Equipment Every Greenhouse Should Have

by John Erwin

Professor, Department of Horticultural Science

University of Minnesota

How many times would you like to know your pH and EC immediately to decide what to fertilize with at that moment? What is your plant temperature? Is your media temperature what you think it is? Do you have a virus in your crop? Are your lights positioned to give you the amount of light you need for night break lighting or supplemental lighting? What temperatures did your plants get exposed to during shipping? New instruments available on today can answer these questions.

Mini Data Loggers

Sometimes it is helpful to know what temperatures your crops are exposed to in trucks, boxes, planes, loading docks, or when overwintering outdoors or in a cooling facility. In such cases, you don’t want to have, or can’t have, a large data logger and wires all over the place. There are now mini data loggers available that are terrific for the purposes mentioned above. They are small, and have built in sensors or small and short sensor wires that allow you to put them in small places. They are also waterproof. The only drawback is that they can be a little expensive; they cost about $200 to 400. Having said this, they are very helpful for certain specific circumstances. They will run on a small battery and you download the data from them directly into a computer. More information can be found at http://www.onsetcomp.com/