Author Topic: holiday watering system  (Read 6775 times)

ACE

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holiday watering system
« on: May 21, 2015, 12:12:50 »
As I have to leave the greenhouse for a fortnight. Some sort of watering system was needed. I got one of those spiked hoses from poundland and just cracked the tap, no good. So I noticed a water timer on Amazon, about £12 and then connected it to the spiked hose which I hung along the inside roof of the greenhouse. Perfect a fine spray for one minute every eight hours seems to be the right combination.

 I have trialed it for a week now in hot and cold weather and it worked a treat. A three minute soaking just flooded the greenhouse the next setting  down was just one minute. At 12 hour intervals, there was not enough 6 hours again too much but 8 hours x 1minute  is plenty.

All the pot plants from the house are in there with some tomatoes and a few trays of late germinating brassica  seeds. I expect the seedlings will go leggy, but they are too small to go out.

galina

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2015, 14:12:24 »
This time of year yes, but I would not have a leaky hose spraying from the top of the greenhouse any later in the year, because the plants get wet and with tomatoes this could mean blight in short order.  Leaky hose pipe laid on the floor of the greenhouse on a timer is a much better plan for greenhouse holiday watering.   

If you have your greenhouse plants in pots rather than in a bed then you need one of those dripper affairs which dribbles water directly into each pot.
« Last Edit: May 21, 2015, 14:14:27 by galina »

ACE

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2015, 16:00:21 »
The pot plants are the stupid things she has around the house which get watered when she remembers. I do not 'cage' my plants. When they are mature they should grow in the ground where they belong, not in pots, but with regular water and a feed of chicken manure which they can have because they are not in the house at the moment, they will think it's their birthday.

I did spend the afternoon pricking out the brassicas into peat pots. They can grow how they like then and will be ready to plant out on the plot when I get back.

I did have a misting system in the polytunnel  when I was growing medal winning show plants with a foliar feed in line. Leaves take in water and nutrients as well as roots, that is why a good rain always beats the hose that is directed usually at the plant base. I would  also have a few toms on the go in the same tunnel. Never ever had blight in 12 years

Paulines7

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2015, 09:56:00 »
I have a similar watering system to yours Ace.   

When we went away for a week last month, I had the timer set for much too long.  Unfortunately I had a lot of tender plants in pots in polystyrene boxes for frost protection.  I didn't notice that boxes didn't have drainage and when I came home, a lot of my plants had drowned and been washed out of their pots.  The boxes were filled to the top with water!  Lesson learnt the hard way. 

So where are you off to for two weeks and are you taking the caravan?  Will you be exploring mainland Britain or off to warmer climes? 

ACE

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #4 on: May 22, 2015, 11:06:57 »
 Loads of people give their plants too much water. I had to build  a roof garden for somebody, it was really nice, it all had to be potted but it worked. A few weeks later she phoned to tell me the plants were dying. When I got there I found everything soaked through with a watering system she had put in and she had drowned the lot of them. When I built the garden we used mostly drought resistant plants because she was away a lot, but 3 hours a night she had it on for It would have only needed half of that in a month.


 Going in the caravan, can't be @rsed with airports anymore, loads of nice places here and we will have a job seeing everywhere. Not going far this time. Staying on the sunny sarf coast really. Ferndown, then Worthing and finishing up at a meeting with a big mob of morris dancers for some fun at Dorking. A bit worried about the dogs at Ferndown as there is something nasty going about in the New Forest. I will have to stop them drinking out of puddles.

ancellsfarmer

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #5 on: May 22, 2015, 18:02:48 »
I recall my "PERFECT" holiday watering solution. The very nice lady next door had always expressed an interest in my planting endeavours and had often said how much she missed her "lovely garden", having downsized from a much larger property.At holiday time  it was arranged that in exchange for free foraging, she was to visit at intervals to replenish the tank linked to a trickle system, simply by turning on the tap, spending fifteen minutes or so harvesting, turning off the tap . So reassured, we departed upon a rare foreign holiday. Upon return ,having learnt that the temperature at home for our whole trip had been several degrees above that in Cannes, we found everything scorched and pretty much dead. When calling upon our "perfect" neighbour, I was told "thanks for the wonderfull vegetables, I picked so many on the day after you left, I didnt need to go round again", !
Freelance cultivator qualified within the University of Life.

ACE

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #6 on: June 08, 2015, 08:30:57 »
Pleased to report that the system has worked a treat. Cannot get into greenhouse as it is like a jungle with everything growing like mad. Deffo bigger pots for all the houseplants, they have never looked so large and healthy. The stuff that still has to go out up the lottie never suffered and I expect are in better condition than if they were in the ground.

