Soil Scout | Turbexfarmworx

Soil Scout provides the most advanced fully buried underground wireless soil sensor and monitoring solution for professionals in Agriculture, Golf and Sports turf maintenance.

Several golf courses and sports fields worldwide, including such iconic venues as the Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia Phillies, use Soil Scout to maintain their turf in tip-top shape while reducing maintenance costs and water consumption.

Farmers and agriculture professionals around the world use Soil Scout to understand their fields, optimize soil conditions for better growth and improve crop production, also reducing operational costs and water consumption.

Why Should I Monitor Soil?

Perhaps you have never actually measured soil temperature or moisture. After all, it’s a lot of work, and in the end “it is what it is”, right? Turning the tables, there is no field work or plant development which wouldn’t depend on and influence soil conditions. So the question is rather:

How would your farming change, if you knew your soil conditions exactly at all times, without even going out?

The Soil Scout Monitoring Solution, with its groundbreaking underground radio technology, is a true game-changer in how fields are managed. The opportunity to permanently bury wireless Soil Scout® sensors across fields, do fieldwork, and forget about the sensors makes soil monitoring simpler and more consistent than ever.

With your local real-time 3D underground weather map, your view on soil behavior will never be the same again.

Smart Farming = Targeted Soil Management

Precision Agriculture is well-known as a consept, where inputs are regulated site specifically based on above-ground observations. But as the most important growth events – water and nutrient uptake – take place in the root zone, why have all Precision Ag applications focused on what happens in the air?

Monitoring the above-ground has been ridiculously easy, compared to the underground.

In practise, usually when crop development starts showing noticeable symptoms, the cause could have been seen from the underground a while earlier. On the other hand, a dynamic soil moisture variability map reveals persistent root causes of yield variation, and helps to figure out corrective actions.

Precision Ag relying on weather and plant observations is doomed to remain reactive, while a real-time online view into the soil can genuily rise into proactive, smart farming.

Monitor the Good, Average and Poor

There is no right or wrong answer to how many sensors should be placed in one field, and where exactly. However, sensing locations with different yield potential for certain, is key to meaningful data. As a start off rule of thumb, we recommend two depths at three well chosen locations in each field to be monitored. This enables actions on the extreme values, or averaging data across these reference points.

Observing how soil behavior differs in good and poor areas, reveals problems instantly.

Water infiltration speed, moisture profiling, drainage performance etc. are absolutely crucial factors, but any numerical values on these are very hard to interpret. However, comparing such figures from good, average and poor areas is an easy and straight-forward task for anyone with common agronomic sense.

This is why monitoring soil at multiple depths in several locations produces insightful data to support tangible actions based on what you see.

A common starting point for many agricultural customers is to begin their Soil Scout experience with a set of six to nine sensors for a ten hectare field, but Soil Scout experts always work out the best configuration in collaboration with the persons with the deepest expertise – the farmers themselves.

Why Choose Soil Scout

Soil Scout is the only soil sensor solution you can freely distribute across a field — Install and Forget!
The system is preconfigured and will start operation as you switch the Base Station on. Scouts are the quickest to install, and you can plant more sensors at any time. They connect to the Base Station automatically — no additional data plans are needed.
The small sensors run for 20 years underground without maintenance. They don’t disturb fieldwork and are safe from wheel pressure and wildlife, resulting in superior cost-efficiency over the years.
Smart sensor placement provides real-time monitoring of real differences and enables treating each area individually and optimally. Our well-trained Soil Scout staff will assist you in choosing the best locations.
When irrigating, instant before/during/after data enables both quick reactions and long-term ability to maintain optimal soil moisture and save irrigation costs.
The sensors operate out of sight year-to-year, providing you with a long-term view of soil behavior. As a result, you get accurate and informed soil management instead of traditions and guesswork, and build up long-time records for your future needs.