Weather Stations Can Be Used For Better Gardens

When one thinks of a garden, they see a fresh, green-filled garden with many different types of vegetables, growing and flourishing.

You are looking at and savoring the great fresh vegetable taste, you will be experiencing. The expectation is to harvest some of the vegetables and eat them.

But the mystery is how to get to that point with your garden. It isn’t good luck that successful growers possess, it is know-how and work.

You can use the instrument metrics from your weather station to help you get there.

You can look forward to mouth-watering vegetables that you picked from your own garden. You will also be saving much money on your food budget as well.

How Do You Use Weather Measurements?

To determine how to best use weather readings, you probably should first determine which readings will be important to you. This will be important in helping you to produce a garden full of wonderful fresh produce ready to be consumed by you and your family.

So the best instrument readings for this will be, temperature readings, rainfall amounts, barometric pressure, wind direction & speed, as well as relative humidity. There are other readings that may be gathered and used from instruments such as moisture content, wind chill factor, and dew point.

The instruments used to gather these readings are a thermometer, anemometer, barometer, and pyranometer. A pyranometer is one of the instruments that aren’t ordinarily found on regular consumer-purchased weather stations.

It is usually only available on advanced scientific climate instrument stations. These advanced stations are exceedingly more expensive than the standard weather stations. The scientific stations are in the neighborhood of $4000-$6000 for the most part. Regular, really good weather stations are usually purchased in the $500-$1500 range.

What Is A Pyranometer?

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Ambient Weather TM-206 Solar Power Meter (Pyranometer)

A pyranometer is a form of an actinometer. I know, what is an actinometer?

What is a Pyranometer? Well, let’s get to the bare bones of what we are talking about here. We are talking about measuring the effects of the sun’s rays in an area.

This measurement is done by the sun’s rays, activating a chemical reaction in the measuring tool to see how effective the sun’s photons are actually working to help out plant growth in an area you are measuring.

Let’s look at an example. You have a small garden on the north side of your property. It really isn’t shaded at all, but you are concerned about how effective the sun will be in growing plants in a garden there. So you measure the sun using a pyranometer.

What you find out is that an area on the south side of your property actually rates as a better garden spot than the plot on the north side. It is close, but the pyranometer shows the south side plot is better for more effective plant growth.

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Using The Readings From Your Personal Weather Station

Any advantage you can get as a gardener makes you a much happier gardener. Learning to effectively use scientific data to your advantage is your goal. Why do all the hard work, if you aren’t going to grow a great harvest of plentiful vegetables?

Let’s look at some things that are very important to maintain great plant growth. One of the first things is to maintain a good amount of water for growth but not too much water.

Too much moisture in the soil can result in stunted growth and can actually be bad enough that you can suffocate the root system of the plants and kill them.

What About The Rainfall?

Watching your rainfall by using your weather station can be a very invaluable source of this information. You will know when it rains and how much it rains. Knowing when the rain is falling can help you with preparing your plants for the rainfall.

You can make sure the soil around the roots is aerated well by loosening up the dirt enough around the roots to cause the water to be close to the roots but not pocketing enough to not allow the roots to get the necessary oxygen from the soil close to the roots. This will allow continued plant growth.

The Facts Show This

Scientific facts back up my statements. One of the most common reasons for the suppression of plant growth during very wet periods is the reduction of oxygen in the soil that is available to plant roots. Plant cells respire and need oxygen to survive and grow.

You will need to be concerned if the soil air drops to less than 12% oxygen. At that level roots will suffocate and die. Some things to watch for are, oxygen in the air in the soil forces out soil air. Also when there is less air available, the oxygen is rapidly used and becomes inadequate for good root growth.

In very wet soils, organic matter begins to decompose and this process will also further deplete oxygen in the soil area. So as you can see, how much water, where is the water, and proper care of the soil in your garden, does make a large difference to a successful gardener.

So in the big picture having a station in your garden area will allow you to measure the rainfall in your garden. The station’s rain gauge will be very useful for this.

Watering Your Plants

Watering habits vary widely from one gardener to the next. As an example, one group tends to get very busy with their lives and they end up forgetting about the plants. The plants often wilt and often don’t get the water quick enough to save them.

Whereas the second group of gardeners tends to pamper their plants. They then have a tendency to water their plants too much. They often come close to killing their plants by drowning them.

With either of these extremes, you can stress your plants to the point that you will end up weakening your plants. Our experience tells us these weakened plants are the first to fall prey to bugs and diseases. Most importantly they also will produce fewer blooms or vegetables.

