EasyBloom Hands-On Review

EasyBloom

Late in January 2009 I noticed an interesting garden gadget posted on one of my other sites- www.amazingdealslist.com. A user had posted a link to a sale page for the EasyBloom. I clicked through to see what it was about and so it began.

The EasyBloom is a proverbial “why didn’t someone think of that before” device. Its a garden tool that measures temperature, humidity, light levels and duration and soil conditions. it also takes into consideration local conditions based on your zip code and season based on the date of the readings. It looks like a tacky dollar store plastic flower that would complement a pair of pink flamingos on any trailer park lawn. That’s not the purpose fo the EasyBloom though.

The EasyBloom can be used in doors or out; can be used with or without the soil probe and requires a USB capable computer. It lives on 2 AAA batteries and only comes to life for use after it has been initiated on your computer. The first time you plug it in there is a tiny piece of software that is installed so your Easy Bloom can talk with the EasyBloom web based interface. Its worth noting that if you don’t have a readily available internet connection the Easy Bloom may not serve you well.

The Easy Bloom (EB) site and interface makes using your EB almost foolproof. Almost because if your not a manual reader like me its easy to miss the point that you need to initiate the EB and select its mode before you try to monitor anything. Otherwise, the site is amazingly user friendly and being improved upon frequently. I’ve personally sent them a handful of suggestions I hope to see in the next updates.

Since its still the first part of 2009 it made little sense for me to try to monitor anything outside- its too cold, the days are short and the suggestions EB would provide would probably tell me to move to a warmer climate! I did have the opportunity to start testing in my sun room and got started quickly. After telling the EB site I wanted to monitor an area and receive suggestions for it I was instructed to unplug the EB from the USB port and let the EasyBloom do its magic.

EasyBloom Download

The first area of my sun room I chose for monitoring is the corner that receives the most sun and currently has a rack with a dozen or so African Violets that are thriving there. I set the EB (sans the soil analyzer) in a tall cup next to one of the violets, pressed the start button, made sure the small LED started to flash and walked away for a bit more than 24 hours. The recommendation is to monitor for at least 24 hours but I suggest at least 72 hours for a better read of conditions.

Being impatient as usual I grabbed the EasyBloom from the plant shelf and plugged it into my computer about 26 hours after setting it. The EB is detected and you can see a quick download of the data occurs. It is transmitted to the EB site and your personalized page where you are prompted to enter monitoring details. I enter the date, location, approximate duration of the monitoring and which season the monitoring was performed.

You can then select the plant recommendation tab to see what EB recommends for that spot based on the data it gathered. The database came back with less than 10 plants that frankly could survive in a dark closet if needed. Nowhere did it present African Violets as a possibility although they are well covered in the plant database. I have no concerns for my violets in that location and did not run to the sunroom to save my plants from eminent doom.

The EB site allows you to go through their entire plant database and mark which plants you own. Of the plants you own you can then use the EasyBloom to monitor the plant at its current location and get some type of feedback. I decided to try this feature with the same location. I initiated that particular monitor mode and placed the EB monitor back into the same spot. This time I monitored for ~48 hours which captured on of the most lovely days we had all month.

Time went buy, data was collected and I plugged in for the read from EB. According to the feedback from the EB the African Violets were receiving too little light (in intensity and duration), the temperatures were too low and humidity was OK. I looked over my shoulder to see if the Plant Police were on their way to confiscate my plants for subjecting them to such horrid and cruel conditions! Did I mention the plants are thriving…

I went through the same process with 8 different areas in my sunroom to fully map the area. Mind you, the sunroom has been packed with a collection of African violets, orchids, and various other interesting house plants (hoya, carnivorous plants, jades, bonsai and begonias) that are green and healthy. I’ve had some amazing blooms in the past month including some difficult to manage orchid species.

EasyBloom in Action

Update-I’ve monitored some additional sites including my kitchen window plant shelves. I’m starting to loose faith in the “suggest” mode of the EasyBloom. Each read came back with suggestions for low light plants- the same rogue gallery of plants I seem to be getting after every suggest monitor I perform. If it were up to the EasyBloom I’d have a houseful of ferns, cast iron plants and ivy!

All together the EasyBloom gave me pretty consistent message that I needed more light intensity and time and temperatures were too cool. I’ve concluded that the EasyBloom is a seasonal device and does not do well in the winter- yet. I think in the near future the folks at EB will head my suggestion and add some dimension to the plant database and suggestion feature to take into consideration the seasonal differences.

I am also hoping they make the data extraction feature open source so users can access the raw data from the EB monitor. How cool would it be to be able to map, chart and trend your garden parameters exactly as you see fit. This would also allow other software programs to take advantage of this powerful monitoring device.

The EasyBloom plant database has a good opportunity to go Web 2.0 where I could enter my specific plants, their needs and real data associated with the plant(s) to share with other users. How cool would it be to find out what conditions others have success with or what plants people grow in similar areas?

I fully expect to be revisiting this write-up of the EasyBloom monitor as spring cracks and outside gardening transitions from the planning to “doing” stages this season. I’ll keep you posted on new thoughts, ideas and features as they are released.

In the coming months I’ll be exploring: