the algorithm can't grow tomatoes
or, why gardening is the ultimate ~analog hobby~
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” — Lao Tzu
If you’ve been surfin’ the good old World Wide Web lately, you’ve no doubt seen the words “analog hobby” pop up more than once. Or maybe we have vastly different algorithms, and you’ve never heard the term in your life but can suss out via context clues what it’s all about.
Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026 [CNN]
The Antidote to Doomscrolling? The Analog Bag. Here’s How to Create Your Own [Reader’s Digest]
The Analog Bag Trend Is an Antidote to Algorithm Brain Rot and Doomscrolling [Marie Claire]
Among the hobbies people are turning to are needlepoint, knitting, watercolor, reading, cooking and baking, junk journaling, getting into physical media, and the like. Hooray! I love that this is trending, honestly. We would all be happier and healthier if we logged off and touched grass more often. Or in my case, 2’ of snow currently.
I’ve written before about burnout with social media and technology, and my desire to minimize time on my phone, but it’s really come to the head in the past year with the preponderance of AI slop everywhere. And the real nail in the coffin for a lot of us came, I think, when it became impossible to tell a real video from an AI video. Now, I see a cute animal, go to share with a friend, then second guess myself. Have I been duped? Is this real?! I’m talking about you, bunnies jumping on a trampoline!
It’s enough to make you want to yeet your phone into the nearest body of water and harken back to a time of landlines and AOL CD-ROMs that arrived for free in the mail.
But I’d like to offer up what I believe is the ultimate analog hobby, and one that AI can never in a million years touch: creating your own backyard garden.
In an era of deepfakes and dead internet theory, where we can't tell if anything is truly real anymore, the garden offers the ultimate proof of human presence. Now surely AI could tell you what plants to include, when to plant them, and how to water them, but nothing could ever take the place of being in the garden, getting your hands dirty, and intimately knowing your plants.
Well it turns out, some companies claim that AI can do exactly that. The RHS published an article titled “How will AI change gardening?” in which they say:
On the domestic front, smart gardening technology that fuses AI and robotics in lawncare and irrigation is already available for the deeper pocketed gardeners among us. Watering can now be automated with AI-backed systems ranging in price from under £100 to more than £1,000. The technology that forms part of these systems can track the weather and adjust schedules to suit conditions, and is controllable by the owner, via smartphone, from anywhere. Install a few soil moisture sensors and it can bring data together in seconds and adjust irrigation accordingly, saving untold litres of water. But even these sophisticated garden helpers are relatively low-tech, compared to what AI is capable of.
“Generative AI, like ChatGPT, is really good at knowing things about the world,” says Daniel. “It can identify a plant, the health of it, its history and what you can do to improve it. The next iteration of AI will be able to act on your behalf via a connected, smart environment that’s making decisions for you. It will be able to improve the health of a plant by analysing the soil it sits in and be able to then change the nutrients and watering plans to maximise effectiveness. This sort of AI could open up gardening to many more people who don’t have the knowledge or time to learn or maintain their space.”
Let the record show that the quote above is from the CEO of an “award-winning AI company” and I would bet my bottom dollar that any gardener worth their weight in compost scoffed at his ideas for the future of their hobby. I especially don’t like that he’s using the lens of accessibility to shoehorn this technology into a space where plants have been doing just fine for millennia without AI telling them how to grow.
The article in full is worth a read, and though I disagree with a lot of it, there are some glimmers of hope as to how the technology could be useful in biodiversity preservation and plant identification. But on the whole, especially after the nauseating AI slop commercials that aired during the Superbowl, I think the majority of us wants to run in the opposite direction from these technologies. Would we willingly invite the computer into our garden sanctuary for the promise of a fraction more efficiency? To me, that would take away the entire pleasure of being out in nature, toiling away while covered in dirt.
That would almost be as silly as millions of people allowing their front doors to be turned into a dystopian digital panopticon under the guise of being able to find a few lost dogs a year. Give up your agency, and thank them for the opportunity to do so!