Watering seems simple but actually takes a little finesse to do properly. Start by identifying your soil type and measuring the actual amount of water your plants receive.

“Vegetables need an inch of water per week delivered by either rainfall or irrigation. This converts roughly to six gallons per square yard per week,” said Robert Polomski, Clemson Extension Horticulturist at Clemson University, in a report out of Clemson’s Agriculture Dept recently.

It has been found that thoroughly soaking the soil with infrequent watering is better than shallow regular watering. Experience also shows that a deep soaking will encourage the plant roots to reach deep into the soil.

It is also known that shallow watering will keep roots close to the surface, and this will cause the plants to be more susceptible to drought.

Sunshine Anyone?

Very important when tending a garden is that you have the necessary sunshine to grow the plants you have planted. It is very important that are able to keep track of how much sun and just how much good weather you have been having so that you can make sure you are on schedule with bringing your garden along.

You need to make sure your plants are maturing at the pace they need to be so that they will be producing the crop for consumption you have planned out. Always remember that your growing season is on a set schedule.

You do know approximately the length of your season and when you will need the crop harvested before the frost hits. So use the daily temperature data and keep track of the good elements days so that you know you are on schedule. Your station with the software provided will be able to give you this record.

Another thing a station will provide you with is the current wind speed, the top wind gusts in the last 12 hour period, and whether or not the wind speed is trending upward or downward. In looking at the anemometers provided the information you will be able to analyze where you are at with how moist or dry your garden is currently.

The longer the wind is blowing, the more dried out your garden will be. With this information, you will be better prepared to know when it is time to be watering your garden.

Remember, a garden that is too wet is prone to be killing off the plants, and a garden too dry will mean your vegetables will not be growing up to their potential.

Adding on or buying a newer, better-equipped station would be two ways to improve your gardening experience. Adding extra instruments and displays to your selection of tools would be a wise move.

With your added repertoire of tools, you will have more information to analyze, and then more timely work to be done, to maximize your vegetable’s growth.

In Summation

So looking at the much larger picture, when you are taking a view of the garden and using an instrument station, it is seen very easily, that the most important things you need to be concerned with are sunlight, rain, wind and the growing season information.

Weather stations do provide readings for all of these areas. You just need to use the information. Let the information work for you. Data logging can be a very helpful thing.

If your unit does have software, this will help you out tremendously. Applying your knowledge of the vegetables you are growing, the station’s daily readings, along using proper weeding, and watering techniques will help your garden flourish.

You can check up on more sophisticated element station collection units to find even more complicated methods to use for even better gardens. More instruments, more information, and much better yielding gardens.

Read More About Gardening & Farming With Weather Stations-View Related Posts Below

Farming with Weather

Farming today is a big risk, big rewards type of business. Farms are very expensive to run and high-yielding in profit in good crop years.

One key to being successful with your crop yield is to be analyzing everything from seed crop data, to pesticide application, to soil conditions and our favorite subject, using a weather station to study what nature’s elements are doing daily.

Farming 40-50 years ago was much different than it is today. Agriculture used to be thousands of 100-500 acre farms spread throughout the United States.

This size of the farm cannot successfully exist today, simply because you could never create enough income from it to afford to keep it running.

The farms today which are able to make money for its owners are probably at least 1000 acres. Most are probably 3 to 10 times larger than this.

Crop Failure Causes

The biggest reason farms fail is usually weather-related crop failure. Sometimes this failure is not that crops aren’t produced, but that not enough of a yield was produced to overcome the high costs.

One way to increase crop yields is to apply every available modern-day data stream to help you understand the truth about what is happening.

This data stream would be of weather data coming from weather stations you may have set up on your farm property.

They would need to be set up by weather station installation on your farm. I have written a couple of suggested reads on weather station installation.

What’s Involved in Weather Station Mounting

Top Weather Station Mounting Ideas

Then you can apply a good sound decision to what is really happening. Using a weather station (or a series of weather stations) could be very beneficial to a farm.

A very close to the perfect professional level weather station is the Davis Instruments 6152 Vantage Pro2. You should take a look at it here.

Davis Instruments 6152 Vantage Pro2 Wireless Weather Station

The Davis Instruments 6152 Vantage Pro2 is a professional-level wireless weather station.

If you are a farmer you will find this weather station ensemble has many top features that you would find necessary to help you gather weather information for farm operations.

This model features the following sensors.

