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Watering in Containers
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Posted by alamo5000 (My Page) on Sat, Feb 6, 10 at 18:12
| I am growing my second all out garden this year. I have done things here and there in the past including growing a full size indeterminite tomato plant in a 5 gallon bucket, indoors, in an apartment with a huge south facing window, right in the middle of winter.
This year I am growing a full fledged container garden...all outdoors. I planted in the ground last year and things went pretty good all things considered. However there were complications...
Weeds for one got so bad that it was impossible to keep up with them.
I am confident that I can grow my tomatoes and peppers and such in buckets...but my main question is about watering.
Do any of you have any system or set up where you can water your plants without simply putting a hose from bucket to bucket?
I will ultimately have about 50 plants or so total and I am fairly certain I will have to water pretty regularly... I just want to make this chore a little bit easier.
Any ideas will be appreciated. |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Watering in Containers
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| Also any other tips you may have will be greatly appreciated. I have never grown a container garden outdoors so please give me any tips you may have. I plan to grow tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplants, and a few other things. |
RE: Watering in Containers
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| I grew tomatoes, peppers (bell & jalapeno), & cukes in 5 gallon buckets last summer. I did have to water at least once (sometimes twice) a day during the super hot parts of the summer. I only had 4 buckets, so it was easy to water by hand for me. One of my mistakes was not taking into account the shade my tree would lay down when it actually had leaves on it. lol My cukes & toms I grew from seed, the peppers from transplant. Everything went very well, all things considered. The one thing I did have to look out for when my toms got big was that the buckets got a bit tippy in the wind. I tied 'em down to the fence, and that took care of that. |
RE: Watering in Containers
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| This site may help you. http://www.globalbuckets.org/ They show a self watering system that you may be interested in. If you look at my post entitled "I need your advice" which is near yours you'll see my self watering grow buckets which are made with 5 gallon buckets. I plan to test them this summer using buckets containing Al's soil mix, a commercial soil mix and straight wood chips to grow my tomatoes and other vegetables. Each bucket should have enough water supply for a few days. If they work out I plan to use the self watering method shown in the global buckets site. Like you I don't plan to water my 250 buckets by hand each day. I hope that helps you out. Bruce |
RE: Watering in Containers
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| I started my container garden at my apartment. It worked out great. I watered every other day during the summer. Here are some pictures of my container garden. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Click here for my container garden pictures.
RE: Watering in Containers
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I have a circuit for automatic watering of all my outdoor containers. I use a sprinkler timer for control, and it is set for watering twice a day 11:00AM and 3:00PM, as studies have shown these are the ideal times to water pots. I am in a hot climate, so once a day is not sufficient.
The water pipe is the standard 1/2" black plastic pipe used for drip systems. At one time I used drippers in the pots, but they don't do a good job of wetting all the soil in larger pots, and multiple drippers gets to be a pain. So a few years ago I switched to a mini-spay head which is very inexpensive and low maintenance. If you go to the Peaceful Valley Supply site and search for Tri-Tip Sprayer you will see what I have been using. Each sprayer is fed from the main line by a 1/8" pipe, so the length should be kept fairly short (less than 10 feet). The sprayers have 3 output levels so they can be adjusted for pot size. When using an automatic system it is important to have good drainage in your potting soil so that excess watering does not hurt your plants. An advantage of the system is you you can add a fertilizer injector to the main line and take care of all your plants at the same time. |
RE: Watering in Containers
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| I bury my containers in the dirt and seldom need to water more than once a week. Mike |
RE: Watering in Containers
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| For my container veggie garden, which was a line of about 16 or so pots between 2 and 5 gallons in size (and had a variety of veggies), I ran a soaker hose back and forth over them. Rather than have the hose run along it once through the middle, I opted to have it go over each pot twice (for example, a few inches to either side of each tomato stem). The water may only drip straight down but would spread as it trickled through the soil. The soaker hose was only on pots, from it I ran a hose across the yard to the faucet and on the facuet I had a cheap dial timer (maybe $20?) that I would set for a couple hours as I left for work and that's all I had to do. And for weed control, there are chemical options but I prefer using a small layer of bark mulch ... if it's in your area, Gardener & Bloome's Soil Building Compost is great in that as it gets watered frequently, the compost and nutrients will trickle down leaving a fine bark layer on top protect against many weed seeds from germinating. |
RE: Watering in Containers
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| I have to garden in buckets because of my health. I made my own self watering containers and don't have to water too often as I am not able to go outside in the yard and do it all on an open deck. So far in the past 2 years I have had good luck with all I have tried. My pots hold 1 gal. of water that takes care of the plants. I can go on the deck and as I keep a hose there that I can just pick up and use, I can water as needed. My containers are so successful that I don't have to spend too much time keeping themwatered. I am already planing my spring garden. |
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