Not sure how that would affect the readings. You are the first person I have come across that claims it needs a sock in order to work properly.
Oh no I am not. This is the most glaring one, but there are several: Soil Moisture Sensor "freezes" Also Capacitive Soil Moisture Sensor barely drops Values and so on... However this is completely outside the scope of my post.
Yes, It's not a commercial product, it's a hobby product.
Ouch. OK.
Won't the sensor degrade more quickly that way?
Not sure what you mean here.
This is an example: Turn off power to a moisture sensor except when reading values - Arduino Stack Exchange But I saw it first hand: powering these sensors all the time causes them to degrade very quickly. I saw it first hand.
The sensing part goes all the way up the where the electronics are.
No, there is a clear line drawn in the sensor that separates the "sensing" part and the circuit.