• wind speed sensor
• wind direction sensor
• Rain Collector Type . . .Tipping bucket.
• a Temperature Sensor
• PN Junction Silicon Diode Relative Humidity Sensor

As a farmer you need to raise your crop production/yield and if you are raising animals you will want to be receiving, outside temperature readings, because they can alert you to temperatures that could cause animal stress levels. These stress levels could mean a drop in milk production as well as a poorer cut of beef from a beef cattle breed.

This Davis Instruments console has the ability to keep track of relative humidity readings which are used in many facets of farming.

It is also very important in the harvesting of hay and crop harvesting. In these harvesting methods you need to know when the fields are dry enough to bring the crop in for winter storage.

Reasons Discussed Why Farmers Use Weather Station Data

When looking at data supplied by a Davis Instruments weather station, not all data is the same. The uses of information are many fold.

They are totally dependent upon the profession using and needing the weather information.

The information supplied by a station, that is most needed is temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure, rainfall measurements, and recorded rainfall amounts.

Also the relative humidity is very important as is the upcoming weather forecast. Working with the forecast is by far the best way to manage your farm work.

Let’s now go over using weather station data. We will cover various categories that are all very important to different types of farmers due to different types of conditions for their farming.

Commercial Agriculture Crops

One very important thing to note is that with commercial agriculture crops, we are talking about huge tracks of land that are in production to grow millions and millions of bushels of crops.

Many of these crops are grown in the midwestern states. States such as Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.

These states are huge in growing commercial agriculture crops such as corn, wheat, and soybeans. These crops are mainstays in the worldwide diets of 2019.

Thus their failure or even threat of a failure is tantamount to maintaining food supplies in the United States. This is in addition to the vast amount of food that is exported to other nations around the world.

With all of this in mind, many of these farmers are looking to incorporate the use of professional weather stations throughout their farms to monitor weather data changes so that all or some of the following weather readings could make a huge difference to them.

Many of these farmers today are using small handheld weather meters to collect weather data and send the results to their cell phones.

This is done while in the middle of a very large farm operation, maybe even in the middle of a field or a corral.

These signal warnings allow the farmers to quickly respond to these weather meter readings.

Yes, I want to take a look NOW! at ONE OF THESE HANDHELD WEATHER METERS

KESTREL 5500 POCKET WEATHER METER – TAN G_MRPX

The Kestrel 5500 Environmental Meter is a complete handheld weather station.

Within the small inner workings, it is very powerful and can provide all of the following readings to you.

• Altitude (Barometric)
• Barometric Pressure
• Compass Direction
• Crosswind
• Density Altitude
• Dewpoint Temp
• Headwind / Tailwind
• Heat Stress Index
• Relative Humidity
• Station Pressure (Absolute Pressure)
• Temperature
• Wet Bulb Temperature (Psychrometric)
• Wind Chill
• Wind Speed/Air Speed

With these readings provided to you, you are able to control your production much better on your farm.

The Kestrel units are small and adaptable to your needs. They can be set up at a distant paddock of horses or beef cattle or dairy cows to monitor cattle heat stress. Or on the corner post of a fenced pasture.

They could also be set up in an area of your large ranch which is the first area that receives weather changes when they happen. Use the unit as a weather alert unit, and keep the unit in your barns and in your vehicles (pickups or cars, etc).

Temperature Data

In farming, most of the emphasis in this data area is looked at through the lens of just how devastating a frost could be to your crops.

A station will have a temperature change alert on it that you can set. This alert will serve the purpose of letting you know when the temperature is dipping down to near frost levels.

This then would allow you to respond by setting up anti-frost measures in your harvest areas to protect your crops. Some of these anti-frost methods could be covering, fog or smoke clouds, a light sprinkling of water, and the usage of wind machines.

Protect Plants Against Freezing

A. Covering

• This method reduces heat loss from the surface. This is often used by home gardeners and the growers of low-growing commercial crops that use smaller acreage lots.
• They use materials such as straw mulch, boxes, tar paper, plastic, etc. to reduce the heat loss from the surface. Often the costs of these materials prohibit this method.

• The storage, the time, and the labor needed to place the covers are the main drawbacks to this method for large areas of crops.
• Some materials are more effective in reducing radiative heat loss than others. Any cover is effective in reducing heat loss by convection. When covers are placed, particularly thin materials such as plastics, care must be taken to prevent contact with the plant to reduce heat loss by conduction.
• You need to remember the temperature of the exposed surface is usually lower than the air below it. Straw mulches should cover all plant parts as any protruding leaves are more susceptible to freeze damage.
• Covers should always be removed during the day, as the plants need to breathe, and the warmer day temperatures will cause condensation around the plants, heavy dampness which will lead to an increased risk of plant diseases forming.

