Making a mini misting system?

[Naga]

My mini GH is up against a south facing wall and if I don't regularly water plants everything gets fried. I was going to get a digital water timer and make a misting system out of either a hose or some cheap PVC piping and as I'm off to Homebase later I wondered if you guys could recommend anything I could pick up to get me going?

[Kristen]

Plants in pots?

I have mine on capillary matting (and the matting is covered with micropore sheet otherwise it gets manky in a short time). Might that do for you?

I have a "reservoir" for mine, that keeps it moist during the day - I just fill the reservoir in the morning (actually I also "flood" the capillary matting to make sure it is evenly wet etc.)

[bretty666]

hi. maybe you could just use hose with one of those adjustable spray heads on it which has a very fine spray..im not sure how big an area you need misting bit if you jiggled some hose to two of these heads and positioned them in the right place(opposing angles maybe) and had them on a timer it might work. other than that i dont know how fine a hole needs.to be for it to create a mist..could you run hose along where you need mist and with a pair of pliers a needle and a tin can with charcoal burning n it then peirce the hose every 10cms maybe??

[BertieFox]

You can easily buy little misting nozzles from companies like Gardena and Hozelock, though they are ridiculously expensive for what they are. The misting types do work very well though and would be perfect for your needs. I have always wanted to set up my own misting system for encouraging cuttings to take, so it would be interesting to hear how well your timing unit works.

[Naga]

I was looking at the Hozelock stuff and it is way overpriced! I have found things way cheaper online but I'm gonna see what I can come up with. I wanna do a misting system as it's a nice little project and I think it's perfect for such a small, hot space especially as I can be at work for up to 11hrs.

I did read once that you can use the little spray heads off of watering bottles which might actually work out cheaper than buying Hozelock stuff.... but then again I'll look at a way to secure them as they might pop out due to water pressure.

Food for thought.

[Kristen]

I have always wanted to set up my own misting system for encouraging cuttings to take, so it would be interesting to hear how well your timing unit works.

I have a misting bench, made from "Bits" as just to go out and buy is ridiculously expensive e.g. Two Wests have a 40" x 36" for £430 I wonder if they actually sell any ...


Mist Propagation Unit : Two Wests and Elliott

Mine was not cheap, per se, but consists of a sensor (which triggers as it dries out), solenoid (to turn water on/off) and a control box (which controls how long each burst lasts, and how long to "delay" after the "trigger" before coming on - e.g. when weaning rooted cuttings). Only downside is that mine is all one zone, so as new cuttings are added the nearly-rooted ones have to put up with maximum mist ...

Mine is the full length of the bench on one side (could be all sides !!) as adding extra pipe and nozzles was very cheap. Its just ordinary domestic cold water pipe that uses solvent glue. I figured that the cuttings needed shade so "whole area under bench" would be fine. I did consider (and may still do) putting taps between each nozzle so I could use "just one end" by isolating the remainder

I got my "bits" from Access Irrigation (current price looks to be £234 for 1.5M wide x 1.25M long, add £15 for additional 1.25M length)

Mist Propagation Kits | Access Irrigation

but it was a toss up with Simply Control
Simply Control Misty Controller Simply Control

However, I don't think it would do a good job for irrigation, per se. A pot with decent foliage canopy cover won't allow much water, from above, to reach the pot itself, and control needs to be based on how much sun there is - overcast days won't need so much, so basically it would wetting the foliage a lot (which may not be a good idea for some crops - e.g. Tomatoes due to risk of blight.

An alternative would be drippers - put a dripper in a pot and it will deliver 1L / 2L etc. per hour to the pot, then put the watering hose on a timer. I did consider that, but the Faff of rearranging all the drippers when I move pots around in the greenhouse (and probably lots of them becoming redundant, temporarily, at certain times in the season, put me off. One blocked dripper could be one dead plant too

Thus I think the answer (to watering pots) is either Capillary Matting or Flood & Drain. I have done Capillary Matting for several years, but I would like to try Flood & Drain. Capillary Matting is: "all pots get lots of water". Not so good for things that don't want so much. Flood and Drain would allow control over how often they were irrigated (rather than having constant moisture), and would also work well in Winter when watering might be very infrequent (my capillary matting is dry by then, so useless for occasions watering; in Winter I water the pots direct, but then the matting gets moist from any that drains from the pots and the plants continue to get that moisture which some don't like in Winter)

But ... for me, setting up Flood and Drain was too big a project, and too expensive (for all the trays and plumbing).

[Naga]

Well I done it. I got some Hozelock Mister Jets and stuck a hole in the hose pipe and fitted the Misters and let it spray gently. I need to rejig it as it was only a quick job to see how it worked but it should work out nicely as I've attached the hose with cable ties along the top, middle and bottom sections and hooked it up to a digital water timer so it should work out nice in the summer months.

To be fair some thinish PVC tubing and a small pin prick would work pretty well and even some type of mesh around the holes would work ok too.

[9000Parts]

I would have been tempted to string some of that porous hose above whatever you are wanting to water and feed it with a very slow supply of water. Not sure how well this would work in real-life but porous hose is cheap enough to experiment with.

[BertieFox]

I'd agree that porous hose might be a better long term solution in a greenhouse, as it is incredibly cheap and when new, works very well. Not every plant likes to be misted and with hot sunshine the leaves will be scorched on many types of plant. A piece or two of porous hose buried in the soil near the plants works well. If plants are in pots, it is not so easy, so there the drip irrigation systems are a better solution, though fiddly to set up initially with all those tiny pieces of plastic piping and the drip nozzles.

[Bigmallly]

If plants are in pots, it is not so easy, so there the drip irrigation systems are a better solution, though fiddly to set up initially with all those tiny pieces of plastic piping and the drip nozzles.

I have a setup in place in the kite with adjustable taps, once set up it works like a dream, at the moment a full barrel lasts over 2 weeks.

A gravity fed barrel with taps strategically placed with adjustable taps:

with these