Vacation watering

Hi everybody - By way of introduction, I guess I'd describe myself as a stealth soil grower. Only about 8 plants at a time, as space allows.

I wanted to share a positive experience I have had. Last year when I went on vacation, I tried to setup my plants on the Tropf Blumat system to keep them watered for the week I went on vacation. It ended up as a total disaster. This is nothing against the Blumats, maybe I needed more experience, but a disaster nonetheless.

This year I took a different approach. I used the small tubing that came with the Blumat system, and setup a timer based watering system using a Toro Model #53746, battery powered timer. It worked great!!!

I used a 1/2" spigot attached to a 5 gallon pail. To this I ran a 1/2" id tube to a 1/2" barbed to hose adapter to go into the timer. I used the same 1/2" barbed hose adapter to come out of the timer. Then I used a 1/2" to 1/4" reducer to get to the diameter of the Blumat tubing. Finally, I setup a circle of 1/4" to drip tube adapters and positioned my plants accordingly.

After a couple of trial runs, I set the timer to come on for 1 minute every 24 hours. My plants were clones that were only about 3" tall, still in 3 1/2" peat pots, so they didn't need a lot of water.

One week later, they are alive and well.

Cheers

thanks for your input bro im glad your ladys were still alive and kicking when you got back from your holidays cheers take care

You realize you can passive water for free? Just get a 5 gallon bucket for your water throw it up on a chair or stool or some such. Then cut a strip out of like an old chitty towel. Passive wicking will bring the water up out of the bucket and down through the strip into the top of your plants pot