Kitchen Garden Forum

Hello!

I was wondering if I could ask for some help in conducting some research for a university project. My group at Imperial College university and I are looking to develop an automatic solar powered greenhouse watering system, with the initial idea of having a moisture sensor and a feed pipe for water in each plant pot. When the soil moisture content drops below a certain level, water is automatically given to the plant. The system would require little or no attention for periods of up to a month, say while the gardener was on holiday.

This is a quick survey to find the opinions of gardeners on the project, as none of us have much experience with gardening.

1. Would a system as described above be potentially useful to you?
2. How many separate plants do you keep in your greenhouse? (roughly)
3. How big is your greenhouse?
4. Do you have plants of mostly the same type or which have the same water requirements, or a mixture of varieties?
5. How often do you water your plants?
6. On average, how much water would you give a medium sized potted plant each time you water it?
7. Do you add anything to the water used to water your plants? If so, what?
8. Do you have any general comments or suggestions for us about this project?

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, any responses or suggestions would be very much appreciated!

-Susan Golton
Please feel free to contact us at susan.golton@imperial.ac.uk

Dear Susan, there are already watering systems on the market that have moisture censors and feed diluters. There must be some web sites on watering systems that could give you some technical details.
I'm sure someone on here will help you there.
I take it the solar panels will be to operate the solenoids for the water valves, censors and also maybe a timer.
I have to say it sounds an interesting project and i wish you well with it.

The Tropf Blumat system which Two Wests stock is an answer to the on-demand watering system.
Alternatively a capilliary fed bench system works quite well.

Hello Susan best of luck with your research.
having tried the towell in a bucket of water capilary method, suggested on this forum earlier in the year, which was fine for my cues and toms for a week, I would say personally thats enough tech for me.But I have always wondered why there isnt a state of the art solar powered fan designed specifically for the home gardeners greenhouse,In my (very tiny) mind its simple; the more the sun shines the more the fan blows? anyone tell me why not?...S.T.

Susan
To get a worthwhile flow of air from a fan would mean a hugely expensive solar panel. I bought a solar powered fan, it hardly does anything at all even in the brightest of sunshine. A solar panel to give you about 1 amp at 12 volts would cost about £100, even that would hardly make any any effect to the air flow.
Allan

Thankyou for your responses everyone!

Yes, our current plan is to have some means of storing solar energy and use it to power a microprocessor and a series of solenoid valves. Thankyou for the information about existing systems, we don't want to be reinventing the wheel!

Also, i'm pretty sure you can get hats with built in fans that are solar powered...

Hi Sue, I don't know about any other systems and I generally use a friend or neighbour to water if I'm away. I have to say I rarely go way when my greenhouses are full as I worry too much about my "babies".

1. Would a system as described above be potentially useful to you? Probably not (see above)
2. How many separate plants do you keep in your greenhouse? (roughly)Anything between 0 and around 600, depending on the time of year.
3. How big is your greenhouse? I have two, one is 6x8' the other is 6x10'
4. Do you have plants of mostly the same type or which have the same water requirements, or a mixture of varieties? I may have a a lot of tomato plants for instance but many other sorts as well all with different requirements.
5. How often do you water your plants? That depends on the time of year and the weather. In a cold summer like this year, sometimes once every two or three days would do. In a heatwave, three times a day barely covered it.
6. On average, how much water would you give a medium sized potted plant each time you water it? Can't answer this one, each plant variety is different even in the same sized pot.
7. Do you add anything to the water used to water your plants? If so, what? No
8. Do you have any general comments or suggestions for us about this project? Sorry, no.

Good luck

Thankyou for your reply! Your answers are very useful for us, as we're pretty clueless!

So are we a lot of the time Sue