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Balcony folk - let’s talk irrigation, anyone with experience of setting something up?
Our balcony faces sw so when summer hits we need to water twice a day just to keep everything alive and keeping tomato’s and peppers happy is nearly impossible some weeks.
Unfortunately we have no power or tap outside so water butt will be in order.
Balcony measures 2x4m with multiple pots and troughs(some higher off ground than the tap on a water butt so don’t know if gravity would give the pressure required) to keep happy. We tend to rotate/move pots regularly.
Any experience/ideas welcome.
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Shop bought or home made?
Where did you get such a massive sheet of plastic from?
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Raise the water butt and use a seep hose but it'll block eventually and you'll need to get another one.
alt: try shading the plants a bit?
double alt: try using bigger pots and troughs so they can hold more water/heat up slower. Make sure your troughs/pots have saucers. Try getting unsealed teracotta pots.
triple alt: you can buy tomatoes and peppers from many shops. If you or your balconymates are from Europe you'll probably find that the tomatoes "don't taste like a REAL tomato" but still.
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These ceramic watering spikes?
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Solar powered pond pump to lift water to a small reservoir to gravity feed an irrigation hose. I’d go for solid hose with those screw in spikes so you can balance the pressure to get an even water. Or see if the pump will give a direct feed to the irrigation hose, I’d be worried about the back pressure on the pump as these things lift a lot of water so would rather feed a reservoir to allow any overflow to return to the butt.
Lots of pump choices out there but look at the maximum water lift when choosing.
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Professor Yaffle has moved in to my tree. He wouldn't come into view and the pic is the best I can do.
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I set up an irrigation system - an ebay special, about £20 for loads of 4mm pipe, connectors and nozzels.
I think it was something like this:I've got it feeding pots and beds. It's pretty easy to set up and might be massive overkill for a balcony.
I imagine you could run a pump from a water butt, though not sure how to power that. -
Negative.
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Okay cool. Get one of those proper rainwater diverters so when your butt’s full the excess goes back down the pipe. Then it’s a case of getting some head, so either raise your butt above the pots or use a solar pump. For delivery you have a choice of seep hose, drip lines etc. For control, timer or moisture sensing probe.
I have only direct experience of the water butt part. But I am about to install a seep hose / timer setup in the polytunnel. It’ll start off mains fed but I intend to move to rainwater eventually.
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Flowers are falling off my peppers and courgettes, Google tells me it's only the male flowers and that the female flowers will stay but they're all coming off... I've got some marigolds and alyssa in planters around my beds to attract pollinators but that doesn't seem to be working too well, any other ideas?
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https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Drip-Irrigator-from-a-Plastic-Bottle
Simples, but works.
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Does anyone know anything about gardening?
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@carson
Cor! Lovely.