I've been wanting to share this with you for several days...but couldn't upload photos...
anyway, here goes...
Some of you may have noticed several foreign objects in my pots. No?? are you blind? hahaha
in several pots, ones that I thought had inadequate soil/drainage, I bored down, carefully, and inserted a plastic drinking straw which had many 'cuts' along it. then refilled the hole with sand. so, that's one thing. you can read and see pics in my previous posts.
the other thing is a 'flag'. although I do have pot labels, telling the strain, number of this plant, and date in soil. I can't always see that label, the pot is turned, or branches blocking my view. these 'flags' are color coded, so I can identify each strain, and each individual, immediately. green for mango, red for JH, yellow for thc bomb, yellow/green for medibud....and so on. of course, now, even if I mix the pot arrangement, I can identify each plant by sight...but I really needed the flags in the beginning...and they're all faded now anyway, lol.
the third thing, and the actual subject of this post, is a wooden stick. it's one half of disposible chopsticks. like the ones you'd get from the chinese restaurant.
so, anyway, I have shoved one 'stick', down to the bottom of the pot, or as far as it would go. this was done outside the expected root zone, but not right against the pot wall.
so now, when I want to know how moist a pot is, I just pull up the wooden stick, take a look. if soil is sticking to it...it's wet! if no soil is sticking to it and it's darker than it's original color(a yellow/tan, darker would be brownish)...it's still moist, water later. but if the stick is almost its original color, no soil is sticking to it and it looks hella dry...water that bitch!
don't be concerned about the roots. I replace the stick into the original hole, or very close to it, if it filled in when the stick was removed. plants are not intelligent, but they're wise. it will learn, almost immediately, that the spot where the stick is, is not a good place to grow into, so little or no root damage is done by shoving the stick back in. and I'd still have to shove the moisture meter in to the same depth to get a reading. now, I don't have to carry it around to 25 pots!
I think I got the pics done right...and showed the water meter data to back up the 'chopstick' data, LOL.
Pic 1-2: DRY, needs water
Pic 3-4: Moist, not yet...
Pic 5: WET, don't even think of watering...or I'll have to bitch slap ya, LOL
Pic 6: good example of my 'foreign' objects; drain, flag, label, moisture meter(chopstick half)