Automatic watering systems?

[sandspider]

Hi all

I was vaguely thinking of modernising my approach to watering. I got this link in my email - Automatic Electronic Water Timer plus 23m Plant Micro Irrigation Watering Kit @ tooltime.co.uk - and it made me wonder. What is the best automatic watering system people have found? I'd prefer it to be able to run from a water butt rather than the tap system I linked to above, but would consider tap if it's much better / simpler than other options.

Or are they a waste of time and money, and it's better to stick a holey hose to my water butt tap and just arrange a slow drip...?

Discuss! Thank you.

[*wallflower*]

I use an almost identical timer and irrigation kit in my GH at home and also one in my poly on the lottie.

On the lottie I have the timer connected to an IBC water tank but previously had it connected to a standard water butt (via a special tap) and at home I have one connected to a mains tap.

In both I sink plastic bottles cut in half with holes in the sides and bottom and run the drippers into those so that the water doesn't sit on the surface and evaporate.

On the one at home I also water some big troughs with the same set up and these drippers just sit on top of the soil.

Absolutely brilliant!!! Would not be without it!

I would say that it's well worth investing in adjustable drippers rather than using the ones that come as standard in those sets, so that you can control the flow a bit better and if you search for 'water timer', 'adjustable drippers' and 'micro irrigation kit' on a well known shopping website you'll be able to get them all at very reasonable prices (less than the kit in the link, I suspect).

Worth remembering to disconnect everything over winter and storing in a shed or indoors though to save causing a timer to explode... which I may, or may not have done!

[sandspider]

Thanks wallflower, useful to know that they can run from IBC type containers as well as mains water. I'll watch out for explosions!
Just to add to the thread, I came across this which looks interesting: How to make a genuinely ‘self-watering’ container garden

[chefgage]

I use the hoselock system. I use a timer off my outside tap. I also use a watering system off my water butt using a submersable pump and an electronic timer in the garage to turn it on and off. I have a lot of pots and grow bags on the drive way so when we go away for a bit its well worth the money

[sandspider]

Thanks Chefgage. Could you tell me a bit more about the specific outside tap timer, and the water butt pump & timer?

Cheers.

[sandspider]

Hi all

Just bumping this again, as I'm going on holiday in June for two weeks and will have to leave quite a few pots in my conservatory in my absence. Is there a newer and better and ideally cheap times watering system available? From a reservoir of some sort rather than a tap for preference.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Giles

[Penellype]

It depends a bit on how big your plants are and where they are sitting. If you use a reservoir it needs to be lower than the plants, otherwise the water will simply flow out of it and flood the plants. If you can put the pots on a shelf the best arrangement is probably a large bowl of water (washing up bowl or similar) with capillary matting that the plants are sitting on dangling down into it. Cover the bowl to prevent excess evaporation.

I use a lot of these https://www.twowests.co.uk/self-watering-trays which come in various sizes, but how long the water lasts depends a lot on the size and type of plants. 2 weeks is pushing it for anything fairly big, and large plants will empty the smaller trays in a day or so.

[sandspider]

Thanks Pen

I've got about 20 small to medium plants - tomatoes, peppers, chillis, the odd tree sapling - on the conservatory floor. My thought was to put a water butt or similar reservoir on a table or something to build a sufficient head, then use a timer and some valves to eke the water out over two weeks...
Last time I tried this with fewer plants and aquarium drippers it didn't work too well!

[chris_m]

For my veggie beds I'm using four dripper hose feeds, one for each bed with dripper outlets at 12" spacing, which suits my square foot beds nicely, run via a Hozelock AC1 progammable timer from my water butts, thus far it seems to be about right set at 30 minutes twice a day.

In addition to the water butts I also have a bank of dustbins as a reserve water supply. When I need to transfer water from the reserve to the butts, then I have a Hozelock butt pump (ooer missus ) to do it.
If the butts are full and rain is forecast (or, preferably, falling) then I can hook up a hose to automatically top up the bins, although I will have to remember to disconnect it when the bins are full otherwise half the butts' contents would just be lost into overflow from the bins, due to the height difference. This is experimental at present, if it doesn't work as well as I hope I'll revert to the non-automatic method of using the pump to transfer water to the bins.

For the greenhouse I'm using another timer running drippers off the mains water, currently set to 1 minute once a day - due to the higher water pressure plus different drippers providing more water in less time than the arrangement for the beds.

For my pots, etc. I've got aquasave watering cones with 1.5L bottles attached so I can just "fill and forget" for a reasonable period of time.