Soil moisture sensors are everywhere in irrigation these days. I’ve seen farms with a dozen Watermark sensors spread across different zones, greenhouses running capacitance probes in every grow bag, and orchards with tensiometers at three depths per block. The hardware…
Blueberries are the diva of the fruit world. They want acidic soil. They want shallow, consistent moisture. They want water that won’t push the soil pH up. And if any one of those things goes wrong, they punish you with…
Most farmers I talk to already have drip irrigation in the ground. The tape is laid, the laterals are connected, the filter station is plumbed in. They’re not starting from scratch. What they don’t have is automation. Somebody still has…
Most greenhouse operators spend a lot of time thinking about their irrigation schedule, their fertilizer ratios, and their substrate moisture levels. Almost nobody thinks about what’s swimming in their water until a crop goes down with Pythium. I talked to…
India pulls more groundwater than any other country on earth, roughly 250 cubic kilometers a year, more than the US and China combined. Most of it goes to agriculture. Wells across Punjab, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu are running dry at…
Most farmers who try soil moisture monitoring start the same way: buy one or two sensors, stick them in the ground, check the readings for a couple weeks, then forget about them. I’ve seen this pattern enough times to know…
A greenhouse at 38°C isn’t just uncomfortable. It’s expensive. Tomato pollen goes sterile above 32°C. Lettuce bolts. Cucumber leaves scorch. If your pad-and-fan system is struggling, every degree over target is yield you don’t get back. High-pressure fog systems have…
If you are pulling water from a borehole, a river, or a storage tank for your drip or sprinkler system, the pump you pick shapes your electricity bill for the next decade. Get it wrong and you are either replacing…
Most irrigation advice assumes you have land, a river, and a reliable water table. Pacific Island farmers get none of those. You get a thin freshwater lens floating on seawater, a few months of reliable rain then months of nothing,…
If you farm in Guatemala’s Western Highlands, you know the pattern. May through October brings 1,500 millimeters of rain. November through April gives you almost nothing. Your soil cracks open, coffee trees stress, and by March you’re praying for rain…
