there are 2 things that make it possible for me to grow plants at all

people have been cultivating the these plants for thousands of years.
they are generally pretty pleased to grow in an environment where people are also 
comfortable.

there is one very big gotcha though. plants will put their needs ahead of yours. 
like lettuce, kale, and other brassicas will "bolt" 
this means they switch from leaf producing directly to flower and seed producing.

these can be very touchy and if you want to get any leaves for your salad you need 
to keep them happy.

javascript is what glues all of these tools to the web. so i can water my plants, collect and visualize their data.
I use 2 sensors. a soil moisture sensor and a photosythysis sensor.

the coolest thing is the photsynthysis sensor because it tells me how healthy they are. 
i put this sensor together largely from parts out of my first arduino inventors kit.
they cost about 2$ (13 rmb) each. probably even less in china. so you can put one on each plant or one over each square meter of garden

they absorb red blue and even a little green light.
a healthy plant reflects infrared / near infrared light to stay cool

NDVI is a value that relates to a plants health. Its like the appetite of the plant. 
if its photosynthesizing well most of the red light will be absorbed and most of the nir will be reflected

i read about it first on public lab. these folks were using balloons and drones to take these pictures and report the health of their local ecosystms

but notably leaves near infrared 700nm +

also notably leaves near infrared 700nm +

wow. pretty dark now. how the infrared is being picked up by my camera is really odd.
like the ir filter is a circle around the center and its not very good. (thankfuly)
its really amazing what a few pieces of plastic can do.
the only light getting through in a meaningful quantity is near infrared

so now im going to shine my ir remote to prove the right spectrums of light make it through.

woo infrared gets through!

as you can see it's mostly tress outside my window. they are the brightest pink ones.
your eys work much better than this laptop camera. the scene is much more clear.
the leaves are all a firey pink and the buildings are a pale blue/black.
this is the input to one photocell in the sensor.

i made it to carry around with me like a tricorder but for plants.
but now i just leave it and others pointing at my plants and read data 
every minute to plot how they are doing througout the day.

this is most of the food i managed to grow this summer.
all indoors in the window of my apartment though. so i dont feel that bad.

npm is here to support the community. To help us build whatever we dream up.

Stick your javascript, html, css, electron, python, c++, typescript, es2020, whatever. 
in the registry and we'll make sure folks can download and install those dependencies.

i havn't figured out how to make npm directly grow my garden but 
i couldnt imagine building the programs i needed without it.