Wacky watering ideas

[Laura Hillier]

Hi Everyone,

Despite the changeable weather, we always dare to hope that a little sunshine and warmth will start to show themselves some time soon. When the days are drier and the heat rises, do you have any inventive ways of watering to ensure that your crops stay healthy without you having to head to the plot with a can twice a day? Wacky DIY ideas or shop-bought drip-feeders - we want to hear about them!


Answers may be edited and printed in the June issue of Grow Your Own


Laura

[Bren In Pots]

Not so much a wacky idea but its best to water the plants and not the soil so I sink bottles (with the bottoms cut off) near to the plants that way when I water it gets direct to the roots.

[redser]

Dig a trench, put lots of water-retentive material like newspaper, cardboard, manure and leaves in the bottom. Flood the trench a couple of times and then back fill with the removed soil. Mulch over the top. This will give a nice resevoir that will last a good long time. The material will rot into the soil by the end of the season. Good for large fast growers.

[Bigmallly]

I don't worry too much about the beds but containers are a different matter, I therefore use self watering containers with visible floats inserted into tubes so I can see when they need topping up.

[mothhawk]

I used the sunken bottles like Bren last year. This year, I intend to grow runner beans in wigwams instead of my usual rows, and the plan is to use big plastic straight-sided buckets that are discarded at work (about 12" diameter, 16" tall) by drilling 6 x 50mm holes around the base and placing one inside each wigwam.
Filled with water or comfrey/nettle tea, they should seep gently and slowly into the soil over a period of an hour or so. I need to experiment to find the ideal hole size so they don't empty too fast.

[Two_Sheds]

I'm short, and watering hanging baskets is a pain. So, I freeze water in one litre ice-cream tubs, and just pop an "ice cube" in the hanging basket

[Newton]

I am trying water reservoirs (plastic containers) below my plant pots and containers. With capillary matting running between the pot and reservoir to wick the water up to the plant and pot. More of a wicky idea than a wacky idea. Saying that I'm a scouser so it is a wacky idea......wack! Calm down!!!

Oh......and all the water reservoirs can be linked to a water butt.......to keep them automatically topped up during holidays..........

[Doive]

Our water butt is a spare wheelie bin, that collects water from the shed roof. It then overflows into another 120 litre water butt scavenged from the local dump - this will be used as the fertiliser source made using comfrey leaves. Two submerged pumps, one in each water butt are run off timer plugs - the fertiliser butt runs for five minutes twice a week to pump comfrey tea into the big water butt, and then the pump in the big water butt is run for 15 minutes every other day to a hose system. Both raised beds have a spray attachment supplying them, and so they receive fertilised rain every other day. The system runs late evenings to prevent sun burn from water droplets on the leaves. Saves ages running about with watering cans!

[Bigmallly]

Great idea Doive but not so easy to do on an allotment where there is no power.

[Aberdeenplotter]

I thought at one point of getting a 12 volt caravan water pump and powering that off an ordinary car battery with trickle charge from a solar panel. I must have been distracted(I'm easily distracted) because I never did get beyond thinking about it. These pumps are designed to shift 4 -5 litres per minute and cost about £40 on fleabay. Of course the car battery will need to be bought as will the solar panel and trickle charger. It was maybe thinking about the costs that distracted me.

Edit note.

My shed is at the bottom of my plot with a 40 gallon water barrel filled from the guttering. My plot is on a 1 in 8 slope and carrying water uphill is heavy work which is why I thought about the pump in the first place.

[roitelet]

Soaker pots. A large 12inch terracotta pot, not frost proofed, with the hole blocked and a cover of some sort, I made some wooden ones or a large plant saucer will do. Sink the pot in the ground and fill with water. The water seeps out slowly into the soil and I find they only need filling about every 4 - 5 days. Worked a treat in the tunnel last year and no split tomatoes as the watering was constant.

Don't forget to take them out of the soil for winter or the frost will crack them.

[Paulieb]

Not really got any wacky watering ideas, but I would say that by MULCHING around your plants evaporation can be greatly reduced, thus reducing the amount of watering required in the first place.

Biodegradable mulches are good, things like leaf mould, garden compost, spent mushroom compost, wood chippings, processed conifer bark, well rotted manure, straw (for strawberries) and seaweed. Though there are other materials that work well too, like gravel or fabric.

[jonohanson]

In the height of summer to keep my greenhouse on the plot watered I have a water tower (5ft above soil level), this creates enough pressure to feed drippers and can keep my greenhouse watered for a week in between fill ups.

This year I plan to have more butt's collecting water which will then be connected to the water tower via a pump powered by an old strimmer engine, this will reduce the need fit me to fill the water tower with mains water.

[Lisamcflisa]

i use thin drain pipe with holes drilled intermittently down its length to water the strawberry plants i have in a raised planter, its sunk through the middle of it and all the plants get there share of water, my grandad died earlier this year so i've inherited loads of stuff for the garden so with his hose pipe i'm going to run it round my green house with small sprinkler type holes in it so i can attach my watering hose to this, greenhouse watering itself while i do outside, time saver if nothing else

[RedThorn]

AP try this try this

Use a solar pump as above to a water tank and gravity drip feed from the tank

EDIT
don't forget to use an overflow pipe to feed back to your water butt