I dunno anney, I look at my tomato plants and decide myself when they need water b'c they tell me so by the way they look. ( smile)

But if it's something you want to try, why not go for it. Do you think it might be of more use to the large commercial farmer than the hobby home grower?

Carolyn

Carolyn

No, it isn't something I think I need, either. With a heavy mulch and my clay-loam soil (at least in my raised beds) none of my plants need much if any water. Though I put out drip irrigation last year, I think I turned it on just once, after finding the top of the soil under the mulch was getting hard and dry.

I think the whole bit about transferring the signal from one technical device to another is a bit much for a home gardener. A blinking light or a sound of some kind out among the tomatoes would probably work better. Hook it up to an automatic watering system if that strikes somebody's fancy.

The reason I posted it is because so many newbies seem to be so perplexed about the watering needs of tomato plants. Eventually the observant will be able to tell if their plants need water, but there are apparently lots of people who haven't arrived there yet. Most overwater their plants.

Another "alarm" device has been devised for houseplants in containers based on a different water-sensing technique. Interactive Telecommunications Researchers Develop A Device For Plants To Send Text Messages

January 1, 2009 Â Interactive telecommunications researchers designed a soil-moisture sensor device that can allow a house plant to communicate with its owner. The device can send short messages to a mobile phone or, by using a service called Twitter, it can send short messages to the Internet. The messages can range from reminders to water the plant, a thank you or a warning that you over- or under-watered it. To communicate, probes in the soil emit electric waves. A voltage level based on the moisture content is sent through two wires to a circuit board that compares the optimum moisture level with the current one. A local network receives this data and allows the plant to send a message through the device.

I suspect a sensor of this kind would work better for container tomatoes than those planted in the earth, since container soil has pretty much the same moisture content. Not sure about how reliable measuring earth soil moisture content would be.

Still, a "notification" device might be helpful to people who are baffled about watering tomatoes. [Of course there are good old-fashioned moisture meters that work fine with a push into the soil.]

And yes, I suspect the first device was really designed for commercial growers who must do things on a large busy scale.