How to check soil temps without shocking the neighbours

[SusieG]

Nah, she lives in Cumbria but is an exception to the "they're tough up North" rule, and carries gloves all year round. I melt from the heat every time I visit the house...

Iceland, Cumbria, interchangeable really!!!
Wonderful part of the world to live, soo envious, would love to pack up and spend my days surrounded by all those glorious Lake District mountains .......

[Bal]

I melt from the heat every time I visit the house...[/QUOTE]

I won't say I'm soft. But I once had a dinner party of friends in December every one turned up in bikinis and swimming shorts. The knew my house would be like a furnace, so came dressed accordingly. I was dressed in suitable English winter wear

[alldigging]

I am with your mum but I have renaulds which means my hands really hurt when they get cold.

[marchogaeth]

Some advice needed please. I want to use nematode this year to control the slugs. According to the blurb the soil temp must be about 5 degrees C. I don't want to buy a soil thermometer just for this. Can I stick the green house thermometer in the soil. If so how deep does it need to go.
i am not going to use the "old" method. Not with my rheumatism

Looking at your original post, my advice would be don't rush to put the nematodes on. You need an active slug population for them to be effective and you need a consistent 5-7C for them to really get going. If I use them, I give it a couple of weeks of slug picking first.

As to soil temp, I look at how the natural grasses are growing. Grass needs a steady 5C to romp away. After a very wet winter here, although we haven't really had frosts, this is not happening here. The posts on The Plot are making me jealous, yesterday was the first day I've been at home since Christmas when I could do gardening outside and the soil was still a bit wet for my liking and today it snowed! I think I'll be gardening cardboard this year.

[Jimmy]

My other hobby to gardening is building electronic projects.
I have built a wireless temperature network.
1) A greenhouse module with three long wired temp sensors.
2) A "soil spike" with a ground and air sensor.
3) A receiver and aerial in my spare room connected to a Raspberry PI.
4) A Web server on the PI to display temps.
So I get a web display as attached.
Each module transmits ever 2 minutes.
And the receiver logs everything to the PI.
So I can get a graph of any day !
Jimmy