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sgmd

indoor drip irrigation for plants on shelves

sgmd
15 years ago

Hi ...

I grow a lot of African violets on lighted shelves. Due to chronic pain problems, it's becoming harder to keep up with watering, so i was thinking of creating a drip irrigation system.

My first thought was to test it out on one shelf which has 4 trays of plants, where each tray holds 6 mature plants (24 plants).

I'd like to try something similar to the Green Genius, but that can only handle 10 plants at a time.

dripdepot.com has some irrigation kits, and since I am new at this, I thought I'd start with the 24-pot system (http://www.dripdepot.com/container-drip-irrigation-kits.html) -- it would be a good way to learn the basics,

However, this setup assumes a hose connection. What I'd like to do is connect the tubes to a pump in a bucket containing the nutrient solution.

I thought about a gravity-fed system, placing a reservoir at the top of the shelf, but this makes it hard to fill-up and if any system fails, it could cause a major spill, making the neighbors in the apartment below quite mad.

So, it seems safest to place the bucket on the floor and drive the water up to the shelf with a pump. But it's not clear to me how much pressure I'll need, how to set up a timer (what kind of timer) for intermittent feeding. Also, can the pressure be controlled by the pump?

If this system works, I'd like to expand it to a few more shelves. And that means more pumps ... do i buy a second pump or upgrade to a more powerful one>

Any advice on creating this set-up would be much appreciated.

thanks,

shireen

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