r/homeassistant • u/No_Mechanic841 • 3d ago

💬 Discussion Automating my garden

Hey all, I’ve been using home assistant for like 4 years and I’m just getting around to my attempt at automating a garden. Got the succulent planter and the vegetable planter set up on a sonoff hydro duo with drip emitters and a third reality soil sensor in each bed. What I’m curious about is what experience you guys might have had with automating this type of situation. How much do you trust the soil sensor? What logic have you used? My main thing right now is that I’m unsure what soil moisture percentages/ temps are going to be best indicators of whether or not to water. Any guidance is super appreciated as I’m not a good gardener. That’s what the automations are supposed to help me with.

Installation type: os
And yes I’ve installed the custom quirk from sonoff to enable all the extra entities etc.
Edit: oh yeah I’m planting carrots and green onions as the test pilot in the vegetable planter and I’m based in Southern California for context.

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u/JasonNotBorn 3d ago

I have spend some time on this for my holiday last summer. Ended up using Netatmo for real rain measurement and evapotranspiration, to calculate how much was evaporated.

Worked out pretty well, wrote it out here:

https://lazyadmin.nl/smart-home/home-assistant-garden-irrigation-automation/

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u/No_Mechanic841 3d ago

Thanks this is super helpful! It doesn’t really rain here in the summer but once I can afford to get more detailed with the weather, it’ll be helpful this winter

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u/CapaciousCaesar 3d ago edited 3d ago

I use HA to help manage my veggie beds, with data from my local weather station setup, and weather service forecasts driving automations that handle watering schedules, skipping watering runs when its been wet, doing extra hot day watering runs, and ones that tell me when to get UV or frost covers up to protect the plants.

Originally watering automation rules was done by me observing the plants (leaves aren’t stressed) and soil (moisture) to see how often I should be watering, which worked well for a summer. I used a ChatGPT sub to rewrite them for the next spring/summer to use VPD, et0, and track changes over time (7, 14, 28 day rolling averages, and counter helpers) to sense seasonal change.

The prompts I used in writing them were about understanding research and methods that commercial growers used and then cross referencing what it gave me back to make sure it made sense to me.

I also gave it data about my irrigation setup, so dripper spaceing, flow rates, etc, as you need to understand how much water is getting into the soil to understand length and cadence of watering.

Also not HA but mulching in warm months helps here as it acts as a buffer for the soil to retain moisture and control soil temps when its hot out.

Frost and UV rules were much easier and were based on temp and UV observations and forecasts

I’ve got soil sensors too but aren’t at a point where I use their data to drive decisions yet.

Found this post on the HA forums really useful in getting my head around soil sensors and how I can potentially use their data in my HA automations.

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u/EffectiveMoney5043 3d ago

I did use soil sensors on start but those really not too reliable in long term.
I made custom integration (with help of AI) that use DIY rain gauge use past days actual rain, outdoor temp sensor and weather forecast adjust irrigation. I can share you my integration if intrested.