In this interview with Patrick Henry, CEO and Dr. Jeff Campbell, GroGuru’s Chief Science Officer, they discuss the best advice that they can give to the consumers using GroGuru’s solutions. The GroGuru sensors monitor soil salinity and EC, and are easy to install. Contact us for a quote for your individual growing needs.
Patrick: What is your best advice for people using the GroGuru solution in the indoor and horticulture growing market?
Jeff: In that case, some of the best applications are to automate your irrigation. Now you can set the timing. You can irrigate only when you need to. You can turn on your drip system based on thresholds for irrigation. You can also monitor salinity in the actual growing medium. You can see if you’re building up salts in the medium and know when you might experience nutrient lockout.
Patrick: In outdoor growing, sometimes there are limitations on when you can access well water or how frequently you can run your irrigation system, whether it’s a drip irrigation system in an orchard or center pivot irrigation in a cornfield. What are your best recommendations in the outdoor growing market? Is it so variable that there’s not one consistent set of recommendations?
Jeff: There’s really not one consistent set of recommendations. One of the strengths of our software is that we look at forecasted ET and how much water is available in the soil. We can start forecasting into the future what we think water levels will be in your soil.
We can say, “We think you’re going to need to irrigate in seven days.” If you have water available in five days, and the next period is another five days after that, you will want to water after five days. You won’t want to skip that watering. Then you’re in trouble. You’re going to stress your plants before you have the next chance at water. We can tell you how long to run the system based on the moisture levels before the scheduled irrigation time.
Patrick: Do you have any parting comment or key thoughts related to adopting sensor technology to help manage irrigation?
Jeff: Farmers have been managing irrigation for millennium.
Patrick: Yes, back to Egypt.
Jeff: Yes. That’s what has allowed us to have cities. It’s been done mainly on rule of thumb. Sometimes it’s no more sophisticated than walking around a field and kicking your heel into the dirt. There’s nothing wrong with that. Farmers will always do that in the future. They should do that. What we can do is give them a much better view of what’s actually going on in the soil and help them manage that resource for the best yield and best use of input.
Patrick: This has been great. I’m here with Jeff Campbell, GroGuru’s Chief Science Officer. I’m Patrick Henry, the CEO of GroGuru, signing off. Tune in next time.
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