On 24/07/2009 01:59, in article ,
"Timothy Murphy" wrote:

I'm going away for a month,
and am wondering if there is a simple way
of watering window-boxes while I am away.
I have a number of 500ml empty sparkling water bottles.
I tried making a hole in the top of one,
but it is very difficult to control the amount of water
that comes out.

I'm wondering if one could use a piece of string
with one end in the bottle and one in the soil,
with osmosis slowly taking the water from the bottle?


I managed to keep a polytunnel alive for 2.5 weeks earlier this month using
- 4 x 200l water butts, connected together as pairs
- 2 of these electronic timers
http://www.beddingplantsdirect.co.uk...ering-timer-p-
182.html
- 3 of these micro irrigation kits
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Kingfisher-25M...t-Watering-Kit
_W0QQitemZ290326936536QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ2009062 6?IMSfp=TL090626168004r701
8

(Note I am not recommending either supplier. I paid £10 for each timer and
£5 for each irrigation kit - so you may be able to find cheaper.)

I would expect you can sort out something similar, but smaller scale, so
long as you can suspend a suitable quantity of water above the window boxes,
or have a tap you can leave on.

In terms of working out how much water you need - I guessed that 800L would
be enough for my purposes, based on how many 20L watering cans we generally
use during the course of a day/week. I then ran the system for a week at 30
minutes at day and from this estimated how long I could actually run the
water for each day and use up the entire amount in 2.5 weeks.