Puncture Vine
The Tertill is a solar-powered garden weeding device that will roam your garden wacking out weeds that have just sprouted while ignoring the tall, established plants like peppers and tomatoes. It is a robot weed-wacker that will set you back $225–if it fulfills its Kickstarter plan and is actually manufactured. There are several problems with this technology.
–Anyone who’s used one knows that weed-wackers screw up all the time. So this is primitive technology with a solar panel.
–What if the unit’s weed-wacker is not low enough to reach ground-clinging weeds like puncture vine and purslane?
–If you plan and install your garden properly, you won’t have weeds and thus won’t need any weeding devices. First, place gardening fabric over the area to be planted, cut holes in the fabric, put down soaker hoses for irrigating, plant your bedding plants, and cover the fabric with bark chips. I’ve been using this method for decades.
The biggest problem with a device like this is the bare ground it runs over. There should never be bare ground in a garden because of water loss through evaporation–that’s what the fabric and mulch prevents as well as weeds. For the soaker hose, fabric, and mulch, you can probably mulch a 200 square-foot garden for a tenth of what the weedbot costs. I predict this unit will fail to sell and will go into gadget extinction.
