We wanted to measure the soil temperature in the greenhouse, so we ordered an external sensor for the Ubibot WS1 that we have just bought. It wasn’t expensive – £16 from Amazon. We thought that soil temperature might be just as important to the plants in the green as the air temperature.
The sensor arrived next day and it simply plugs into the micro USB port on the side of the WS1. What did surprise me, however, was that the WS1 measures the temperature of the external probe AS WELL AS the temperature from the WS1 itself. In other words, it is measuring two different temperatures. This obvious as soon as you look at the Ubibot dashboard.
External probe available for the WS1 on Amazon
This makes the WS1 and an external probe a really cost effective solution. If you didn’t want to measure soil temperature, you could measure the temperature outside the greenhouse as well as inside the greenhouse. This was something that I was already considering. And all from one sensor!
Temperatures from the WS1 itself (top left) and from the attached external probe (bottom right)
We installed a new Robinson’s greenhouse a few weeks ago. It is a 14ft x 8ft Robinson Rushmoor greenhouse. This one is aluminimum and powder coated to a pastel green (I think they call it “sage”!). It matches the window frames on the house. It was ordered last November and it arrived at the end of February. It replaces the polytunnel that we set up when we first moved in.
Working out where to site the greenhouse was reasonably straightforward since we didn’t have many options. And none of them were particularly flat. We had to take down an old dry stone wall (to the right in the picture below) and the new greenhouse will now form part of the field boundary. To get things relatively level, we dug some foundations and then brought up some blockwork on the one sided (to the left in the picture below). Then the small dwarf wall was built on top of the blockwork.
The dwarf wall could have been single or double skin (i.e. one or two rows of bricks). We opted for a double width wall. Having seen the price of bricks, I wish we had opted for the single skinned version! All the groundwork took is 3 weeks to complete. Just in time for the fitter to work his magic on the greenhouse. It took a professional fitter 2.5 full days to install this greenhouse – I hate to think how long it would have taken me to do it!
The end result looks fab!!
Digging the foundations for the greenhouse. The soil from the trenches is piled up in the middle as much as possible.Concrete laid. All three tonnes of it! We have used blocks to create “steps” in the concreteOnce the blockwork is up, we can sort out the soil in the inside. The dwarf wall is going to sit on top of the blockwork and the blockwork is going to be covered with “feather boarding”.Outside skin of bricks in place and the returns for the doorway done!Dwarf wall now complete. Two rows of bricks with a set of “soldiers” on top. These are engineering bricks with no holes or frog is this will allow the greenhouse to be fixed directly to the bricks. 4 tonnes of soil put inside the greenhouse to bring the floor level up to the bottom of the dwarf wall internally.Frame installed, no glass.Glass and fancy finials added!
I installed the polytunnel in April/May 2013. It was definitely starting to show signs of it’s age. To be fair, the plastic covering is designed to be replaced every 5 years, so we have done well that I lasted 8 years. The raised beds had also started to rot away. These were the original ones that had come from Tommy Topsoil.
Recently we had been using the polytunnel to house the chickens. They had to be kept indoors due to the outbreak of bird flu in the UK.
The space left by the polytunnel is now being used as a vegetable patch!
No more polytunnel, but a new vegetable patch! It is already planted with two types of potatoes!
Having just installed a new greenhouse, we thought it might be a good idea to monitor the temperature in greenhouse. You would think that there are lots of solutions out there. Nothing complicated. Just a display in the house showing the current temperature in the greenhouse, plus maximum and minimum. Maybe a graph. And connected wireless somehow.
There must be loads around. Let’s look on Google! MMMmm. I must be searching on the wrong terms. Where are they?
The closest I could find is a solution from a company called Ubibot. You will find them here: Ubibot.com. They produce a variety of WiFi environmental sensors for industrial and commercial use. I bought one of their cheaper sensors (WS1) for £78 on Amazon just to see if I can get it to work. Ubibot have a store page on Amazon. You will find it here. The WS1 sensor measures temperature, humidity and light levels. More than a enough for a greenhouse!
According to the blurb that comes with the device, 2xAA batteries will power the device for 4-6 months based on readings that are taken every 15 mins. The device connects to the internet via WiFi and the data is stored in Ubibot’s cloud based platform. There is no subscription fee and it is free to use within certain usage limits. It is clearly designed for much larger scale use and I doubt that one sensor in a greenhouse is ever going to reach the limits of the free account.
