self-watering of tomatoes plants

 
In my bid to promote self watering of my tomatoes I have filled a couple
of empty milk bottles, made a hole with a heated NEEDLE (so we are
talking about a tiny hole) underneath hoping that the water would last
at least a couple of days, and placed the bottle next to the tomato
plant...



The 6 pints bottle was empty after about three hours! What have I done
wrong? I did leave the lid on. Other suggestions?




--
ackeiyword

 On 7/13/2011 5:34 AM, ackeiyword wrote:

The hole may not be so tiny as you believe. Or, if you are filling the
bottles fully with cold water, they may be pressurizing when placed in the
sun and literally start spraying their contents.

 
    My first thought is that the bottles were not air tight before poking
the holes in them.  I would also suggest poking only one hole in the bottle.
The idea is to have the water drawn out with capillary action into the soil
being the driving force.  I have glass bulbs with a long thin stem
terminating in a tiny hole.  It takes a bit of time to fill with water but
it lasts for days after shoving into the soil of potted plants.  It does
empty more quickly when the weather is hot and/or the plant is really
growing.

    Other ideas:

http://store.earthbox.com/default.asp

http://www.globalbuckets.org/

http://www.insideurbangreen.org/

Assuming the plants are already in pots, you will have to be creative to
adapt the ideas from each of the websites.

Good Luck.

 
(Amazon.com product link shortened)10592176&sr=8-1

 wrote:


I was going to suggest the drip irrigation dripper myself.  I have set
up gravity feed sustems with them in the past and you get a regulated
flow.  One problem is that they usually work off a timer and run about
0.5 to 3 GPH, so too much without the timer.