Hello!
I need some advice on an autowatering system. Sometimes Im away for a couple of days and cant water my plants. Im mostly an indoor grower have quite a few overwintering plants that been starting to drink quite much water as the warm spring weather approaches.
So, Ive been thinking about some kind of autowatering system, both to be able to go away for a couple of days and to let the plants get a more steady flow of water (I've never been good at watering and guess I both let them dry out/overwater to much ).
I guess the ideal solution would be some kind of autopot system but it would be to expensive imo. So ive been thinking about a tray system with a capillary mat i just put the pots on (4-5 pots on each tray). The mats would wick water from a small buffer-reservoir which in turn is filled up by a pump from a large reservoir with lowstr nuts when empty (an electronicssystem is measuring waterlevel in the buffer-reservoir to determine when to fill).
I plan on using my regular pots with 70% soil/30% perlite mix.
Since i have zero experience with capillary mats i don't know if its even possible. Anyone know if this is doable? Does it harm the plants/do they get waterlogged by standing on a capillary mat? Is it possible doing this with soilbased pots? And does it work for fullgrown plants?
Ive also been considering making my own selfwatering pots by stacking 2 pots, fill the lower one with water and use a netbasket filled with soil at the second pot to wick water, but this would be to labor-intensive to build for all my plants.
Btw, anyone know if a "spreader-mat" for NFT-systems is the same as a capillary mat?
Cheers.
I need some advice on an autowatering system. Sometimes Im away for a couple of days and cant water my plants. Im mostly an indoor grower have quite a few overwintering plants that been starting to drink quite much water as the warm spring weather approaches.
So, Ive been thinking about some kind of autowatering system, both to be able to go away for a couple of days and to let the plants get a more steady flow of water (I've never been good at watering and guess I both let them dry out/overwater to much ).
I guess the ideal solution would be some kind of autopot system but it would be to expensive imo. So ive been thinking about a tray system with a capillary mat i just put the pots on (4-5 pots on each tray). The mats would wick water from a small buffer-reservoir which in turn is filled up by a pump from a large reservoir with lowstr nuts when empty (an electronicssystem is measuring waterlevel in the buffer-reservoir to determine when to fill).
I plan on using my regular pots with 70% soil/30% perlite mix.
Since i have zero experience with capillary mats i don't know if its even possible. Anyone know if this is doable? Does it harm the plants/do they get waterlogged by standing on a capillary mat? Is it possible doing this with soilbased pots? And does it work for fullgrown plants?
Ive also been considering making my own selfwatering pots by stacking 2 pots, fill the lower one with water and use a netbasket filled with soil at the second pot to wick water, but this would be to labor-intensive to build for all my plants.
Btw, anyone know if a "spreader-mat" for NFT-systems is the same as a capillary mat?
Cheers.