The Challenge
The main challenge with this device is setting it up. Obviously with a device at this price point, it has a pretty limited user interface and this can be a challenge when setting it up. Combine this with some fairly scant instructions and if it doesn’t all go to plan first time, then you can be in trouble. This happened to me as something went wrong when I was trying to connect it to me home WiFi. I was trying to do this using my iPhone and connecting to the devices on WiFi network. Somehow, it all went wrong. Even though I had followed the instructions. I reverted to the PC based pages. That didn’t help either.
I finally cracked it by using Ubibot’s PC offline tools. You can download them from here. There was the briefest of mentions of it in some of the Ubibot support pages. It allows you to connect to the device using the micro USB port and set it up without connecting to it via WiFi. You have to download some software from the Ubibot site (the install was a little quirky!), but it was a cinch to set up via this route. I wish I had tried this in the first place as it would have saved so much time! It was much easier than trying to connect to it via WiFi.
Once set up, it connected to my home WiFi network and started posting measurements every 15 minutes! The device (and it’s measurements) appear on the Ubibot data warehousing pages. The main screen shows the latest readings and clicking on the device opens up a set of historical graphs. Wow!
The good stuff
Even though my iPhone was showing only one bar on my WiFi, the WS1 has connected to our WiFi in the house. I am guessing that it is 20m to the greenhouse through a number of thick masonry walls. The WS1 only supports 2.4G WiFi and not 5G WiFi so it is more susceptible to physical obstructions between the access point and the sensor.
Now the data from the WS1 is on the Ubibot platform, I can set up a number of alerts (e.g. sending an email) if some of the data readings reach particular limits. There are some really cool options here. Most of them totally OTT for a greenhouse!
Now the data is on the internet, it is possible to view it from anywhere or even share the data with others. Just on the off-chance that someone wants to know the temperature in your greenhouse!
It integrates with Alexa too! You need to add Ubibot as a skill to Alexa. Just follow the instructions here then you can say “Alexa, what is the temperature of the Greenhouse?” It took me a couple of minutes to set this up. I wasn’t sure how useful this feature might be – either way, it makes a cool demo!
Here’s the view from the data warehouse table view.Here’s the detailed sensor view. There’s not much data here yet as I only got it working this morning!
It has got to that time of the year where the mower is used on a weekly basis. We leave the cuttings to rot down (with just over 2 acres of grass to cut, we don’t really have a choice), so the grass needs to be cut regularly to ensure that the clippings don’t get out of hand. It is amazing what a difference a bit of sun and rain has on the grass!
Yesterday we had a minor incident as an old climbing rope (used for attaching our dog to a tree!) was left in the grass. It didn’t take long for it to wrap itself around the blades of the mower deck and bring proceedings to a swift halt. Fortunately, the dog wasn’t still attached to it!
It didn’t take too long to sort out this morning, but it meant taking the mower deck off the Z425 to cut the old rope away. While I was at it, I thought I just as well give the underside of the deck a good clean as well as lubricating the spindles. The problem with grass cuttings is that they are very alkaline and attack the paint and metal of the mower deck. Although the underside gets a new coat of yellow Hammerite every year, it doesn’t do any harm to give it a bit of a clean every now and then.
This is what happens when someone leaves an old climbing rope in the grass. The mower definitely wasn’t happy!
Fortunately, there was no real damage done and it only took a few minutes to cut away the old rope. It actually took longer to get the mowing deck off the mower! I took the opportunity to clean out the grass and hose down the underside of the mower deck.
I have never had to remove the belt completely from the mower deck. I thought it might be a good idea to take a quick photo of the belt just in case it ever snaps and needs to be replaced.
Well, this is a sure sign that summer is on the way – trays of seedlings that are going to be ready to go into the polytunnel in the next few weeks. Tomatoes, cucumbers, beetroot, mange tout, and lots of flowers (including geraniums and sunflowers).
We put up an 8ft x 20ft polytunnel in May 2013. We put two 8ft x 4ft raised beds down one side and then racking on the other side – it was only 8ft wide so we couldn’t put raised beds on both sides. While it worked, it was the most efficient use of space and the raised beds were a little too wide to reach the back (while not standing in the raised bed itself).
We decided to make the existing raised beds slightly narrower (by cutting down the existing raised beds) and to put them on both sides of the polytunnel. While this gives us slightly less growing area, it is a better use of the overall space and it is much easier to reach the back of the beds (particularly if you have short arms!).
We (actually I mean Jo!) also seem to be a bit more organised this year in terms of sorting out what we want to grow and when it needs to be planted. Rather than deciding on what we want to grow about 2 months after it should have been sown.
