Anyone plantlink/other garden soil water system?

I can see the plastic sheeting working very well with an automated watering system. My initial goal in using the plastic was to reduce my well pump run time but there are other advantages to it :
 
http://www.robertmarvel.com/whyplasticmulch.html
 
I also spread grass clippings over the black plastic to help to keep the soil cool in the hot summer and it looks nice too.
 
Mike.
 
EDIT
 
I should have mentioned that I like to till the soil and get the plastic down as early in the season as possible because it warms the soil which helps early plantings like peas and lettuce.
 
We've been using a weed barrier fabric because it breathes. However, maybe breathing is not necessary, and so plastic would be better?
 
NeverDie said:
We've been using a weed barrier fabric because it breathes. However, maybe breathing is not necessary, and so plastic would be better?
Letting air in is a good thing but letting sunlight in causes weeds to grow. I think that it's something to learn from experience. As long as your material blocks weeds and warms the soil then I think it would be good that it lets rain pass through it.
 
Mike.
 
NeverDie said:
Glad it's working out for you.  What kind of soil moisture sensors are they?  i.e. do they work by conductance, capacitance, TDR, or something else?  I've a couple years experience with the conductance type, but they are always going out of calibration: first because of fertilizers entering the soil changes the conductance, and then second as the plant roots consume those nutrients.  I get the impression most people are unaware.   Unfortunately, calibrations are laborious to do, so I need to find a better type of sensor to switch to that won't be affected by anything but just soil moisture alone.
 
I have been using these sensors for years, they work great and keep the calibration if they are installed correctly. I was using them with Homeseer and collected a lot of data. You will have better accuracy if also install a soil temperature sensor.
 
ttps://www.amazon.com/Davis-Instruments-6440-Moisture-Sensor
 
I think that it would take a lot of sensors to give you useful info in a large garden. Moisture can vary over a 20 sqft area and as it's been mentioned, different plants like different conditions.
 
Mike.
 
Opinions seem to be all over the map regarding both the granular matrix type and the gypsum type of soil moisture sensors.  Some people (like Picta) have a great experience and others don't.  It's definitely true that soil temperature will affect the readings, and one advantage to using a pre-made one like the Davis is that you can use their correction formula.
 
So, it seems the only way to really know is to try it for oneself.   I think this summer or maybe the next  I might give a nominally similar DIY version a try on some indoor potted plants:  http://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/how-to-make-cheap-soil-moisture-sensor-2/#comment-202129
in part because indoors the temperature is fairly uniform.  I imagine the Davis ones are about as good as they get, but it would be more fun if each type of potted plant, with probably a different uptake rate, could have its own sensor--and that's difficult to cost  justify unless the sensors are truly cheap.  
 
I can see how the Davis sensors would make sense for big farms having large level fields, though, because it's probably well tilled soil with a uniform crop, with each plant being nearly the same and so having about the same uptake rate at any given time.  When I started this two years ago I thought the same might hold true for my lawn, which guzzles water, but I've since learned that the soil composition underneath my lawn varies quite a bit, and making it uniform would require a lot of effort.  Also, I've found that sprinkler irrigation is very difficult to make make uniform after-the-fact, and the system that came with my house definitely isn't.  Lastly, the amount of sun and wind and even rain exposure varies as well, because the house and fences and trees block the sun and wind and redistribute rain to varying degrees in some areas more than others.  To further complicate, you have tree roots aggressively competing for moisture in some areas and not others.  With benefit of hindsight, I can now see that those causes of non-uniformity all contributed to make it really, really hard to generalize from just a few soil moisture samples.  Shifting to underground dripline irrigation would undoubtedly improve the uniformity and improve efficiency, but the other causes of non-uniformity would remain. So, in a nutshell, even though I had 10 wireless soil moisture sensors (with temperature compensation), it still wasn't enough to match the problem. To do it right would either require removing the sources of non-uniformity (some of which just aren't going to budge), or else a whole lot more sensors and much finer grained zoning. I already have 10 zones. It might take 30, maybe 40, to get a tight enough fit to save a significant amount of water without also killing parts of the lawn. Until there are fairly cheap, individually addressable sprinkler heads, though, or something similar for subsoil irrigation, the cost of setting that up properly renders it impractical.
 
On the other hand, 10 sensors was enough to keep everything green, so they are good for that.  I'm just skeptical about the potential for really huge  water savings.
 
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