My first meter was a $12 job from the hardware store down on Cherry Street and it read "wet" for three days straight while my basil slowly turned yellow. Turns out the probe needs to go way deeper than you'd guess, like 4 or 5 inches down, not just poked in the top inch of soil. Now I stick it in, wait 30 seconds for the needle to stop moving, and check two or three spots per pot because the readings swing like crazy near the edges. The other thing that saved me was bottom watering, my tomatoes stopped getting soaked once I let them drink from the saucer instead. Those cheap meters aren't useless, you just have to learn their weird habits first.

Man I felt this in my soul. My first time running a screed I was so green I didn't even know mag screeds could bend, I just assumed the concrete was out to get me personally. Spent like two hours chasing the same low spot back and forth like a idiot before the old guy on the crew picked up my screed, eyeballed it down the edge, and started laughing at me. That sound when a bowed screed hits the mud, kinda wobbly singing noise? Never gonna forget it. I keep a chalk line in the truck now for the same reason the finishers do, and I check every screed before it goes in the rack at the end of the day. Half a day of learning but you only make that mistake once.