Ebb and Flood Irrigation

Wondering about constructing something DIY. I do this manually at times (when pots are dry and watering from Can + Rose likely to run-through), pick up a carrier of pots, stand in gravel tray, fill tray with water, leave 10 minutes, swap for another carrier of pots ... it takes ages to do them all, although I don't sit and watch them (but I do forget some and they get far too waterlogged as a result).

I was thinking of a frame, say 2" - 3" high, around the edge of the area (a length of staging, for example), cover bench and surround in pond liner or similar, put a "sink plug hole" in the base, and fill with water for 10 minutes and then drain - compared to a 2' square tray this would do all plants in one go.

Or I could lay capillary matting I suppose, but some Googling suggests that the commercial nurseries seem to have switched to Ebb and Flood benches & floors now, so I expect it's a) more efficient and b) cheaper

My bench is pretty robust, but I should perhaps cover it with gravel trays filled with water (and plants) first to see that it looks like it can take the strain.

2" of water is 50 kg / sq.m - that's 2/3rd of my weight !! My staging is 4.5 sq.m. on each side ... at 2" deep I make that a quarter-tonne of water !! plus its a lot of water to apply / store. Hmmm ... perhaps I need to rig up something to do it in zones, "flowing" the water from zone-to-zone.

Any thoughts, advice and experience appreciated

 

Very useful chaps, thanks.

Shiney my staging is just Dexion, so no doubt I could get some more bits cheap of eBay to "brace it". I've seen your propagator, if you reckon that is 1/2 a ton (doesn't surprise me filled with wet sand) then I'm less worried about the weight of water across the whole of my staging.

John: that sounds like what the hydroponic boys use (couldn't fine the product on their site though?), as they need their plants to be re-wetted frequently (no soil in their pots), I was assuming I would only need to "run" mine when I watered, and I suspect that with a 10 minute "stand" in water that would probably only be every other day, until the pots are well filled with roots at least.

I did read something that alerted me to the need to have plants with same watering requirements in the same "bed"

 

looks like that's Hydroponics - using expanded clay granules as the "substrate". part of an earlier life was growing Hydroponic plants for Office Landscaping - they had expanded clay granules in a pot and a little float-water-level. Folk just had to add water when the float gauge fell too low, and some hydroponic granular feed every few months. Dead easy really. As the office light was never good enough we insisted on additional grow lights, we swapped out the plants every couple of months, stuck them in the greenhouse for a few weeks to revive them, then gave them to someone else! The great thing was that with the grow lights they came back bigger than they went out! Great business model ...

I think I'll have a crack at a DIY job with some pond liner and see where I get to. If I manage to extract-digit I'll report back with some photos

 

The staging should easily handle 50kg/sqm if its distributed uniformly. You could strengthen it up with gusset plates or diagonal bracing across the corners and stand it on pavers to spread the load
Herringbone Struts from wickes etc are quite useful for cross bracing.