Tertill Weeding Robot

If you only need to remove weeds manually in the first few weeks after seeding instead of all the time, that's a potentially substantial reduction of labor cost.

Same with strawberry picking robots: It's not a dealbreaker if they have only 50% precision. That still means you have halved your labor costs (and time requirements) for the picking step (assuming that the robot picks in the night, then workers pick the remainder during the day).

> at some point you'll have a tiny new seedling that you want to keep and you'll have to remember to work around your weeder.

There's a metal guard you put down around small plants that prevents Tertill from mowing them down. The video does a pretty good job explaining the basic operation.

If you have $2000 burning a hole in your pocket, Husqvarna already sells a solar-powered automower.

I don't redo everything every season! I like to garden smart, not hard. Check out permaculture.

Last year, I put down cardboard and mulched - planting strawberries directly in the mulch and piercing through the cardboard. Fast forward a year, now that the cardboard is pretty composted, the strawberries were established last year had root systems in place, broke through the cardboard, and beat most of the weeds. The weeds can't thrive because the strawberries are taking up all the sun.

It's true. But once they've established themselves they're a pain to get out. I've been on a bunch of ivy pulls, done a bunch of blackberry and japanese knotweed removal. Once they're in, they're incredibly hard to remove and outcompete everything else. Blackberries do not replace salmon berries and huckleberries as cover for birds, nothing uses japanese knotweed and ivy pulls trees down.

Try this https://www.tertill.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/tertill-i...

I have used the Divi theme a bunch and I think if you watch the actual link where the video is you should be able to check it out.

Would get all gummed up with mud. But that's true of about any type of locomotion.

Overall, this seems very much designed for ideal environments - smooth, relatively dry, etc.

Tank tracks have problems at a small scale that aren't immediately apparent at full scale.

The big one - especially for something "in the dirt" - is dirt/mud getting between the tracks and ground wheels/idlers. This can easily stop the drive system, requiring user maintenance. Then there's the issue with water rusting parts (shafts, screws, etc). Also, more moving parts equal more things to break. Finally, on a small scale, tracks have a tendency to be easily "thrown" from the wheels depending on how turning is accomplished and the terrain.

On a full sized tank or bulldozer, tracks still have these issues, but in the case of dirt, it can just power through the obstacles; dirt and mud may build up, and cause some rust, but the important bits are kept constantly lubricated. Any parts that do grind up the dirt just wear down instead of stopping (and eventually need replacement - very $$$$ replacement). If anyone cares to, hosing off the tracks with a water truck can also be done, but isn't likely to be done. Again, it all comes down to maintenance.

Also, full scale tracked vehicles rarely turn "en point", because their tracks can be thrown just as easily as on the smaller scale, but cause more damage and more repair $$$ needed to fix/replace (plus doing it in the field isn't easy, either). The proper way to turn such a vehicle is to not perform such maneuvers, or if you have to, make sure you're on relatively flat and soft ground (that you don't mind utterly destroying - beware your wife's rose garden), and do it fairly slowly. The side load on the tracks and idlers will still be just as high, but throwing the track isn't as great. Usually, though, you steer in a curve just like a car, except using differential speeds on each track. There will still be side loads and "skidding", but the loads are much, much less (also, this is why such machines, whether tracked or wheeled, are known as "skid steered" or "differential steering").