Well, I worked on a project I have been talking about and gathering parts for a really long time now. I have had the pumps for over a year. I got the pumps on sale at Harbor Freight in Florida. I picked up the irrigation kit on sale at Walmart this fall. I eventually work on my DIY projects. Eventually. This is the homemade irrigation system for the planter stand in the apartment. I am really bad about taking care of my stuff. Unless it meows or otherwise can get my attention it’s gotta be basically 0 maintenance if it’s to survive. I have been working on a planter stand for a few months now. I finally have enough light, I just forget to water it for a few weeks at a time. I took a series of YouTube videos of my putting this together. It changed a few times as I put it all together. The videos are much darker then I thought they would be, so my apologies.
Here I cut the tube, and make up an adapter to get the smaller tube hooked up to the pump. It took a while for the pump to prime.
Gotta love my mumbling. The first pump I tried wasn’t powerful enough, so I had to make a 2nd adapter to the bigger pump.
I finally get to where I set up some irrigation using some soaker hose.
All set up and working. SCORE!
The water pump running in the tub of water. You can see the hose adapter I made to connect the small hose to the larger pump outlet.
The soaker hose put into the windowsill planter box. I used the little nails that the irrigation kit came with to nail the tubes down to the trellises or whatever. I don’t think that this is enough soaker hose to adequately water this box with the size of the drippers on the small pots. I think the next one I put together will have a horseshoe shaped loop so I have twice the amount of watering.
It’s amazing how much extra light a ‘real’ light fixture puts out compared to the cheap grow light tube fixture. You can also see the net I made to keep the cats out of the plants.
A close up of the plants. You can see where I alternated the curve of the hose so in the end, I had a straight run of irrigation hose. I planted Paris Island Cos (romaine lettuce), Grand Rapids (green leaf lettuce) and Arugala (rocket salad) in the planter. I figured I needed to get that all started now if I was to have fresh salads by the time Katie moves up. I really don’t know how the salad greens will grow in this homemade indoor greenhouse thingy I got going on, but I shall find out! Now I just have to either find a timer that will work, set up my X10 firecracker and use that as a timer, or what I really want to do, is build a timer out of a rabbitcore so i can hook it up to the internet.
I’ve seen your video. I really admire your home-made irrigation system. I’ve come across something new!
Have you considered adding more videos to your posts to keep the readers entertained? I recently read through the post and it was quite good…thanks for sharing
I found your website through Google searching for “eco-friendly”, I really like it!
I appreciate the information!