So a big plant up this week , sweet corn, physalis, curly kale, calabrese, savoy and loads more if I can find the room.

daveyboi

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #7 on: June 08, 2015, 09:28:55 »
Thanks for posting a report on how it worked Ace it is nice to have feedback on this sort of post afterwards

Daveyboi
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Vinlander

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #8 on: July 19, 2015, 12:19:53 »
My greenhouse floor is lined with black plastic and has a capillary system covering the whole floor and linked to a small area of mats half immersed in a depression fitted with a ballcock supply.

I don't get problems with roots in the 'mat' because the main capillary 'mat' isn't a mat but a 6cm deep layer of old growbag compost (from when they were mostly peat - modern composts just disappear in a few months).

It compensates itself for flood and drought. I get no disease problems. Vine weevil don't seem to like very damp media even when I don't nematode every year. The humidity isn't dangerously high for tomatoes but discourages spidermite (but not enough to grow aubergines - except the smooth-leaved 'turkish red' type).

Apart from the need to buy a bale of peat every 5-8 years it has no downside I can see.

BTW I'm all for saving the bogs from the compost manufacturers - but Ireland is still burning peat on an industrial scale.

Cheers


With a microholding you always get too much or bugger-all. (I'm fed up calling it an allotment garden - it just encourages the tidy-police).

The simple/complex split is more & more important: Simple fertilisers Poor, complex ones Good. Simple (old) poisons predictable, others (new) the opposite.

cambourne7

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #9 on: July 28, 2015, 21:39:33 »

BTW I'm all for saving the bogs from the compost manufacturers - but Ireland is still burning peat on an industrial scale.

Cheers

you sure about that??

Vinlander

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With a microholding you always get too much or bugger-all. (I'm fed up calling it an allotment garden - it just encourages the tidy-police).

The simple/complex split is more & more important: Simple fertilisers Poor, complex ones Good. Simple (old) poisons predictable, others (new) the opposite.

Silverleaf

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #11 on: July 29, 2015, 00:19:57 »
If Ireland's burning loads of peat, isn't that even more reason for gardeners not to use it?

pumkinlover

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #12 on: July 29, 2015, 08:08:59 »
I recall my "PERFECT" holiday watering solution. The very nice lady next door had always expressed an interest in my planting endeavours and had often said how much she missed her "lovely garden", having downsized from a much larger property.At holiday time  it was arranged that in exchange for free foraging, she was to visit at intervals to replenish the tank linked to a trickle system, simply by turning on the tap, spending fifteen minutes or so harvesting, turning off the tap . So reassured, we departed upon a rare foreign holiday. Upon return ,having learnt that the temperature at home for our whole trip had been several degrees above that in Cannes, we found everything scorched and pretty much dead. When calling upon our "perfect" neighbour, I was told "thanks for the wonderfull vegetables, I picked so many on the day after you left, I didnt need to go round again", !
I think that your neighbour missed the point there  :BangHead:

Vinlander

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #13 on: July 30, 2015, 20:24:06 »
If Ireland's burning loads of peat, isn't that even more reason for gardeners not to use it?

Economics is a multi-thread conundrum - and I'm no expert (actually nobody is - you've only got to look at what a mess the financial system gets in - and especially how it fails to get out of it).

However the 'tragedy of the commons' is always present in every system - look it up.

One aspect of this is that any commodity that is under-priced will very rapidly get abused. This usually involves the rich getting richer and the poor poorer - but it can also mean the resource is taken out of circulation and can even get wasted.

You could say that because we don't buy peat for what it does best (eg. not rotting down to claggy mush in our growbags) then the price will go down and someone else will use it to replace something expensive - even if it's not a very good choice and it's effectively being wasted.

Cheers.

With a microholding you always get too much or bugger-all. (I'm fed up calling it an allotment garden - it just encourages the tidy-police).

The simple/complex split is more & more important: Simple fertilisers Poor, complex ones Good. Simple (old) poisons predictable, others (new) the opposite.

Silverleaf

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #14 on: August 02, 2015, 00:00:11 »
Well I was thinking about the environment, not economics. I still wouldn't buy peat no matter how much it cost.

If huge amounts of peat bog ecosystem is being lost then every time we choose a bag of peat-free then that's a little bit of peat bog that hadn't been destroyed. And that's good, surely?

cornykev

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Re: holiday watering system
« Reply #15 on: August 02, 2015, 19:08:43 »
Peat aside, if Ace had more friends they would have watered for him, old billy no mates.  :tongue3: :wave:
MAY THE CORN BE WITH YOU.

 

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