Back last autumn David Bardgett Ltd negotiated a discount for our buying group clients on plate meters.

This discount is still available if you are thinking of using a plate meter for the first time this spring to measure your grass, or looking to upgrade your existing model!  Currently the plate meters also come with a six-month subscription to AgriNet for new users, to record your measurements.

Earlier this month I was with a buying group member who had taken advantage of this deal to purchase their first plate meter, an EC20 Bluetooth model.  All I can say is it was an experience!  A bit of an upgrade from the one I usually use, so we took out both, as we walked the fields.

The first thing to do was to download the Jenquip EC20 Platemeter app for either Android or Apple phones, and then connect the plate meter and phone together, using the app and not Bluetooth on the phone.

We hadn’t set anything up on AgriNet at this stage, and just wanted to ensure the meter worked and was communicating with our phone.  The app allows you to enter data on that, but had AgriNet been set up we could have downloaded the data from AgriNet and also shared data back, so not having to enter the data manually after you’d finished.

With a bit of trial and error we got the plate meter working, though it doesn’t beep as loudly as my existing one, so you were never quite sure it was measuring unless you watched the figures on your phone as you walked.

A few times though I lost the data as I completed the paddock.  The problem was that my phone was set for a low (1 min) Screen Timeout, i.e. nothing happening, and it locks you out again, resulting in it losing the data unless I was constantly touching the screen.  Once I had increased the Screen Timeout, i.e. 5 minutes, it solved the problem and we never lost any data again!

After these learning curves, we had no problems and I could see the benefit of just having to say ‘go’ and ‘stop’ as you got into each paddock, rather than writing things down, and then not having to type it all in once back to the farm office – definitely a big time saver and with immediate feedback on measurement results it encourages more regular grass measuring.

Contact Andrew at andrew@davidbardgett.co.uk or your local FCG office, if you need help in using a plate meter and interpreting the data.