Grow Your Own Magazine

Forgive me if this has been posted as I've looked and can't see anything.

In Australia we've been getting some extremely hot weather (30-40C) and we're on water restrictions here as well. This year with the thought of going through summer watering my tomato plants and the limited water not getting to the roots, I decided to adapt the way I water to the needs of the plant.
In order to get water to the roots, I dug in lengths 45cm of flexible drainage pipe leaving some sticking out of the ground.
This proved to use less water and get it where it needed to be, the root zone. I used it on 30 tomato plants over the summer and I can say it worked well and gets the thumbs up here. It worked well both in the ground and in pots. (see photo)

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Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
- Mark Twain

Cool idea mcshee, I think a number of people do a similar thing here with upturned plastic bottles with the bottoms cut off. Bury the neck end of the bottle under ground and fill the bottle with water. Personally I'd make a couple of small holes in the lid so the water seeped out during the day.

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A simple dude trying to grow veg.

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They do a similar thing in the UK with grow bags a pipe that is the same lengh as the grow bag with a right angle bit of pipe sticking up above the surface that you water into the part of the pipe that under the compost has a series of holes in to let the water out jacob