Growing season 2010 is well underway

Soon the rains will stop and the soil will begin to dry. Do you know what your soil water status is? With an eKo Pro system you will always know. This year you may find that you can put off the start of your irrigations by more than a month but how will you know?

Read A Tale of Two Vineyards - Case Study 2008-2009 Growing Seasons and see how soil moisture monitoring can make your irrigation decision making straight forward.

eKo Pro System New Features

The eS2000 complete weather station is now available. It uses only one port on a node.

The range of the standard eN2120 nodes was increased from 2000 ft. to over 2 miles with the addition of an inexpensive rf amp. All nodes sold as of April 2010 have the new longer range.

At the same time a new higher performance gateway, the eG3100, was introduced which provides faster response and the ability to use the gateway as a data viewing station and general purpose vineyard web server.

Crossbow Technology Sells the eKo Pro Product Line to Memsic Inc. Dec. 16, 2009 Press Release

Estimating Leaf Water Potentials from Soil Moisture and Vapor Pressure Deficit Data.

Do you hate going out in the midday heat with your pressure chamber to measure leaf water potentials? Camalie Networks has developed a model which estimates Leaf Water Potential (LWP) from soil moisture tension and vapor pressure deficit both of which can be monitored from the comfort of your office or on your cell phone wherever you are. Camalie Networks is the first company to provide this capability.

Camalie Networks installed an 8 node eKo Pro system at Sam Brannan Vineyards in Calistoga at the beginning of the 2009 growing season. This is what Edgar Lantz, owner of Sam Brannan Vineyards, had to say about his system's results at the end of the growing season, "I saved 60% on my water use in 2009.”

Advance Viticulture and the Sonoma County Water Agency's Alternative Irrigation Strategies Demo

Links to Live eKo Pro Systems

eKo View Demo system at Camalie 11-nodes

eKo Camalie-Konrad System   25-nodes

Terraces at Quarry Vineyards/ St. Helena 10 nodes

Sam Brannan Vineyards eKo Pro 8 nodes

Sam Brannan Vineyards/Calistoga 8 nodes  Custom Camalie Networks interface

Brown Estate eKo Pro 7 nodes

Camalie House Mechanical System

Camalie Water System

Call for username and password to log on and try out the eKo View interface for yourself while browsing live data from real vineyards. 650-799-6571

Soil moisture is being consumed and replaced as you can see from this trend of soil moisture tensions at 24" depth as of 9/2/09 from Konrad Vineyards. When the soil moisture tension gets to 150 centibar the vines will have a Leaf Water potential near -13Bar which is where we like to keep it. Usually it takes until late June to reach this level of vine water stress at Konrad Vineyards with its deep clay soils which hold quite a bit of water but, in 2009 it took almost another month to get to this level of stress due to late rains and cool temperatures.

Case Studies:

The latest case study of the use of eKo Pro based monitoring comes from 2009. An eKo Pro system which spanned two vineyards, sharing an internet connection and using only one gateway is reported in A Tale of Two Vineyards - Case Study 2008-2009 Growing Seasons. This shared eKo Pro network which spanned two vineyards separated by about a half mile was used to manage irrigation in these vineyards in 2008 and 2009. The results show two very different irrigation paradigms being used and numerous unexpected learnings which directly affected irrigation decisions. Having visibility into the status of moisture in the soil changes irrigation decision making fundamentally. The second year of monitoring resulted in another 2X increase in yield for Konrad Vineyards to 2.9 tons/acre.

In 2007 Camalie Vineyards used a prototype eKo Pro system to manage its irrigation for record 3.9 ton/acre yield with only 36 gallons of water per vine including pre and post season fertigation. In 2008 fruit set was poor and the yield dropped to 2 tons per acre but in 2009 the vineyard repeated its performance of 3.9 tons/acre again. Crossbow's website presents Camalie Vineyards Case Study including an interview with the grower, Mark Holler.

Press:

A great article New Networks Take Nature’s Pulse in the Innovation section of the Christian Science Monitor was written by Lori Valigra about our wireless sensing. It was published January 23, 2009.

Wines and Vines published the article, Wireless Network Monitors H2O in July 2008 about our success in using wireless soil moisture sensing written by Tom Ulrich.  

On June 19, 2008 Camalie founder Mark Holler presented a technical poster,  High Density Wireless Soil Moisture Monitoring for Deficit Irrigation Management at the ASEV conference in Portland Oregon showing that less labor intensive soil moisture sensing can substitute for manual leaf water potential measurements.  

Crossbow Technology introduced the eKo Pro Series Vineyard monitoring system in April 2008. It is a commercial version of the wireless sensor network developed at Camalie Vineyards.  

Camalie Networks LLC was started up at the same time in April 2008 to sell, service and customize eKo Pro for viticulturists in the Napa Valley.  

Growers and Researchers Using Wireless Vineyard Monitoring Networks: