Topic: Soil temp & moisture sensor location

[ALITTLEweird1]

Where do you have yours placed? Open area or garden? Do you water where your sensors are or not? Just trying to get some ideas. I plan on putting mine in an area that I don't water.

Thanks

[ValentineWeather]

I can tell you what I did having just soil temperature probes. The standard soil temp depth you see around here is 4" on Mesonet stations so I would at least do that depth. The other 3 probes were spaced to 36" of course it depends where you are located. I was just interested in freeze data for my purpose. If for gardening etc it would be different how you want to place them.

[johnd]

Where do you have yours placed? Open area or garden? Do you water where your sensors are or not? Just trying to get some ideas. I plan on putting mine in an area that I don't water.

There isn't a right or wrong answer. To state the obvious, if you're interested in 'natural' soil moisture levels then it would be an area where you don't water. But if you were a farmer growing crops then you'd probably be more interested in the moisture that the crops were seeing, including after irrigation. (Actually, a more practical problem especially with farms growing annual crops is to locate the sensors in places where they're not going to get destroyed by all the machinery used to tend and harvest crops on a modern farm. So in practice it's often the field margins that get used for eg soil moisture readings.)

[Liamdog4]

I use mine for my turf grass for irrigation in two locations. I have one depth of 4" at root depth and one depth of 7" just to see how soil moisture  at that depth acts. Like was said, it depends on what use you want to use them for. I also look at the soil temps for spring pre-emergent applications . Just follow instructions on soaking the soil moisture sensor before installing in the soil.