Evenly watering big pots

[Jimmycricket]

Hi all.

So I have struggled over the years with finding a way to water multiple large pots, consistently, evenly and preferably with fertigated water.

Every pot needs to receive an equal amount of water. Every pot needs to spread the water evenly and leave no dry spots. It can be a pressurized system or gravity fed

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Mcjoint]

Put one or how many sprayers you need in each pot. Just make sure all the lines are equal length and size. You would need a pump to be able to get enough pressure to atomize the water being sprayed. If you have hard pots that's don't leak on the sides you can use a large droppe and gravity feed, just let the top of the pots get lightly flooded, put a valve alt the res so you can control the water flow.

 

[mistaSmoka]

a five gallon bucket (or whatever size container u want), a submersival aquarium pump and 1/2" tubing however long u need. thats how i do it. the last 3 feet of tubing is pushed through and taped to a piece of pvc pipe like a wand. also have it plugged into a multistrip that has a long cord. so i can switch the pump on and off in between buckets.

 

[Jimmycricket]

ive found sprayers clog and are a pain to get high enough pressure in to go about 5 or 6 feet

 

[Jimmycricket]

also i guess i shoulda said this earlier. By large pots I meant 200-500 gallon sized smart pots.

 

[Graytail]

So ... if you're using fertigation, you must have a central tank ... and if you rigged each pot with perforated watering probes, as many as would work, connect them to one line for each pot ...

Then if you want an equal amount to each, you could install inline meters to the feeder lines to each pot, then either manually turn the feed on and off for each, or find a switch that could meter the flow and switch off when it's reached.

That'd be one hose to each pot with some sort of distribution system like perforated pipes or soaker hoses, for even soaking. That hose would run to the central take with a flow meter on it. 20 pots, 20 hoses.

That's the best I can come up with right now. I made a quick search for that fancy flow meter/switch thingie but didn't find one. It would be perfect to find a flow meter that could be set to shut off after a given number of gallons.

I dig stuff like this - shoulda been an engineer like my grandma said. Sometimes old people are right

 

[Jimmycricket]

Soaker hoses dont work as they will always clog. Even with straight water that is a little on the hard side with lots of minerals they clog.

I currently use those half inch drip lines with lots of quarter inch lines coming off it

 

[Graytail]

Soaker hoses dont work as they will always clog. Even with straight water that is a little on the hard side with lots of minerals they clog.

I currently use those half inch drip lines with lots of quarter inch lines coming off it

Then all you need is a way to meter it. Flow meters looked pretty cheap ...

 

[Jimmycricket]

its a pain to make and with lots of large pots would require a LOT of tubing.