Explore the GROW Citizen Observatory data

The GROW Observatory collected data from across Europe using low cost soil sensors to collect data about the soil and growing conditions. Across 22 GROW places 6,500 Flower Power sensors where deployed by participants such as community groups, land managers, small and family farms, science and educational institutes with access to land including vineyards, agro-forestry, and food growing to collect time series data from November 2017 to October 2019. Data were collected every 15 minutes by the sensor and uploaded by the participants using mobile phones sending the data to the GROW servers.

Data in the time series was:

• Soil Moisture (%)
• Temperature (C)
• Light Level (Lumens)

In addition the metadata include: i) latitude and longitude of the sensor, ii) name of the sensor, iii) date of observation.

Soil Moisture, Time Series, GeoLocation, Consumer Sensor, Scale

The GROW consortium. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No.690199

CC-BY 4.0 licence

The GROW Observatory collected data for edible plants across Europe and for 11 European Environmental Zones on planting and harvesting dates, as well as general descriptive plant information. Regional differences became obvious soon, and some of the data was not applicable or suitable in several european locations. Feedback from growers suggested that even within the same larger climate zone, local differences in growing dates were apparent. GROW started an online group on Facebook and crowd-sourced actual planting and harvesting dates from the community via regular online polls.

Data collected:

• Planting and harvesting dates (collected from reviewing literature and publications, e.g. back of seed pack information)
• Planting and harvesting dates (crowd-sourced via polls in Facebook online community)

In addition the metadata include a rough location of planting/harvesting dates and relation to a specific european environmental (sub)zone.

Growing calendars, edible plants, local differences

The GROW consortium. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No.690199.