My little watering & anchoring invention...

Flowki said:

I mean that the depth of the dish would be hard to get right. If it's too deep then you would have to sacrifice soil to get it down in their. If it's too high instead, then you'd possibly lose height on the plant due to needing to transplant it higher up to keep the lower branching/leaves clear thus needing it to be smaller top end if going for a certain size for space, hope you follow. If you are then forced into using too shallow a dish you may have to refill each individual dish 3 to 4 times to get in the volume, so a big problem if you have many pots.

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Flowki said:

You will only be dealing with 2' to 4' max tubing that is only fixed to the soil with some form of peg, easily removed. You mix up neut in a separate big container and that should all be clean with no bits to create any clogging at all. Once mixed you can fill a transport bucket and then with that fill up the gravity container. As you can dictate the size of the gravity container and flow of the liquid due to tube size you will only have to fill it up one single time to feed 4 plants. That is unless your plants are in huge pots so you'd need to do 2 transport pots due to carry weight.

Under the bucket/stool you can place a catch bucket if you are paranoid about leaks so if one does occur (almost certainly at that single connection point) it will drip into the catch bucket.

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slow_grow said:

Gotcha, yeah the priority has been to ensure volume is not an issue. It would indeed suck to have to refill it a few times. It's currently under 2.5" high yet holds nearly 3/4 gallon of water. If a 1G version was created it would be only 1.5" or so high yet still capable of holding more water than a 1G plant could take at a single watering so I'm hoping height as it relates to volume and plant sizing won't be an issue.

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slow_grow said:

Is this what you do?

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Flowki said:

Ahh that's good to hear then, hope it does not sound like I wanted the idea to fail or something.

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Flowki said:

It is at-least 5 times easier and faster than traditional irrigation while at the same time waters the soil slow enough to send you insane if done manually. I'm not insane ^^.

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slow_grow said:

I'll start by just saying I have nearly zero patience when it comes to watering. In other areas I seem to have far more. For instance I could manicure for hours but for some reason I just hate sitting there watering things slowly to ensure good and even saturation. Water too fast and I'd get tons of runoff and no real sense of how much the medium could hold until after the fact which could potentially be too late. Water too slow and it becomes more of a chore.

So I decided to set out and design a drain container that closely mimics the distribution of water in nature that would also serve as a training platform for LST, mainlining or any technique where multiple, easily accessible anchor points could be had. In rocking my own mainline for this grow I found tomato cages to be somewhat awkward and too limiting. I was about to start clipping anchor points to the edges of my pots when it dawned on me to simply combine the two problems into the watering solution I was already mulling over.

Here is how I'm currently watering to ensure a good soak without requiring the plant to suck what it needs from the bottom run-off drain pan. Basically a bunch of smaller containers with holes punched in the bottom of them. This works very well however it's cumbersome and hideous.

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Here is the current iteration of the drain container's design:

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I'm still testing the drainage pattern which is why you don't see any drain holes in the model. The smaller holes on the outer lip serve as training anchor points. One need only tie a knot or form a ball in their training wire and run it up from under a hole to the plant, nice and clean. The large anchor points are for staking the container down. The idea is this would remain fixed in the pot the entire grow once the plant's lowest node was taller than 2". This initial size would accommodate both 3G and 5G pots from a diameter standpoint and hold just over 90 ounces of water.

Current flow testing shows that 80 .4mm holes in a concentric pattern focusing primarily on the outer perimeter will yield a drain time of 20 minutes. The idea being to simply fill it up and walk away. Measurement hash marks will be added in increments of 10 (oz) so I know exactly how much water is going in.

The container would be white to reflect light and since it would remain in place the entire grow it would also be a great way to keep tabs on any bugs since they'd pop against the white fairly well. It would also serve as a means to keep the upper portions of the soil from totally drying out. The container has stubby little legs to ensure that drainage hole contact with the soil is avoided. They are stackable for easy storage and each stake point is reinforced with ribs.

There are few more tweaks that need to be made before I have a 3D printed prototype generated to test with.

