Remote soil monitoring helps you make faster, more accurate watering decisions

It’s springtime, so it’s a good time to talk about soil. Or better yet, let your soil speak to you.

Why?

Like many things, your soil has a lot to say. Especially as you nourish and care for it throughout the prep, planting, and growing processes. Its health and yield expectations can depend upon your soils’ ability to talk and have you take the right actions about what you hear.

Whether it’s in your garden, landscape, farm, greenhouse, or grow house, your soil is ready to tell you about its water and temperature conditions. Knowing your soil moisture tension and temperature can help you understand how healthy it is and help you mitigate plant and crop nutrient leaching and water stress.

This soil intelligence is key to improving your overall precision irrigation program in various agriculture technology (AgriTech or AgTech) applications. More specifically, soil data is critical for fine-tuning irrigation scheduling, so you know exactly how, where, and when to water.

Enter our new Soil Moisture Sensor.

The ALTA® by Monnit Soil Moisture Sensor can alert you on your mobile device or computer to water your crops or commercial landscape at the right time. Plus, the Sensor’s data can provide a deeper understanding of what’s happening over time with soil moisture and temperature virtually everywhere in your fields or growing facilities. You can know how to have nutrient-rich plant growth across your operations from root to stem to leaf and save water and resources—all while optimizing yields.

How it works to help you water

With a resistive granular matrix element, our Soil Moisture Sensor measures soil water tension (matric potential). The moisture element is unique because it measures water tension in its hydrophilic fabric-covered matrix material rather than the surrounding soil. This is how the Sensor can provide consistent calibration without recalibrating it for each installation.

The Soil Moisture Sensor also has a thermistor-based element to measure soil temperature. You can also use this element’s reading for soil moisture temperature compensation, so you don’t have to get different water readings if the temperature changes.

Other key features:

• Safe in both hot and freezing temperatures
• Measure within a range of 0 to 240 centibar (cb) or kilopascal (kPa)
• Corrosion-resistant and made of high-grade stainless steel
• Internally compensated for commonly found salinity levels
• Easy to install and use compared to traditional tensiometers

Of course, soil moisture and temperature monitoring are essential in other applications beyond precision irrigation in agriculture, commercial landscaping, and growing operations. Our Soil Moisture Sensors are also ideal in water table monitoring, greenhouses, grow houses, sports turf, golf courses, leak detection, forestry, flood prevention, construction, mining, agronomy research, environmental monitoring, and more.