Heaps of soil in the sun, that is our view this week!

We are starting a little sensor calibration experiment, where we create a variety of soils as we find in our garden experiment across Flanders to test the soil moisture sensor of our garden dagger in.

The idea is to test how the raw measurements from the sensor (counting electromagnetic fluxes through the soil) can be converted into actual soil moisture measurements in different soil types.

Such conversions exist and are provided by the developers of the sensor, but we were eager to test this for ourselves, to get a better understanding of how the sensor work, to get a calibration specifically for the range of conditions in our project, and to potentially contribute to that global classification.

Master student Jens will spend the coming weeks installing sensors in these pots, monitoring them and analyzing the soils.