Suitable coating material for protection of sensors I'm building a moisture/temperature sensor for outdoor use in soil. It uses capacitive sensing for moisture and an NTC thermistor for the temperature. It's going to be used for vegetables so food safety is a concern. 

I don't think the PCB is food safe, or safe from corrosion/degradation due to the soil and moisture would creep into the FR4 material in the PCB and cause my measurements to drift so I would like to coat the entire thing to protect it from the elements, keep my vegetables free from toxins, and keep the measurements from drifting.

So these are the requirements in order of importance for the coating:


Not electrically conductive
Food safe
Doesn't degrade/react in/to soil/sun light
Hydrophobic
Resistant to abrasion when insertion/removing from the soil
Affordable
Low relative permeability (electromagnetic)
Decent thermal conductivity
Not a host for bacteria


I first considered a food safe epoxy but I had difficulties finding a reputable supplier of food safe epoxies in Germany (my German sucks). I did find a supply of food safe silicone which is nice in that it has all the properties above but I could only find it in large quantities and it's quite expensive. I also considered L/HDPE which seems to have all the criteria apart from the bacterial aspect (I'm not sure about that) but it seems like melting it to have a low enough viscosity to be able to form a solid but thin coating seems hard/impossible.

My knowledge on the topic of epoxies, plastics, rubbers and chemistry in general is limited, so I'm turning to chemistry@sx for recommendations to what I can use for a coating and what process to use for coating. And maybe I've misunderstood something of the materials I've considered so far... Also I'm sorry if this is the wrong place for this question, I'm not sure where else to post.
Various DIY capacitive moisture meters use a PCB for the sensor:



While not directly related to your question I thought I'd mention that you can buy these sensors for several dollars:



Purchasing a readymade kit and relying on the discount of mass production (along with a manufacturer's warranty) is probably easier than designing your own, and etching your own PCB.

I think how you plan to make the probe plays a part in how you plan on coating it; for example you could fit the parts in a test tube, that would meet all the requirements in your list. Such a capacitive sensor would operate similar to the touchscreen of a cellphone.