Many flower growers, while away, worry about their pets, who remain for a fairly long time without care and attention. You can ask friends or neighbors to water the flowers during your absence, but there are other effective ways to provide your plants with life-giving moisture while you are not at home. Consider the most popular methods of automatic watering indoor plants.
Providing water treatment to flowers
You can simply water the plants well before leaving and put the pots in pots with water, which will help keep the soil moist for a week or even two. This method does not require any financial investments and is available to everyone. But a more effective system is the automatic watering of indoor plants, which will allow the flowers to survive your absence for two or even more than three weeks.
How to prepare flowers for your absence
Each grower knows that plants that are well pre-watered can survive without additional watering for up to two weeks. Plants should be prepared for their departure, namely:
- remove plants from window sills to reduce illumination and thereby achieve less evaporation of moisture from the soil;
- from plants it is necessary to cut off all flowers and buds and thin out the leaf mass;
- the pots should be placed more tightly, which will create additional moisture around the flowers; the ideal solution would be to put the pots in a pan or basin, on the bottom of which a layer of expanded clay is poured, well moistened, flowerpots should be placed on the wet expanded clay, and pour a few centimeters of water on top;
- ideally, if you can make a cap over the flowers from a transparent film like a small greenhouse, this method is very good, nevertheless it is somewhat stressful for plants, and if you leave for a week or more, then prepare cuttings of your favorite flowers that you can put in a jar of water.
Organization of self-moisture
The automatic watering system of indoor plants is a constant supply of moisture to the roots of plants in the amount they need. The homemade greenhouse described earlier will work much more efficiently if you add an additional source of water that will uninterruptedly supply your flowers with life-giving moisture for several weeks. Consider how to make auto-watering indoor plants at home. You can apply the simplest, “artisanal” option. For example, in ordinary large plastic water bottles, you can make small holes in the lids. Settled water is poured into the bottles and turned upside down, while installing between the pots. Moisture will drip drop by drop to the bottoms of the pots and moisten the expanded clay on which the flowerpots stand. The diameter of the holes should be sufficient so that water flows out. You can determine the desired diameter experimentally. Now you need to determine the size of the bottle, which is necessary for the uninterrupted supply of moisture to the bottom of the pots. The size of the bottle depends on the size of the earthen coma in the pot. For example, around large pots, you need to place several large bottles of water, but for plants in tiny pots this method will not work at all.
Industrial Autowatering Devices
If the funds allow you, then you can install an automatic automatic watering system for industrial production. The most common are Aqua Globs, and they consist of a special glass bulb that is connected to a ceramic cone. This cone is immersed in the substrate, thereby achieving uniform wetting of the substrate. The cone has a porous structure, water pours from the pores into the soil drop by drop. If the tub with the plant is large, then several such devices can be used. Usually, cones are connected to the water supply using a special rubber hose. Another industrial system that provides automatic watering of indoor plants, Gardena, is also popular. The device operates with a pump, timer and tubes, it is able to provide water to 36 plants at a time.
Other water intake methods
The most popular indoor watering system for indoor plants is connecting flowers to a container containing water using improvised wicks. You can use cords, and ropes, and woolen threads, as well as twisted most ordinary bandages. One edge of a makeshift wick is lowered into a basin or other container of water, and the second end is attached to the pot, fixing it in the ground with a peg or clothespin. The difference in capillary pressures is created, due to it, water enters through the wick from the pelvis into the pot. Automatic watering of indoor plants using wicks is a very effective and widespread method of continuous moisture supply.
Autowatering Security
To completely eliminate the possibility of drying the land in pots during your absence, both home-made and industrial automatic watering systems should be tested in advance. For example, it is worth checking how well a homemade wick conducts water and how much water is available in the basin. It can easily turn out that the basin with water will be empty in a day, and this is inevitable death for your flowers. It is very important to determine in advance the right size of the bottles so that your plant has enough moisture for the duration of your absence. You also need to decide on the height at which you need to put a basin with water so that the water passes well through the wicks.
Capillary mats
An excellent solution for providing water to plants is capillary mats, which are mats made of absorbent material. You can see capillary mats on sale in many specialized shopping centers, they are relatively inexpensive.
You can distribute such a capillary mat on any surface, for example, on a large table or a wide windowsill, but at the same time one end should be lowered into a container of water. Under the mat, be sure to lay an oilcloth so as not to spoil the surface of the table with moisture. If you can’t lower one of the edges of the mat into a container of water, you can cut off strips from it, moisten them with water, and then put one end under the mat and lower the other into the container. These bands will work like homemade wicks and conduct water. For automatic watering of indoor plants, pallets are also produced that work like capillary mats. They consist of a deep tray and a shallow inner tray, as well as a capillary mat. Water is poured into a large tray, a small tray is placed in it, which is lined with a rug, and then flowerpots with flowers are placed on it. The mat will pull water all the time. This watering is good because the flowers are guaranteed not to begin root decay.
Finally
Having examined in detail all the proposed options for automatic watering indoor plants, you will undoubtedly choose the most suitable for yourself, which will help you protect your favorite plants from drought. If you do not have the means to buy an industrial production system, then you will be able to make such a device yourself, which will be no worse. Thanks to the above methods, you can easily organize automatic watering of indoor plants. Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Paris and other delightful places on earth are waiting for you! Travel without worrying that disaster will happen to your plants.