You can’t prompt a garden into existence, and you can only reap what you actually sow. AI might be able to generate a scarily accurate photo of an heirloom tomato, but it can never replicate the smell of soil first thing in the morning after an evening summer thunderstorm. A LLM could never harness the magical sound of a giant, gravity-defying bumblebee flitting among tomato blossoms.
And even if it could, I wouldn’t want it. The Luddites were right.
Until next Friday,
Amy
Based on Worcester, MA data
Sunrise: 6:44 am | Sunset: 5:18 pm | Day length: 10 hours, 34 minutes | Moon phase: Waning Crescent | Weeks until last frost: 13
Seeds = ordered! Next up, perhaps next week, is tackling my seed starting area in the basement, which typically looks a little like this during the spring:
It’s a cobbled together mix of various trays, potting cups that I’ve had for 10 years, and different types of grow lights and timers. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done! This year I’m going to experiment with soil blocking, which I’m really excited about but a little intimidated by, if I’m being honest. I picked out this soil blocker from Johnny’s because it was developed in conjunction with Eliot Coleman, one of my favorite farmers and garden educators to learn from. I have a handful of books written by both him, and his wife, Barbara Damrosch, and love their entire ethos.
For soil blocking, I think I’ll try a couple trays this year, lest I completely mess up and end up seedling-less in April. And since last year was one of my worst gardening years in a decade, I need some easy Ws this year!
I’ll keep these links here for the next few weeks so they’re easy to find if the mood strikes:
Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson (I cannot adequately express how completely obsessed I am with the Stormlight Archive series. I don’t want it to end! But I also have so many other books in my TBR pile that I’m cruising through the series, despite each book being ~1,200 pages.)
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer (I’m listening to the audiobook of this and it’s 59 hours and honestly, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to get through before my library hold expires, but it feels like a very consequential book to read right about now.)
Beavers being re-released into the wild in the United Kingdom. Beavers became extinct from the wild in England more than 400 years ago due to hunting for their pelts, meat and glands, but after being given legal protection recently, have made their way back into rivers. Beyond just being absolutely adorable, it’s an exciting prospect because only 14% of rivers in the UK are in good ecological condition and beavers are natural ecosystem engineers, retaining as well as releasing water, filtering pollution and creating the conditions for an explosion of wetland and river wildlife.1
Crossplay from NYT. If you were an iPhone user circa 2010, it’s reminiscent of Words With Friends — essentially Scrabble, with some minor changes to probably prevent them from being sued I guess!? Anyways it’s a fun little time killer when I have my phone and am otherwise Bricked.
The free workout app, Liftosaur. It’s like a super powerful spreadsheet, which is how I have always historically tracked my workouts, but with fun colors, preset programs, and it’s entirely scriptable so you can build whatever program you want. It has in-depth history of your lifts, exercise demonstrations…and nothing major is paywalled, only some nitty gritty graphs and plates calculator. I may upgrade at some point because it’s so rad!
Change is brewing in the coffee industry. What lies ahead? [NPR]
How the Easy-Bake Oven, an Appliance That Allowed Kids to Heat Treats With a Light Bulb, Revolutionized the Toy Industry [Smithsonian Magazine]
Plant Believed Extinct For Half A Century Suddenly Found In Unexpected Spot [Newsweek]
They’re Coming for Our Daughters [Jessica Valenti on Substack] (essential reading if you are a woman and/or have a daughter)
Trump says climate change doesn’t endanger public health – evidence shows it does, from extreme heat to mosquito-borne illnesses [The Conversation]
Beavers are coming home! | The Wildlife Trusts
These AI leaders can choke. Gardening w AI. They are truly such clowns. Read the room, gentlemen.
Love your weekly updates and bits and bobs. Thank you for doing it! 💗
Have you read Eager by Ben Goldfarb? A great book about beavers!