Once upon a time on usenet Brooklyn1 wrote:
On Tue, 28 Apr 2015 09:24:26 -0400, Leon Fisk
wrote:

On Tue, 28 Apr 2015 12:25:41 +1200
"~misfit~" wrote:

snip
My biggest problem when there's lots and lots of rain is all of
that water leeching the goodness out of the containers I grow dwarf
fruit trees in. I try to get out between the worst of it and suck
the water out of the 'saucers' and put it into a barrel. I use a
250ml 'syringe' that is branded 'Masport' was sold for removing oil
from a lawnmower engine (and is no loger available new) to do the
job. However it's plunger isn't completely water-tight (designed to
work in oil) so would love ideas on what else I could use -
preferably 500ml or more per 'suck' but I'll consider anything.

Can you get/find anything like this in your Country?

http://www.harborfreight.com/multi-u...ump-66418.html

I've got a similar version (paid much, much more from a Marine
Supplier) that has worked good to suck the oil from the differentials
on my truck, along with the power steering pump.

Seems to me it would make a lot more sense during rainy periods to
move those potted plants to an area protected from rain...

The rain is very good for them. It washes the leaves of accumulated dust and
debris and they seem to respond well to it, often getting a new flush of
growth after rain. They're citrus trees, not house plants. ;-)

harbor
freight sells tarps too, also heavy duty dollies very inexpensively,
so does Northerntool.com... an ounce of prevention.

I doubt that they post to New Zealand and as I'm an invalid (with an
invalid's income) buying tarps and putting them up for rain and removing
them for sun seems rather too labour-intensive. I'd need to hire someone to
do it.

Also I would
definitely drill a weep hole in those saucers... and if concerned
about nutrients it's not difficult to collect that drained water with
an inexpensive plastic pan, litter pans for kittens are purrfect and
cost about a buck.

They wouldn't do the job when each tree pot can 'collect' five litres of
water in an hour of heavy rain. I normally leave the water level in the
saucers very low but when it rains I go out between downpours, suck the
excess water from them and store it for drier weather. I have a row or six
60l black plastic rubbish bins that I put the water in until needed again.
Whenever possible I re-purpose mass-produced items that are usually cheap -
these cost me $9 each including a lid and I bought them over a couple of
months - the lids are a must have to keep mosquitos from breeding in the
stored nutrient-filled water.

I try to never let the saucers dry out as I have small aquatic snails in
them which eat the algae that grows there and contribute their own manure to
the system when I suck water out. I use pots that are fairly tall with the
bottom 15% or so (the part that sits in the saucers) filled with pine bark
'nuggets' so the media isn't always soaked. I re-pot about every two years
on average (if they're in the largest pots I root prune and replace ~50% of
the media - if not I go up a size). Usually by that time the bark is just
starting to rot down and become part of the media, which has caused a bit of
subsidence and made room for the composted manure / seaweed top-dressing
that I do whenever the trees have a growth spurt.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)