Watering your pots has never been so easy

Most people have pots of some shape or form in the garden, and whether these are around the patio, on the front door step or strategically placed around the garden, they need to be kept watered if the plants are going to stay alive.  This can be a real bore, especially when the weather is really hot and they need to be done every day.  There’s also the added challenge of ensuring that someone can be available to water them when you’re away on holiday which you can bet will be the only 2 weeks of the year when there’s not a drop of rain!

Pots need to be checked and watered even when the weather isn’t hot and dry as the rain just doesn’t penetrate the soil in the same way as it does in the ground and if you let them dry out it will be really difficult to rehydrate the pot again.  If you have an automatic irrigation system in the garden then it will probably be possible to extend this to your pots, but there are other options if you haven’t.

My favourite is the brilliant tanker irrigation system designed by Living Green and distributed by Clarke and Spears International.

Which system you use will depend upon the size of the pot or planter you are trying to irrigate, but the principle is the same.  The tank sits at the bottom of the planter (positioned before planting) and the periscope-style tube runs up through the soil until the end pokes out of the top.

In this planter I used one of the modular tanks and you can see the tube poking up on the left hand side.  I have also very successfully used the modular system at the bottom of a raised bed where the eaves of the house prevented the rain from getting to the plants at the back.  With this system it is possible to join a number of tanks together to cover a larger area.

When the tank is full of water, the felt strip across the top becomes wet and feeds the water into the soil from the bottom of the pot.  In the summer, unless the weather is really hot, you will only need to top up the tanks once a week.  In winter, this needs to be done even less frequently, more like once or twice a month.

I think you’ll agree that this is a brilliant system.  As well as saving time, it also facilitates a more effective way of watering because the plants receive it directly to their roots.