp is an additional £29. In a fairly active market, this seems to be priced at a reasonable level and you certainly get a good looking, well made product that does genuinely make your life as a green-fingered master (I wish!) far easier. I am very much looking forward to my first crop of jalapeños to feed the family and it will no doubt feel good that after so very many years, I’ve finally managed to actually grow something!
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