Ok, so I'm sure from the title it sounds like I'm about to ask how frequently I need to water plants or whether their over or under watered but it is neither of these . I need help from a professional or someone that uses drip systems or the like for watering their plants. My problem is this, I want to make a set-up in a biggish garage and use 3/4 of the space available. I plan to throw up 9-10 600w hps to cover about 100-120 plants. They are ALL going to be in 18litre round pots in soil/perlite. As you can guess, feeding and watering this amount individually is going to be a complicated task but I've seen on video's and pictures people using some kind of automatic watering system where there are seperate pipes that go into each pot and feed them on a set schedule. My question is what is this device called and where can I possible purchase one from. And will it feed up to 100plants a time or will I need quite a few of them. Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.. Also while I'm looking for advice, can someone please let me know if they think this idea is dumb and I should just go hydro and other than bigger yields and an easier feeding routine, what are the pro's and con's of using a hydro set-up, because as I understand it, it uses more space = less plants in the space. THANKS
I would say to do it cheap buy a garden hose and lay it ontop of your pots. Poke 2 holes in the hose above each pot and just snake it around over all your plants. If you want to go a little more expensive (and are somewhat mechanically inclined) you can do it with a PVC set up, drilling holes in the PVC pipe above each pot. These seems like they'd be cheap, and fairly easy. Pros of Hydro: Easy once set up, bigger yield, faster growing palants. Cons: Expensive to set up, especially for that many plants, nutrients costs add up since you will have to have such a large reservoir.
for something this big, i would tie it into your home sprinkler system if you have one, or you could just run a dripline to each plant and have the drip line hooked into a facet that you can just turn on and off.
They are pretty easy to set up. All you need is a water pump, some of those 1 to 8 adapters and a bunch of drip line (all available at your local hydro or pet store). Set the water pump in your reservoir, oh yeah you need one of those too, and run a thick line from that pump. It will run to a 1-to-8 adapter, and those 8 tubes will each run to a 1-8 adapter. Then another 1-to-8. So 1 line turns into 8 lines, then 64 lines, then 512 lines. Run two lines per plant, for a total of 256 plants. Start with the biggest line you can find, and then step down each time to smaller gauges. Personally, I think if you're going to run a drain-to-waste drip system you'll do better in coco. You can always look into getting yourself set up with a waterfarm hydroponic system. Setup is pricey, but the yeilds are better... so there's that.