Irrigation

I spent the morning watching basketball and trying to devise a watering system for my seedlings. This is the first time I’ve tried growing from seeds rather than buying seedlings, so it’s a bit of a learning curve. The big problem I’ve been having watering them evenly. My watering can doesn’t water evenly at all, leaving some seeds dry and some soaked. After playing around with all sorts of complicated what-not (what else do you expect from a PhD student in engineering? It has to be more complicated than necessary), I came up with this:

Disposable bread pans with a little hole for each seedling. So far it seems to work a lot better than the watering can. I also made a drip-waterer:

I love anything I can make from trash! This is such a simple idea, but I’m not sure how well it’s working. Just take a plastic bottle, cut off the bottom, poke holes in the lid, and stick it next to your plants. Theoretically, it should drip slowly throughout the day, watering your plants nice and near the roots. I think I may have made the holes too big though, since it drains in about half an hour. Not exactly going to keep my plants wet in the dry summer heat, but I’m going to keep playing with it and see if I can’t make it work. I’ll be in Europe for most of May, so I need to make the watering as easy as possible for my roommates while I’m gone.

If I can drag myself away from basketball this afternoon, I'm going to try upside-down tomatoes!