What do you guys think? Any suggestions?

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Flowki said:

Hopefully a little help from what I found out. If the holes combined are more than 10mm you will likely flood the pot. It's not really avoidable with only using holes no matter how many small ones as the water from it's own constant weight will dictate the flow pressure/volume yada yada and it will mostly exceed to top soils soaking ability past 10mm. Maybe 4x 2mm holes toward each ''corner'' of the dish will allow enough surface soil area per hole to soak up before it all try's to run off down the sides or too the center. If the holes are too close to the outer edges the water may sink a few inches but still lead itself toward the side of the pot and then just drop and flood the catch tray. If all too close to the middle then the center core of soil will get flooded fast and act like a straw funneling water from top straight down to tray.

Small holes would also easily get blocked by falling dead leaf matter or w/e small bits may find it's way into the dish, that would require constant checks/cleaning.


Perhaps some things that could help

Instead of just holes you could have 4 cone shaped spikes that go from the tray down and pierce into the soil. The spike end in the soil would ofc have a hole in it a few mm wide. As it's pierced into the soil it now has some resistance to stem the water pressure and slow the flow down to the soils sponge rate (or so). So long as the straw spikes are not too close to edge/center it could work. Blockage may be more of an issue though, maybe less depending on the size of the bit.

In either case, a lid for the dish with a closable access hole to fill the dish up would basically ensure no crap gets in to create blocks.

I don't see much other way around these issues with ought making it mechanical.

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Budley Doright said:

A fine screen mesh over the top would help with debris to a point and yup it may need to be rinsed out every now and then. Great ideal though and you best get that puppy a patent before you lose it wink wink lol. Might I suggest "Dragons Den".

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idfuckmyplants said:

I like the concept , If it was me personally I'd do it as 2 seperate semi circles just for ease of application . But still something I'd consider using

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vostok said:

IMO: I'd like it in pale yellow to attract bugs, so I can paint some veg oil on it to kill them!

you could take this idea to a garden product maker and sell the idea to him,

maybe sell his product inside yours ..?

you gotta haggle the deal ...lol

good luck

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Budley Doright said:

A fine screen mesh over the top would help with debris to a point and yup it may need to be rinsed out every now and then. Great ideal though and you best get that puppy a patent before you lose it wink wink lol. Might I suggest "Dragons Den".

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slow_grow said:

I like the idea of spikes although can you tell me what equation you're using to measure flow? The current iteration has 80 .4mm holes. Initially I had planned on 300 .5mm holes but that wasn't slow enough but even so, it still took 3 minutes to drain 1G of water (this was back before the overall height was reduced). This formula closely matches what I'm seeing with my drilled buckets where basically I'm just drilling holes in a bucket and timing how long it drains into the bucket below it. With only 80 .4mm holes it takes right around 20 minutes.



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Flowki said:

Ahh right I didn't realize you were going with a full sieve type layout professionally produced ;p. Yeah with such a fine spread across the top soil I don't see why it would not soak up evenly if going that slow. The only thing I'd be concerned about with such small holes is any dry residue build up blocking them between feeds. That ''should'' dissolve once wet on next feed and fall through hopefully. Is it very slightly concave so that no water can sit on edges of dish or do the corner curves also have holes?. Lids to stop you having to clean out dead leaves all the time still sounds like a convenient idea. I Don't see what else could go wrong unless the math lets you down.

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slow_grow said:

Yeah man the buildup is a concern but I've been testing with excess amounts of jack's in my test buckets and can't detect any buildup yet. The inner edges are rounded but without some type of dip there will be some very slight pooling. I think if it goes to production I'll incorporate some ever so slight dips toward the drain channels so not a drop sits around.

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Flowki said:

Well, sounds like you got it all figured out so good luck and send an update yeah?.

Ok maybe one more thing ;p, I take it theirs room for various types of plant support, bamboo etc etc?.

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slow_grow said:

Hmmm didn't think about factoring in supports, are you saying for the main stalk?

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