With Christmas a month away, it’s time to start picking out the perfect gifts for the people you love. While winter winds and swirling snow have most of us thinking about just staying warm, serious green thumbs are probably already counting down the days until they can get their first plants into the ground. If you have a serious gardener on your Christmas shopping list, here are some great gift ideas.
Iro Smart Spinkler
Watering can be tricky work. You have to factor in temperature, humidity, and the time of day. If you get it wrong and water too little, you’ll end up with a shriveled brown patch. Water too much and you’ll just add to your monthly utility bill, and possibly damage your plants. The Rachio Iro Smart Sprinkler looks to take some of the guesswork out of gardening. Once you hook it up to your home irrigation system and plug in a few details about your soil and plant types, the Iro will pull local weather data to build a watering schedule that works for your yard. You can check in with your phone to ensure your garden is getting watered, and even adjust the schedule on the fly when you’re away from home.
Ogrow GreenHouse
A greenhouse is a great way to extend the growing season, and in many parts of the country, you’ll be able to garden all year long if you have a bit of protection for your plants. Not only will a greenhouse protect your plants from the cold, but it will also help protect delicate seedlings from harsh winds and torrential downpours. Ogrow offers a range of garden greenhouses, including large walk-in units that would be a perfect gift for the serious gardener looking to get a jump-start on next year’s garden.
Carson CloseUp Monocular
When plants suddenly start to wither and die, you need to get in there quickly and figure out what’s going on. But diagnosing an infestation of insects or a case of blight can be downright difficult. The Carson CloseUp monocular allows you to take a closer look at what’s feasting on your plants. You can even get a version with a smartphone mount, so you can take pictures of the critters invading your garden, upload them to your favorite gardening forum and ask around for help diagnosing and eradicating the problem.
Mushroom Kit
Growing a healthy vegetable garden isn’t just about leafy greens. A tasty patch of fungi is a great way to add something extra. The Mushroom Kit from Back To The Roots is a great, affordable gift that will start yielding a crop of mushrooms in about ten days, and will continue to produce an edible crop for several weeks. Mushrooms like cool, shady places, so this is a great way to use up a corner of the garden that doesn’t get enough sun for vegetables and flowers, or you can even grow them indoors in the offseason.
Windowfarms
If you don’t have a ton of room, but still want a luscious green vegetable garden, the best thing to do is to go vertical. Windowfarms looks to solve your space problems with their stackable indoor gardens. The base of the farms features a pump that sends a growing medium up to the top of the tower, which then trickles down through the plants. The company sends you fully formed plants that you simply pop into the pods and harvest as you need them.
Read more: Gifts ideas for gardeners
