Hello, and welcome to my greenhouse!
I finally managed to get all of my tomato plants planted into the big greenhouse pots where they'll stay for the summer. Once that was done, I decided to set up the watering system for the plants. There's 10 tomato plants in the greenhouse, and watering them one at a time isn't very practical, and takes longer than I want to spend watering, so I set up a watering system every year to water all the plants at the same time.
I use 1/2 inch PVC water pipe for my watering system. When I built the system, I drilled a 1/16 inch hole in the pipe every 6 inches, keeping them in a straight line on the pipe so they all face the same direction. I use a gravity feed system for the water, so It's not necessary to glue the pipes together. I just push the pipe fittings and end caps onto the pipes. The fittings have a tight fit to the pipe and there's not enough water pressure in the pipes to push them apart.
Here's my 5 Roma paste tomato plants with the watering pipe in place.
This is the 5 Amish paste plants with the watering pipe in place.The white post in the middle of the front wall has 5 pots on either side of it. In this picture, you can see how I have the pipes connected to the water supply with a piece of garden hose.
This is the 55 gallon plastic barrel that I use for the water supply. You can see the hose for the pipes hooked up to the valve. The barrel is up on a stand made of dry stacked concrete blocks. That provides enough height for the gravity feed. The top of the barrel is a bit higher than I am, I have to stand on something to look in the barrel to check the water level.
I took a picture of the watering system in use to show how it works. I control the water pressure to the pipes by how far I open the valve. The system gives enough pressure to squirt the water up against the wall, so I have to back off on the valve to control how far the water goes. The idea is to water the plants, not the wall.
Some of the holes in the pipes don't line up with the pots, so I have to block them with small screws. There's no point in wasting water between the pots. This watering system will stay in place for the rest of the growing season.
I usually fill the 55 gallon barrel from the rain water catchment system, if there's water in the system. If we get a dry spell and I run out of rainwater, I'll use city water to fill the barrel. I've been using some form of this system since we built the greenhouse, it works quite well for me.
Well, that's all I have for this post, thanks for stopping by to check it out!
