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The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Soil Moisture Meters 101

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2019

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Are you having problems deciding when it’s time to water? If so, you’re not alone. That’s where the best soil moisture meter comes into play. These useful devices help you decide when you should be hydrating your plants. But there’s all kinds of them out there. They range from a few dollars to hundreds, and there’s a mix of types. Finding the best soil moisture meter can be a challenge. Let me help you out with that! Learn More: Best Soil Moisture Meters Analog, Composter’s Moisture-Only: REOTEMP Meter Digital, Standard Moisture-Only: Luster Leaf Digital Meter Digital, Composter’s Moisture-Only: A.M. Leonard Meter Digital, Precision Moisture-Only: General Tools DSMM500 Meter Order Field Guide to Urban Gardening My book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, will be out May 7, 2019. If you pre-order the book and forward your receipt to kevin@epicgardening.com, I'll send you a free pack of heirloom, organic seeds from one of my favorite seed suppliers! Pre-Order Field Guide to Urban Gardening Support Epic Gardening Support Epic Gardening on Patreon Follow Epic Gardening YouTube Instagram Pinterest Facebook Facebook Group   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everyone. What's going on? I hope your garden is doing well. Kevin from Epic

0:04.1

gardening here. Today we're talking about soil moisture meters and why it's a

0:08.8

tool that you may want to incorporate into your garden. It might be something that you want to pick up this

0:14.0

season. So the first thing we're going to talk about is what exactly these are and what they do. There's

0:20.6

also a couple different types, so we'll run through those as well.

0:23.7

Now, as an average home gardener, both you and I, we don't need anything absolutely

0:28.9

insane that maybe a larger scale farmer might need.

0:32.8

You know, they need all the data, all the metrics,

0:35.6

up to the minute to monitor their crops.

0:37.8

So let's go ahead and talk about the different methods that exist.

0:41.2

Your first soil moisture meter type is going to be an analog meter,

0:46.0

so batteries aren't included just because they're not needed. These are really

0:49.8

simple in design, but surprisingly effective and they work by conduction of electricity.

0:55.4

So that's naturally occurring electricity in the soil.

0:58.3

The tips of the probe will have at least two forms of conductive metal and if water is present then any

1:05.0

natural electric current in the soil will be transmitted to the probe. Now water

1:09.2

is a natural conductor of electricity. More water registers as a higher electrical charge on the meter and

1:16.1

then a soil moisture reader like this is, you know, it's pretty accurate in most cases and

1:20.6

it's also quite inexpensive. Digital meters have many features with

1:26.6

which analog might not, right? So typically the probe isn't subject to

1:31.1

corrosion like an analog meter might be. There are batteries in the device of course and then the screen will display all sorts of data along with the probe actually sending out a tiny electromagnetic pulse that senses moisture.

1:47.6

So the probes are often on long cables rather than directly secure it into the device like you would see in an

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