Buried bottles, clay pots and other tricks to keep the soil moist for long - Are they effective?

You raise a very good point about soil being more forgiving, potentially.
To be honest, I am assuming the worst, but perhaps I shouldn't.
But I never tried and planting anything in this garden before.
Our blackberries do very well every year, with no watering, but they are well established and tough as nails, as a species.
And our small apple tree never gets watered, and gives plenty of fruit every year.
Not sure if that is indicative that tomatoes and courgettes will do equally well if left unwatered for a few weeks, though. But perhaps they will, and I am getting worried for no reason.
(Or perhaps it will rain hard.. Not sure why, but every Summer I assume we will get three months of sunshine, despite all past evidence to the contrary).

 

Yes it was neat and tidy look to them that appealed to me, ive not been gardening long but i appear to be taking a neat and tidy route for some reason, i don't understand this i am the most untidiest person i know in the house lol,


Interesting to know your method mentioned works hope what ever you do works out for you what ever you do please keep us informed.

 

Outdoor toms I might water a couple of times to establish them early in the season, if it is dry, I think personally they taste better for struggling slightly.

Courgettes, might need some water if it is dry during the summer, but I tend to think too much watering reduces the root area, the plant doesn't have to spread those roots to find it if you keep watering regularly, so a good soak now and then of the whole area followed by none for at least a week is my way, that is if I water at all.
Of course, should we have a drought then sometimes I deviate from that thinking.

 

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Renowned for rain and surrounded by sea, England could run out of water by 2050 unless attitudes change and waste is cut, the country’s environment body said on Wednesday.


Rain-sodden England told to use less water or face drought

 

Thanks so much.
Your setup does look very tidy and compact, particularly considering you are growing 6 plants in such little space.
I would be curious to learn later in the season how productive your plants will be. I heard very positive things about growbags.

 

It sounds both funny and somewhat unbelievable, I agree.
I was very surprised when I first learned it, while studying water management. Originally my field were developing countries, and of course it is not surprising to hear about drought in say Kerala, in India. But England??

But then, it is interesting that even in a much warmer region such as Kerala, water scarcity is not caused by the climate in itself, but rather by water intensive activities.
While it is true that it rains a lot, we also use much more than it rains.
Each drop of water in the Thames, by the time it reaches the south of England, has been used, discharged into the sewage pipes, cleaned by water utilities and given back to the river perhaps an hundred times (I do not remember the exact number, but it is not far off).
Most water utilities do not rely anymore on pumping water from the ground, because simply the demand would be too great for the water table to replenish naturally due to rain. And once the water table sinks too low, the toy breaks and it can take decade with no extraction to recover.

So, it is weird, but when they say that both people and industry need to find ways to reduce consumption, they are right.
But then, the good thing is that currently wastage is quite impressive. So by cutting on that, there is a chance we are not going to live a very different, or worst, life than now.
We might have to change the way we do certain things, but then the more this becomes mainstream, the more the solutions will become better, cheaper and more easily available.

In a sense, that self watering trays under your grow bags are a good example.
They save electricity, water, time, space, soil and effort. They are reasonably affordable and come next day delivery.
And they make more tomatoes too, allegedly

 

I read some similar advice for other fruits too. And actually it makes sense.
Some of the best tomatoes I tried were from friends who grew them in very warm weather, on sunny hill sides with fast draining soil. Often they could only be watered by driving a water truck to them, so it did not happen too often. It was not intentional, laying and mantaining thousands meters of pipes was just too expensive, and because it does not rain often where I am from, rainwater harvesting is not much of an option.
Probably productivity was lower than with frequently watered plants, but surely the tomatoes tasted good.

That is an interesting point, about root spread for courgettes.
The husband of a friend of mine is courgettes addicted and keeps 60 plants or so each year, and he suggested to plant them 7 feet apart (which is my small garden is really not an option). That is because of the size of the plants of course, but I suspect also for the roots.

I am waiting for 6 plants, so I will plant three on a sunny border, with perhaps 8h or more of sunlight, with trellis for the foliage and no more than 3 feet space each. One or two will have their own larger patches, but unfortunately with no more than 5 hours direct sun per day.
One will go to a 100 liters planter I am making, perhaps in a sunny position (I am running out of those quickly). And one in a 25 liters self watering pot.

To cut it short, I suspect none of them will do particularly well, for one reason or another. Still it would be interesting to see which, if any, does a bit better.
I certainly hope they make some flowers at least. I love the flowers (in a pot, awful I know, but brings back childhood memories).

If I can ask, do you think it is a silly idea to plant those on soil inside a section of a 10-12 inches pot, perhaps 6 inches tall?

My thinking was that it would keep them away from the soil a bit, so less risk of pests and dirty water touching the foliage.
That is how I was thinking of planting my cordon tomatoes too.

But of course doing so would constraint the roots of the courgettes, they will only be able to spread once they reach the end of the pot section, which will also dry up faster than the soil underneath?

 

Not read the entire link, but they said in the same breathe on the news yesterday morning the water companies lose 3 billion liters a day via leaks in the system.

Can anyone think of any other business that loses that amount of it product every day?

 

Thanks John, that is just what I had in mind.
Is there any advantage in your opinion in removing the bottom of the pot, as I was planning?
My thinking was that, while many roots will find their way to the soil through the drainage holes, removing the bottom would help with roots development, but it's just a guess.
In any case, I am glad you think it might work out well enough.

 

It's a huge amount, I agree, and it is the same in so many countries.
The way I heard it from water utilities staff, their profit margins are too narrow.
While they can of course estimate losses from point A to point B, pinpointing where a leak occurs is not very straightforward.
Also, replacing a few hundred yards of pipes here and there is quite expensive and does not guarantee that a leak will not appear somewhere else soon after, as lots of the pipes are extremely old anyway.
So replacing them all or building new pipelines to divert the flow, which is the most effective solution long term, is a pretty expensive thing to do with their annual budget.
I do not know much more than what I was told, but I have to say that they have countless clever solutions to keep costs down in daily management.
For instance, in sewage treatment plants, water is very seldom pumped by motors one place to another. The whole system is quite cleverly based on physics and engineering, so water flows from one treatment to another always at the right speed no matter the amount, just because of gravity.
I know I sound like playing devil's advocate, but perhaps given they are that money conscious, if it would make financial sense to fix the leaks, they would.

 

Thanks John!
Time to take out the jigsaw then..