Watering cans and easy watering in the polytunnel

With the warmer weather this week I have been lugging a lot of these around.

It can get really hot inside a polytunnel during the day and all my precious plants need lots of watering.

As you all know, I love my polytunnel. But one of the things I don't love, is that the previous owners of our house erected the polytunnel on top of subsoil, dumped from when they had the garage built. This means I can't grow directly into the soil in beds but have to use large pots ( I use builders buckets with holes in) to grow my plants in. My system works well and I get great crops, but I do have to water everything, by hand, a lot more than if the plants grew in the ground.




In the height of summer that means at least 20 mins, morning and evening, spent watering the polytunnel. I don't begrudge the time spent as I enjoy tending my plants, but it also means I can't go away for more than a day unless I arrange for someone to come in and water the polytunnel, in my place.

I use a hose and a watering lance for larger plants, but at the moment the tomato plants are still small and seedlings need watering with something a bit more delicate and directable, hence all the watering cans!

I have often wondered about setting up an automatic watering system inside the polytunnel for use in the height of summer, which I could connect to the tap and set with a timer. We use Hozelock type fittings on all the taps and I have been looking at various online sites for suppliers and found Easy Watering to have some good ideas. I just need to work out how much it might cost, which system would work best for us and who to buy it from.

Inside the polytunnel I need to apply the water either on the top of the pots directly or into the gravel trays they stand in, so I think some sort of  drip irrigation system  (also available from Easy Watering)  might work best in there. I could lay the main hose up the middle of the floor with the side branch hoses leading to the trays or pots - each tray holds three big pots so I wouldn't need too many side hoses (there are typically 16- 20 gravel trays on the floor at the height of the growing season.)
 
Outside in the veg garden I use soaker hoses laid on the soil in the beds, as well as assorted spray fountains placed on the soil. I only use the soaker hose when needed and always when we are around to monitor it so I don't need an automated system there. I also use the water we collect in the water butts where ever I can.

By the way, this is the experimental potato bed, finally fully planted up with the straw/compost top mulch layer in place.  I will let you know how the experiment goes and how it compares to the harvest from the adjacent bed, which I planted up using my normal method.

So, it is time for me to have a think about our future irrigation needs, both automatic watering systems  and any different/additional  manual equipment we need to source.  I tell you though, if we ever get the new polytunnel up and running in the newly cleared and levelled area it will have raised beds I can plant into!

Review - Water Butt supplied by Idealo

In the wake of the recent water shortages ( I know we had a wet April, but a few hot weeks in May may well have removed any benefit from that!) I think we are all particularly interested in ways in which to make our garden or allotment more water efficient.

Obviously watering wisely, mulching the soil surface after watering, watering late in the evening and growing less thirsty plants are all good tips, but saving rainwater and reusing "Gray" water is also a good idea.

Fitting water butts to downpipes on your house, garage, shed or greenhouse etc is one way to harvest free water from the sky. However since the announcement of the hose pipe ban in my county I have noticed is that there have been few or no water butts for sale in my local garden centres and I gather a similar situation exists in other areas.

I already have a couple of water butts but was thinking of getting a few more, as if our borehole water supply fails for any reason I have one or maybe two days, at most, saved up in the butts to keep the crops in the poly tunnel growing.

So I was delighted when I was contacted recently by  Idealo , who offered me the chance to have a water butt to review. Idealo is a UK price comparison website that compares a huge range of garden products, from hand tools such as trowels and shovels to larger pieces of machinery like lawn mowers and garden shredders.

I chose one like this one  as it was large ( 200 l) and a pleasant green colour. It also seemed a good price (£59.99) for all the fittings which it came with.


Idealo arranged for its delivery to me and it was ordered and shipped to me in 2 days.

Unfortunately it arrived the day the rain stopped and the sun began to blaze away, but I am sure we will get some more rain soon!

 
No packaging - apart from the black plastic and tape :-)

Stand and tap and connector kit all stored inside the butt - all included in the price which I was impressed with.

The tap plugs into the hole but you have to reach inside to do up the internal plastic nut which fixes it on  - good job Compostman has longer arms than me !

The capacity of the butt is 200 l, which is a good size.

I think it looks very nice, as far as such things can look nice.

There are pre drilled holes so you can fix it to the down pipe from either left or right - and which ever hole you don't use has a handy plug.

The lid locks in place so it is a safe feature if you have small children around.

I can't wait to put it in place and save yet more water, just in case! Thank you to Tommy at Idealo for sending the butt to me to review.