Friday, April 24, 2015

Let's Measure That: Soil Moisture

I've got this great view of our X-Garden out my office window. And so far, it's the best looking pile of dirt I've ever seen. In fairness, planting from seed does mean that we've got to sweat it out for a few days to weeks before we'll see any sign of life.

In the mean time, I need to keep the soil most, but not too moist. And we've had a few days of heavy rains which is a good thing, but is it enough to keep the seeds happy? It occurred to me that rather than just worry about this, I could take some action. Surely there's a way to measure how water's in the soil and give me a definitive answer.

And there is. In fact, such a meter is all of $9.00 on Amazon. Today I gave it a try. And verdict is...

Yeah, we've still got some moisture in there, but it's getting on towards watering time.

I've always looked at everything gardening related as one big experiment. No matter the outcome, you learn something. So having more data is better. And everybody knows that experiments need meters. Of course, the next move is to use the meter data to automate watering, but for now, I'm satisfied with just watering the plants the old fashion way.

By the way: we did at least one good thing in our X-Garden. We planted milkweed. Good for us! (And for the butterflies!). Learn about the benefits of milkweed here.

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