Installed the Irrigation System!

[Zeus123]

Hello!

So, I was beginning to get a little tired of spending 30 minutes a day hand watering my plants and I thought, 'WOW, I'm only a month and a half into the season and I'm already tired of this!" I'm a 28 year old man and certainly shouldn't have these feelings, but of course I leaned towards my millennial instincts and sought out a way to make my life easier. A quick trip down the road to HD and $50 later I now have a wonderful self watering container system as illustrated in the picture! Only took me maybe 25 minutes to setup from start to finish and works perfectly! I estimate that I have now saved myself 6,000 minutes per 200 day growing season (apr-oct) and maybe even as high as 9,000 minutes when the Georgia heat comes on and I would be required to be out there twice a day.

Only teasing, I actually love being outside and watering my plants, but last week I came home and the ones in the containers (the totes were fine although they are also containers) were showing some signs of needing water and I never like to see any signs of anything. Was the 1st day the temps were in the mid 80's and I instantly realized that there was no possible way I could avoid this issue unless I installed the irrigation system.

For anyone who doesn't have an irrigation system I HIGHLY recommend it based on the very small cost and installation effort. I can't stress enough that you still need to monitor the plants every single day to ensure that your watering 'schedule' is appropriate. You also must ensure that you really are getting the water all the way down. I've been experimenting with mine and at the moment I'm letting water run out the bottom and then testing all the areas in the containers with a moisture testing instrument to ensure the water really is getting to where it needs to go.

What I learned: Try and source only what you NEED from HD, Lowes, etc. Looked at some online 'kits' and quickly realized I needed things that weren't included and things were included that I certainly did not need. It's also so unbelievably simple that you would never need any directions to put this together. It's 90% common sense. The $50 was enough to outfit 10 containers and I still have enough to outfit my 10 pepper plants and the additional 5 tom's I'm planting this week.

I still spend those 30 minutes outside every day pruning away!

Please ignore my experimental container 2nd from the left. Although, it somehow reached 5ft tall already.

Zeus