How to Water Your Greenhouse Plants When On Vacation
Monday, September 21st, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Gardening in a cold greenhouse is something that every gardener in temperate weather regions should try. It will extend the range of plants you can grow and will also extend the growing season. Whilst a heated greenhouse will give you an even larger range, it is quite costly to run and, because it will use fuel to heat it, will not be good for the environment.
Gardening in a cold greenhouse is much like outdoor gardening. With a couple of differences.One of these exception is that you are in control of the amount of water plants get. For this you need a watering system and this can be as complex or as simple as you wish. At its simplest, a watering can or hosepipe can be used. However, if you go away regularly (or even once of twice during summer) you will want something a bit more complex which will allow you to water your plants whilst you are away. It is worth considering a good watering system when you are planning to build your own greenhouse
The amateur greenhouse gardener will find a number of watering systems currently on the market, performing in a similar fashion. The two most common types of greenhouse watering systems are the overall sprinkler and the drip feed system. Both of which can be fed from a timer.
The sprinkler watering system.
There are a number of manufacturers who make this system. There are a number of kit systems available in which you select the sprinkler heads you need and fit them to the supplied plastic tube. This system works very well and is easy to fit. However, it can be wasteful on water since you water the whole greenhouse rather than just the plants.The clock turns the water on and off at pre-planned timings. This can occasionally cause overwatering or drying out, although this does not happen often. More importantly, it can lead to uneven watering on tomatoes which causes the bottom of your tomatoes to go black and hard making them inedible.
The drip watering system.
Once again there are a number of suppliers of these systems. {A typical system consists of a water reservoir which feeds through increasingly smaller pipes until it reaches your plant where you have a small valve which allows you to control how often a drip goes onto you plant}. This means that you can vary the amount of water from plant to plant depending on their individual requirements. Since this sytem does not have a mains water feed, you will have to get a friend to fill the reservoirs when you are asay. So you just need to tell them to keep the tanks full, and not worry about individual plants
This is a very straightforward system. It doesn’t suffer from mains water pressure changes, and there are no fancy controllers to go wrong. The initial setting up can take some time and patience. Once it’s set up, it can stay there all year even when you’re not using it. You just top it up once a week or so, and forgrt the daily task of watering. The system is also very good for water conservation since you only apply water exactly where you need it.
As you tend to go away for your holidays in the midst of the fastest part of the growing season (and the hottest), then an automatic watering system become necessary. One of the most significant greenhouse gardening tips is to install an auto watering system It saves you relying upon friends and neighbours to do the job for you. If they forget just a single day, your plants caould be irrevocably damaged. Both the above systems discussed can be relied upon to do the job well and eficiently and are well worth the time needed to set them up and the cost of purchasing them. Both systems will last a number of years provided you look after them.
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