When it comes to a successful garden, we all know Mother Nature's rules. She can choose to rain just after your water or to freeze all of your squash blooms in one night. She has the ability to blow your hanging pots clear off the terrace. With a slight increase in relative humidity, she may transform your small greenhouse into a plant-killing steam room.
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What is a greenie to do? You may rely on local TV forecasts based on approximations or guessing from almanacs, but neither strategy is adapted to your garden's exact needs. The solution is to get scientific with a weather station that offers real-time data about conditions on your property and includes alerts that will notify you when it's time to intervene for the sake of your plants.
How Weather Stations and Alarms Help Plants and Vegetables
By installing a weather station in (or near) your garden, you eliminate all guessing in monitoring the conditions of your plants, veggies, and flowers. This device will display the exact temperature, humidity, dew point, barometric pressure, and wind speed in your garden.
Alarms can notify you when any preprogrammed thresholds for the variables they measure are met. For example, you could set an alarm to notify you through text message when the temperature in your garden reaches 95 degrees. These warnings enable gardeners to take precautionary measures against the forces of nature that had previously ruined the results of their labor.
Here are some examples of how using weather station alarms can help save plants:
Scenario 1: Frost Damage Prevention
Next to her cherished vegetable garden, Martha keeps a weather station. She has set the station to notify her whenever the temperature falls below 40 degrees. The alarm goes off early one morning, informing Martha that the temperature is 39 degrees. She dashes outdoors and covers the veggies in the garden to protect them from frost.
Scenario 2: Mildew Control in a Greenhouse
Peter lives in a location where the temperature and humidity change on a daily basis, and the tomatoes in his greenhouse are always covered in mildew. He buys a weather station and installs it near the greenhouse with a temp/hum sensor (connected to a sensor transmitter) to provide him with information about the conditions in the greenhouse, as well as a dewpoint alarm to alert him when conditions are favorable for standing water. When he receives a notification that standing water is collecting in the greenhouse, he walks out to ventilate or drain condensation as needed, so preventing mildew.
Scenario 3: Wind Protection for Hanging Plants and Vegetables
Lisa has a lovely display of potted and hanging plants outside her home, but when the winds pick up, they frequently end up destroyed on the ground. Lisa places a weather station near the plants and sets an alarm for wind speed, so she will be notified if the wind speed exceeds 25 miles per hour. When heavy winds arrive, Lisa receives a text message instructing her to bring vulnerable plants onto the porch to protect them.
Davis's Advantage
Davis Instruments has spent more than 30 years honing our rugged weather stations, the Vantage Vue and Vantage Pro2, which carry an industry-leading degree of setup and alarm settings. To take use of our feature-rich website, WeatherLink.com, and the WeatherLink app, each Davis weather station can be utilized with a console and/or push data to the Cloud with WeatherLink Live. Both the Vantage Vue and the Vantage Pro 2 can warn you of impending high winds or cold temperatures. Most importantly, you can receive warnings regarding specific issues in your garden right now.
How to Set Alarms on a Davis Weather Station
Simply click the ALARM button on your Davis console to enter HIGH ALARMS mode (use the HI/LOW button to toggle into LOW ALARMS mode), then use the and > keys to pick the parameter you want to monitor. To set the alarm threshold, press the 2nd and then the SET keys. To modify the number, use the + and - keys, and the > and > keys to select the next digit. When finished, press the DONE button to save the settings and the DONE button again to exit ALARM mode.
What happens if the threshold is reached? Your console will ring an alarm, and you will rush to protect your cherished roses and cucumbers.
But what if you're not sitting right next to your console? This is when WeatherLink.com comes in handy! You may also set a notification and have WeatherLink send you a text message or email depending on your console alarms if you're uploading data to WeatherLink.com. Simply log in and select notifications, then choose Daily Summary, Email Notification, or Text/SMS Notifications from the "wrench" symbol under your account image on the right sidebar. You can set the alarms immediately on the web if you own a Vantage Connect or EnviroMonitor and have WeatherLink Live.
More Information on Davis Weather Stations
Davis Instruments is ready to help you if you're a gardener trying to take things to the next level or a weather enthusiast looking to establish a foundation of hyperlocal weather data. Please contact us if you have any queries regarding designing a station to meet the demands of your garden.