EasyBloom: Taking Another Look

The Wall Street Journal featured the EasyBloom and I posted about it back in December 2009. Maybe I was too quick to dismiss this product as just another gimmicky green gadget. I have an overflowing file of them that never see the light of day on this blog because I do not want to waste your time.

Thanks to reader James Thompson, I now know that there is a different technology used in the EasyBloom that appears to be more accurate than the commonly available moisture meters that I do not recommend.

I'm going to buy one of these and test it in a variety of situations. I am particularly interested in how it can be used to help urbanites grow fresh food. If you own an EasyBloom, please share your experience with it in a comment.

It may have significant potential as a learning tool. Self-styled veteran gardeners may pooh-pooh it but there are many more of us who do not have a green thumb and didn't study a lot of plant science in school.

Most of us living in the city need all the technological help (like SIPs) we can get. We live in the digital world. The world of dirt was long ago when I was born. It’s not coming back folks.

Amazon.com EasyBloom customer reviews (57 reviews - 4-star average) 

Following is the EasyBloom forum Q&A that James linked too in his comment. Thanks again James.

steve m. 2009-02-26 16:12	General Gardening » Soil Moisture %? How do you measure soil moisture? Using electricity? What does the % unit mean? What a great idea. It is nice to see a start up company in production!
Matt E. 2009-03-01 12:38	General Gardening » Soil Moisture %? Hi Steve, Good question! This is one we have spent a lot of time answering for ourselves, so I will be happy to explain our soil moisture technology. Most of the soil moisture meters on the consumer market use a simple technology that applies a voltage to two conductive leads in the soil. The current that flows through the soil is proportional to the amount of water the soil holds. We rejected this technology because it is highly affected by saline soils, and the conductive leads can get dirty and lose their calibration very easily. EasyBloom licenses a special technology for measuring soil moisture from Decagon Devices Inc. It measures the "capacitance" of the soil, which is the ability of the soil to store a non-conductive electrical charge. This technology does not require bare leads exposed to the soil and is not as susceptible to the effects of saline soils. Percent soil moisture refers to the volumetric percentage of water in the soil at any given time. While soil keeps a constant volume, every soil has pore space that makes up to 35% of the volume of the soil. EasyBloom measures the amount of water held in the pore space as a percentage of the volume of the soil. This is the same technology used to sense soil moisture on the Mars Phoenix Lander! Thank you for your interest. Matt Senior Agricultural Engineer
steve m. 2009-03-10 16:38	General Gardening » Soil Moisture %? Matt-Thanks for the information. Decagon makes fairly nice moisture and water tension sensors. They are not terribly dependant on soil conductivity and are reliable in a wide variety of soils. Only issue I've seen is a problem with radiated emissions at the frequency the sensor is stimulated at-CE and FCC stuff. Nice job. Yall have a really neat product. Steve Miller EE, Sensor/Interface Design, PASCO Scientific

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