B. Using Fog or Smoke Clouds

• This method is well known for its active ability to reduce radiative heat loss from the ground. Often smoke from smudge pots is used to smoke out or fog the area with a warm protective air covering.

• Some people have used mist from fine water nozzles, and another favorite is to burn petroleum-based tires. These will also serve to keep the earth’s warmth from escaping thus lowering the risk of frost-bitten plants.
• One bad part to discussing the smudge pots and burning tires is that very often this goes broadly against local environmental laws for air pollution.

C. Sprinkling of Water

• A third method to discuss is sprinkling a low application of water in the air. This is done by using an irrigation system and sprinkling a light mist of water over all your crop.
• This has scientifically been proven to be effective in protecting lower to the ground crops from frost. This is especially effective when vast temperature differences are present between the ground temperature and the temperature say 10-20 feet above the ground. Effectiveness varies in the range of 1 to 4 degrees C.

• Please note that this method must be started well before the onset of freezing temperatures and must be maintained for an extended period of time after the threat has subsided.

D. Wind Machines

• Another popular system used is the use of wind machines. This is most effective during freezes which occur on calm, clear nights. On those nights the air layer near the ground is colder than the air aloft.
• This is known as a temperature inversion. Wind machines or helicopters are sometimes used to bring the warmer air down to the crop level to replace the cold air layer at the surface.
• Equipment and operating costs are high for this system, but this can also be the one most effective method to use, but your budget must match up with the benefit you are producing.

Wind Speed & Direction

The first thing that comes to mind with wind direction is how very important it is to observe wind conditions(speed and direction) prior to spraying any crops with chemicals.

Spraying is a very expensive part of managing your crop’s overall health. Insects and pests must be sprayed for. This will increase the volume of the harvest by not losing yields due to any damage from blights, eating of crops, and either malformation of the fruit/yield or the physical appearance of the crop.

The marketability must be maintained. The integrity of the crop that you are selling must be top grade. The top-grade quality will always bring the highest price for the crop.

A. Wind and Crop Damage

Wind speed is very important as well. If you have a wind storm or predicted strong wind gusts, you need to know. Strong winds often cause crops to break and lay down. Often they will not harvest properly if they are laying down (versus) standing up.

B. Drying Conditions

Knowing the drying conditions of the day or the next few days is very important to a farmer as well. Let’s say you have three hay fields, to cut, to condition, to bale and to haul into the mow.

Maybe you will not even start the haying operation if you do not have enough time to get the bales into the barn before it rains for a couple of days.

Wet bales can easily become moldy. Moldy hay will not be eaten, nor could it be used in the feed grinding process.

This will then cause extra work to roll the bales over, to ensure the bale is dried out on all sides. If the farm needs to bring in the bales of hay or straw from the field, they will need to know if someone should be sent out to roll the bales over to let the bottoms dry out.

It is very important to only pick up and mow away only dry bales. Bales of straw or hay that are still damp can cause a great heat up(self-combustion may occur) in the mow, and many barn fires have happened in the past.

These fires often totally destroy the barns as well as the stored crops, the cattle, and farm equipment as well.

The Forecast

The upcoming elements forecast is what I would consider the second most important thing an instrument station can give me if I’m a farmer. As I mentioned in my article on gardening and weather stations, the same goes for farming.

A farmer is always at the mercy of the outside elements. He will be allowed x-number of hours to bring in crops before it rains, as an example. Or he may have two hundred acres of grain to harvest yet, but in three days, it is going to start snowing. He must maximize his harvest time, to bring in as much of the grain crop as possible.

The weather forecast and present instrument elements data will allow him to figure out the best use of his daylight working hours. It will allow him the best use of the dark hours as well. So as you can see the weather information is needed by any farmer, that way he is not shooting blind.

Summation

The farmer’s respect for and knowledge of the weather is vital to his survival. If he misreads or fails to act properly in any climate situation he will pay dearly for that bad decision.

The farmer has many huge expenses today in his business. Equipment is very high in cost. Building maintenance is costly. Fertilizer is expensive as well. The cost of the best seeds (for top-yielding crops) is expensive as well.

Animal feed, gas for equipment, and the cost of labor are high as well. So with this in mind why would a farmer not be willing to invest in top-of-the-line weather stations, displays, and weather equipment?

The stations should also collect and store data as well. This is the age of highly educated analyzing farmers. So the use of computers, the analysis of data, and high-level planning are keys to successful farming.

So let a highly rated weather station do its thing for you.