Watering Your Greenhouse When On Vacation

Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 6:39 am

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Gardening in a cold greenhouse is something that every gardener in temperate weather regions should try. It will extend the range of plants you can grow and will also extend the growing season. A heated greenhouse, whilst extending the range even further, is not really very environmentally friendly since it uses power for the heating. It can also be expensive to run.

Cold Greenhouse Gardening is very similar to gardening outdors. With one or two exceptions.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. At its simplest, a watering can or hosepipe can be used. 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 planning to build your own greenhouse

The amateur greenhouse gardener will find a number of watering systems currently on the market, all of which do the job well. The two most common types of greenhouse watering systems are the overall sprinkler and the drip feed system. Both of which can be fed from a timer.

The Spray System for Watering.

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 system works very well and is easy to fit. However, it can be wasteful on water since you water the whole greenhouse rather than just the plants.The clock turns the water on and off at pre-planned timings. This can occasionally cause overwatering or drying out, although this does not happen often. 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.

Once again there are a number of suppliers of these 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}. This means that you can vary the amount of water from plant to plant depending on their individual requirements. If you are going away for some time, you can either add more reservoirs to the system or get a friend or neighbour to fill the reservoir as necessary. So you just need to tell them to keep the tanks full, and not worry about individual plants.

This system is almost foolprof. It does not have any clcoks or controls to go wrong and is not subject to pressure changesfrom the tap. However, it does take time and patience to set up in the first place. It can become your permanent watering system, once set up, so you need never worry about keping your plants watered. It will save you a chore every day and will only need filling up once a week or so. The system is also very good for water conservation since you only apply water exactly where you need it.

An automatic watering system is especially important, since we always seem to take our vacations during the hottest part of the year, and in the high growth part of growing season. Automatic watering systems are one of those greenhouse gardening tips that you should carefully consider It saves you relying upon friends and neighbours to do the job for you. It is not so important to them, therefore they are likely to forget. 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.