Now that the growing season is behind us, we can analyze the data and share practical examples with you. In this article, we will delve deeper into one of the features of the PlantData.Live platform: automatic irrigation controlled from the cloud.

Proper irrigation is an important part of any tree and plant protection plan. Each location has its own specific needs (soil type, existing plants...) and limitations. These limitations are often:

• dynamically: e.g. depending on the weather, presence of owners, soil moisture...
• practical in nature: e.g. concrete pours, other locations under your supervision...
• difficult to predict: construction plans or the weather can change in the short term
• need your attention at the same time: e.g. during a dry period, you need to irrigate many sites.

PlantData.Live offers you an end-to-end irrigation solution that allows you to:

• Sites to monitor: with online sensors, you can closely track the condition of your trees and plants, such as measuring the water potential in the soil, dendrometry measurements, as well as your infrastructure, such as the pressure in the water pipes and whether your pump has power to operate
• Establishing irrigation schedules: Set up schedules that determine when irrigation is allowed and when it is not.
• Controlling irrigation: Turn the irrigation on/off manually or based on a schedule in combination with sensor data
• Be alerted to problems: Receive notifications when certain problem situations occur (too low pressure buildup during irrigation, too high or too low soil moisture...)
• Reporting retrospectively: Provide your customers with a complete overview of the situation at any given moment and the actions taken

Practical example: irrigate during groundwater extraction

In this practical example, we will focus on a specific construction project where the surrounding trees and plants need to be monitored so that they do not suffer any consequences from the groundwater extraction on the site.

Design of the practical example

The site consists of:

• 3 different zones
• • Each with its own sprinkler
  • Each with a soil suction tension sensor
• One pump that serves all zones (no separate control per zone)
• A Honeywell MIP (water) pressure sensor in the water line
• The irrigation pump recovers a portion of the pumped water from the groundwater drainage

Configuration of the irrigation

For the specific site, it was predetermined that the suction pressure must always remain between 8 kPa (rather moist) and 30 kPa (rather dry). Due to construction activities, spraying is not allowed during the day. The responsible tree technician determines that spraying may take place every day from 9:00 PM for a maximum of 7 hours.

The construction company communicates the schedule to the tree technician. On days when concrete is being poured, the tree technician can remotely interrupt the irrigation.

On the PlantData.Live dashboard, this leads to the following configuration:

The PlantData.Live platform regularly checks the readings of the suction pressure sensors between 9:00 PM and 4:00 AM. The tree technician determines that irrigation should not occur when the average value of these soil suction pressure sensors is below 10 kPa and can further refine this during the groundwater extraction based on his observations. The tree technician decides that an alarm is only necessary when the average suction pressure is above 25 kPa. Consequently, no alarm is set when it drops below 10 kPa.

Results

During the well pumping period, the tree technician has two instruments available to monitor the suction pressure in these zones:

• The PlantData.Live irrigation dashboard. This dashboard contains two types of information:
• • A quick overview of the situation at this moment, including color codes to easily follow the picture
  • An overview of the past few days to determine the trend and make proactive decisions
• Automatic alerts via Email, Teams, Telegram, Whatsapp, or an old-fashioned SMS.

During most of the summer months, the suction pressure was nicely between the established upper and lower limits, and irrigation was carried out at night for 7 hours. A typical week - for example, the week of August 11, 2025, to August 17, 2025, looks as follows:

However, at the beginning of July, there was a clear trend where the soil became systematically wetter. For most of July, the suction tension flirted with the lower limit of 10 kPa. In the week of July 18, 2025, through July 24, 2025, the average suction tension ultimately fell below this threshold:

On the night of July 19 and 20, the full active period was still irrigated. On July 21, the suction tension was so low that it did not exceed the lower limit of 10 kPa. Consequently, there was no irrigation throughout the entire night.

Thanks to this interruption, the soil became less moist. As a result, the average suction tension on July 22 initially reached a level higher than 10 kPa again. Due to the new irrigation, it dropped below 10 kPa again during the night. Consequently, the irrigation was automatically stopped early.

The reduced irrigation allows the soil to maintain the soil moisture within the desired values. Normal irrigation will resume on July 23.

Conclusion

The PlantData.Live platform enables the tree technician to monitor a groundwater drainage site, automate irrigation, and control it remotely, all within the same platform.

The tree technician will always maintain control over the irrigation and has the ability to further refine the irrigation based on his own expertise and observations in the field.

Moreover, the technician can sleep soundly, as the PlantData.Live platform takes over the repetitive work and keeps the technician informed about the site's progress.