(Original Article written by Schneider Electric – link below)
Innovative automated irrigation system cuts costs, improves product quality, giving greenhouses a competitive advantage.
Consistency Improves Quality
By watering each hanging basket to its necessary moisture level, plants are uniformly of better quality, leading to higher sales and less waste. Plus, production costs are lower because the process becomes more efficient and water waste is eliminated. The process is simply monitored and documented for evaluating plant quality improvements.
Consistent product quality is important to ensure plants can be sold. This can be especially challenging when dealing with different varieties of flowers. Even identical baskets may not need the same amount of water due to differing conditions by location in a greenhouse. For instance, each basket may be exposed to different air flow, temperature and sunlight, which impacts
moisture loss.
Examination of baskets grown using the timed watering method shows that there are often large weight differences between baskets. One test showed basket weights varying from 3 to 6 pounds each, indicating a huge difference in soil moisture. After the
OASIS is installed, the basket weights even out after just one pass.
“Knowing that each basket is going to be watered to exactly the same weight takes a lot of stress off the grower. The grower has the peace of mind that all plants are intelligently watered, so OASIS is an industry game changer. Demonstrating the importance of watering consistency has helped us open some eyes and close some sales. Some people have expressed an audible disbelief of the inconsistent watering happening in their greenhouses. It‘s been the same situation everywhere we went.” Len Logsdon, Owner Control Dekk.
Read original article here.