This is the original layout for the polytunnel. Unfortunately, two raised beds side by side wouldn’t have left enough space for a walkway.
And here’s the new layout. Rather than 4 wide beds, there are now 5 narrower beds. This leaves room in the middle for a path and means that you can reach the back of the beds without having to stand on them. The workbench now runs across the polytunnel rather than down all of one side.
A few weeks ago the summer arrived. Goodness, we waited long enough! And the temperature in the polytunnel started to soar. While we do remember to water the plants in here, it can be a bit hit and miss. We decided that the plants might benefit from some regular watering and have installed a Hozelock automatic watering system. It is relatively cheap and it does look like the plants appreciate it. It is set up to water them for 10 mins twice a day (6am and 6pm avoiding the heat of the middle of the day).
We started with the Hozelock starter kit, but within a week had to upgrade the timer. The original timer (Hozelock 2705 supplied in the starter kit) had presets (twice a day for 5mins, twice a day for 10 mins etc), but you couldn’t amend the schedule. The other reason for the upgrade was the original one packed up! I thought it was flat batteries (it uses two C type batteries), but when I opened the battery compartment, it was full of water! Even after trying to dry it out (and with new batteries), it was still dead. Ho hum. I will put it down to operator error, but I thought I had tightened up the back of the compartment properly (it is screwed on and has a rubber gasket to keep the water out).
The upgraded unit (Hozelock AC Pro) while a bit more expensive does seem to do the trick. It was easy to set up and I like the over-ride facility in case you think the plants need some additional watering during the day. It did come with a rain sensor than cancels the watering program if it rains. However, this isn’t of much use in a polytunnel!
We added some bits to the original starter kit – in particular, we add a couple of spray nozzles and these seem to work a treat. When then have drippers that feed the courgette plant and drippers in each of the tomatoes plants. The system has been really quite flexible and B&Q (not one of my favourite stores) does seem to stock a lot of the bits for this system. The other thing that seems to work well is the Hozelock extension bar that means that we don’t need to keep unplugging hoses if you need to fill a watering can or wash the car.
We had to install an “extension bar” to be able to connect up all the Hozelock devices. At £25, it is expensive, but it does mean that you don’t have to keep unplugging hoses to fill up a watering can or wash the car!
Last year, we had a couple of wasp nests – one in the orchard and another in the bottom field. We were lucky. A very nice badger came along and dug both of them up and then ate the lavae. This year we have a wasp nest in the vegetable patch. Given that the have a couple of months to go before they reach the end of the season, we decided that we had to get rid of it. Otherwise, someone (me, Jo or the dog) are going to get stung. Jo got stung last year and she isn’t that keen to be stung again.
Given that it is a vegetable patch we weren’t that keen on using pesticides here, however, we are assured that the chemicals breakdown as soon as they are exposed to sunlight. Even so, I don’t think that we will be planting anything at this end of the vegetable patch this year.
Jo’s idea was to whack the wasp’s nest with a mattock and then run as fast as you can! I think the only thing that this approach would guarantee would be some pissed off wasps. Alternatively, you can get someone suitably attired to spray them with chemicals. I’ll vote for the man with the can!
Not quite sure what is going on here, but it looks like the insecticide might being having an effect!
The flagstones went down on the new patio before Christmas, but unfortunately the weather wasn’t good enough to be able to point them at that time – it was either too cold or too wet. Well, the weather has started to turn (I did say “started”!) and we started pointing the flagstones this week. We are using the same lime based pointing that we used on the house so that it all matches. Even at this time of the year, there is a risk of rain or frost getting to the pointing before it cures. The pointing is protected overnight with a large sheet of hessian. So far this has worked well for us.
It has take a week or so to complete the pointing on the lower (and larger) of the two terraces. I reckon that the pointing will be complete on the upper terrace too by the end of next week. You wouldn’t think that it would make much of a difference, but it really has pulled the whole area together.
The lime pointing is being mixed to the same proportions as we used on the house:
1: 1: 5 1 portion 3.5 N /sqmm Hydraulic lime : 1 portion white cement : 5 portions Nosterfield River sand
The materials have all been acquired from Womersleys that specialise in materials for restoration projects.
Now the weather has improved we have started pointing the patio. We are using the same lime based pointing that we used on the house. The fresh pointing is protected from the rain and the frost overnight with a large sheet of hessian.
It has taken the best part of a week, but now the lower terrace of the patio is pointed. It makes a tremendous difference to the appearance of this space.
