It’s been six or seven years since I purchased an indoor/outdoor thermometer. Now they have hygrometers (humidity measurement) as well as thermometers! I’m not entirely happy with the backlit display, because it can’t be turned off at night (only set down to 30% brightness), but it sure is nice to be able to keep track of the greenhouse, germination chamber, outside, and inside temperatures and humidity levels in one display!
Featured Image: The new digital indoor/outdoor temperature and humidity display includes a forecast bubble that is based on the GPS location.
My old indoor/outdoor wireless thermometer started having problems last year: beeping constantly because it couldn’t maintain a signal with the outdoor unit. Changing batteries, factory reset, nothing made it stop. I took the batteries out and it sat in a box for most of the last year. After building the microgreenhouse, I figured I’d try it again and see if it would work. It’s been working fine for the last six weeks, but on Monday, it started beeping again. I tried again to change batteries, do a factory reset, I even took the outside unit apart to see if it had a short inside. Again, I couldn’t find anything. I needed to order fans for the germination chamber, so after verifying that neither Lowe’s nor Home Depot had any (due to being November – “check back in April” they said), I figured I’d pick something up on Amazon. They don’t make them like the one I had anymore: I could get something for cheap that was so much simpler as to be nearly worthless or I could get something fancier but more expensive. This was a tool investment, so I went with one of the more expensive (but not the most expensive!) ones: the Acu-rite Home Environment Display.
Sure, it’s fun to have new toys. But what’s even more fun is having a new toy that does an important job!
Squeak is always excited when I get home from delivering microgreens on Fridays: she doesn’t see me between 9:30am and 3pm right now! And if I have any food in hand, this is the look I get until I share and/or finish eating.
Three trays out of the germination chamber today: a mild (bottom), a spicy (middle), and a pea (top). Growing microgreens is a science, one that I haven’t totally mastered yet: the mild and spicy had new soil in them that didn’t want to fully absorb water from the bottom up, which impacted germination during the time in the chamber. These are fairly forgiving seed varieties, so they should pop up just fine despite the delayed germination.