Throw that weed whacker out the window, put your feet up and take back your weekends while this robot backyard gardener gets to work.
For those of us who don’t have a green thumb (and for some of us that do), weeding just plain old f#*king sucks.
Spending hours crawling around my backyard pulling up the same old weeds that will just be back again in a few weeks? No thanks, I’d rather enjoy whatever little sun this is on offer in Melbourne or, more likely, piss off to the local pub.
But what if there was a way to do both? What if there was some radical robot helper that would do all of the grunt work while I’m six beers deep on the pokies telling my NSW-born-and-bred bartender how the State of Origin win was bullsh*t?
Well, meet Tertill – the solar-powered, weatherproof backyard workhorse that lives to weed your garden.
Coming from the mind of roboticist Joe Jones – the inventor of the wildly popular Roomba that’s probably flying around your feet right now – Tertill is a godsend for a lazy gardener like me, cutting off the ‘root’ of the problem by staying on top of your weeding needs at all time.
That’s right, this sucker lives in your garden day and night, using its high-tech sensors to patrol your plants for any nasty little weeds to eliminate.
And better yet, for those of us with young children or annoying cats (I’m looking at you Travis), there are no toxic pesticides in sight. Tertil comes complete with a spinning string trimmer that lasts about a month, cutting weeds off near the ground before they have a chance to sprout.
These are bound to grow back over time, sure. But the beauty of our little robot helper is Tertill doesn’t take a day off, never giving the weed a chance to flourish. He’s always watching, waiting in the shadows of Banksia’s and Bottlebrush’s for the perfect time to strike.
It’s basically the backyard Batman – but instead of paralysing street thugs, it’s dishing out justice to weeds.
How does it know what and where to weed?
Superhero or not, this little garden gadget has vowed to keep your plants safe from the annoying little weeds growing underfoot. But how does it tell friend from foe?
For that, Tertill has one simple answer – plants are tall and weeds are short. If a plant is tall enough to touch the sensors on top of the bot it will set it’s sights elsewhere until it finds a smaller target to chop down.
But if you’re worried about Tertill killing your budding bed of flowers, don’t worry. If your plant is too low to the ground, you can place a height guard around the area you want protected to send the little guy in the other direction.
The bot also boasts a number of features to keep it on the right track. Tertil comes complete with a surprisingly effective four-wheel drive system, allowing it to stay on the move through soft soil, sand and mulch, as well as climb hills for slanted properties.
Several sensors, similar to those in your iPhone screen, surround Tertill’s shell. These sensors are always looking for objects like garden fences or bigger plants—the slightest touch is all it takes for Tertill to slam on the brakes.
This bad boy is also powered by the best battery there is – the sun. As long as those sunny UV rays are bouncing on the bot’s head, Tertill will be hard at work keeping your garden neat and tidy.
Even when the sun isn’t out to play, Tertill actually uses it’s smartly stored energy to keep chugging along even under several days of cloud cover by patrolling for weeds less often.
There are a few problems
Before the little guy can take over your gardening bed, he will need a small helping hand. When first setting up Tertill, owners will need to have a short barrier, at least two inches or taller, around the garden to keep it from running rogue.
Tertill will needs abit of space to get around, so it might not work effectively in container gardens, flower beds or other small garden spaces.
Like other pricey smart garden bots, the weeding bot is also a prime target for sticky-fingered thieves and doesn’t come with any safety features, like a PIN, to prevent someone from just taking it home for themselves.
But the real roadblock getting in the way of Aussies in the adopting the garden robot revolution is that Tertill is still only available to buy in the US in 2024.
The company does say it will be coming to Aussie store shelves sometime in early 2025, but that’s a possible 20 more weekends of weeding that I don’t want to do.
For those of us who can’t wait, you can find third-party companies like UBuy shipping the Tertill to Aussie shores via India for around $300 AUD at the time of writing, but the jury is out on how long that will take to reach your doorstep.
