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My $85 moisture meter read 'dry' on a pot that was drowning
Back in April I got one of those fancy digital moisture meters because my philodendron kept yellowing no matter what I did. Cost me $85 at a local greenhouse in Portland. I trusted it for two months, watering only when it said the soil was dry. Turns out the probe was giving false readings because the peat mix had gone hydrophobic. The soil was bone dry on top but soaked deeper down. By the time I realized it, the roots were mush. I went back to the old wooden skewer trick and stuck a chopstick in the pot to check. That meter now sits in a drawer. Has anyone else had one of these digital meters lie to them, or did I just get a bad unit?
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matthewp5217d ago
Curious how deep you were sticking that probe when it read dry. Those cheap metal prongs usually only check the first few inches of soil, so if your top layer was dry but the bottom was soaked, the meter wasn't really lying, it was just reading the wrong spot. Did you ever test it against the chopstick at the same depth to see if they actually disagreed?
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