Greenhouse Watering during Vacations
If you live in a temperate weather region and have a garden, you should try gardening in a cold greenhouse. 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.
Cold Greenhouse Gardening is very similar to gardening outdors. With a couple of differences.One of these exception is that you are in control of the amount of water plants get. Your watering system can be straigtforward and low tech, or more complex with high tech controllers. The traditional watering can, or hose-pipe is the simplest solution. 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 designing your own diy greenhouse
The amateur greenhouse gardener will find a number of watering systems currently on the market, performing in a similar fashion. Two of the least expensive and most accessible are a system which sprays water over the whole greenhouse and can be put on a timer and a system which continually drip feeds water to your plants.
The sprinkler watering system.
There are a number of manufacturers who make this system. Several suppliers make individual parts which you put together to get exactly what you want. This is a very good system and does the job admirably. However, it can be wasteful on water since you water the whole greenhouse rather than just the plants.It tends to be an all or nothing system, in which the whole area receives the same amount of water during the timed sessions, and individual plants may be overwatered.. 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 system for Watering.
A number of supplies produce drip watering 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}. The advantage of this sytem is the water to each plant cam be individually adjusted. 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. However, it does take time and patience to set up in the first place. 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. Since it onlu places just the right amount of water for each plant, the system is good for water conservation.
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. Automatic watering systems are one of those greenhouse gardening tips that you should carefully consider You no longer need to depend upon friends and neighbours to tend your precious plants. If they forget just a single day, your plants caould be irrevocably damaged. Either of the systems discussed here will repay their cost very quickly once set up, and both will do a good job. Both systems will last a number of years provided you look after them.