How to make self-watering for indoor plants with your own hands?

If a person decides to leave home for a while, the question arises of caring for houseplants. You can ask your friends about this, but no one will give guarantees that the care will be carried out in good faith. There are several ways to preserve flowers without resorting to outside help or complicated store-bought mechanisms. However, they can only be viewed as a temporary measure. If there is no timely watering all the time, then you should look for another way out.

If the trip is not a surprise, it is better to prepare plants in advance for the upcoming changes.

• Put in the shade so that evaporation is less intense. It also depends on the time of year, the presence of working heating devices in the room and ventilation.
• Remove affected leaves and inflorescences. Professionals advise to partially thin out healthy leaves, and it is imperative to remove not only blossoming flowers, but also buds. This may sound harsh, but it will allow the plant to use water more economically.
• Wipe the leaves, sprinkle them with a spray bottle.
• Place all flower pots in one place and cover with foil on top, making several holes in it for air flow. An alternative to the film can be a covering material - it is more porous, promotes air exchange and prevents the formation of mold.
• If you are placing flowers in groups, isolate diseased plants. In the immediate vicinity, even a trivial fungus will quickly infect healthy neighbors.
• All flowers should be well watered just before leaving. In rare cases, the plant is taken out together with the earth (lump) and lowered into the water, but not for long - so that the earth does not crumble.

In order for the plant not to die, it needs water. In our case, we need a source from where it will evenly, but in the right amount, enter the flower pot. Since this problem is not new, there are all sorts of gadgets commercially available. But in the confusion, you can forget about them, and it's not difficult to do something like this yourself.

The first option requires a bottle. Ideally, plastic, but you can take any. The main thing is that it has a lid. Wine bottles framed by greenery look more aesthetically pleasing. They can also be painted, decorated using decoupage technique or decorated with ribbons, rhinestones, beads. This option will come in handy even with regular maintenance, for example, it will make it easier to endure the heat in the summer.

Manufacturing instructions.

• It is easier to pour water if the bottle has no bottom. But you can pour it through the neck.
• We make one or two narrow holes in the cork so that the water drips. We close and install in the right place.
• You can simply put it down or stick it with its neck into the ground. Then you can judge the intensity of irrigation by the amount of decreasing water. The bottle can be hung over the flower, but not high.

For this structure you need a lace, twine or any other rope. In the absence of such, strips of fabric twisted into bundles can be used.In this case, the rope should absorb water well. It is believed that synthetic fabrics are preferable to natural ones, as the latter can begin to rot. But for a week and with naturals nothing will happen.

The principle of operation of the structure.

• One side of the rope is lowered into a bowl of water, the other is placed in a pot.
• You can position the rope both from above - so that the free end lies on the ground, and from below, pushing it into the hole for water drain. In the latter option, more water will be retained in the soil, since it will evaporate less. But there is a risk that the rope will be pinched by the pallet and there will be no inflow.

From one basin, you can lead the ropes to different plants. Or, if the flower needs a lot of moisture, put several sources of water with strings on different sides. To prevent the rope or harness from sliding from the designated place, they must be fixed.

The automatic intake of moisture can be achieved with the help of various substances capable of absorbing water. After it evaporates, they usually dry out. The most popular are hydrogel beads. Even cut flowers can stay fresh in them for a long time. And some plants are planted in them as in the ground. A hydrogel is quite capable of temporarily replacing watering. This requires:

• hydrogel balls;
• a larger pot;
• water;
• plant.

Progress.

1. Soak the balls in water to swell.
2. Remove the plant and soil from the pot. To do this carefully, without damaging the roots, the soil in the pot must be moistened.
3. Fill the bottom of the larger pot with balls. Then we put the removed plant with the ground in the center. Balls should fill all the remaining space around the circumference of the pot. They are also placed on top with a thin layer.

Drying, the balls will give water to the soil. To slow down this process, you can additionally use any other autowatering method. There are rugs with similar properties - flower pots are placed on them. Cut into thin strips, they absorb water well, so they can be used instead of ropes or rags.

The easiest way to auto-irrigate is to place all the pots in a drip tray or tub of water. But, despite the simplicity, there are drawbacks here:

• moisture will only enter the lower layers of the soil, which is not suitable for plants with a weak root system;
• if you do not change the water for several days, it will turn into an ideal breeding ground for mold or mildew;
• in the lower part of the soil, water may stagnate and there will be no outflow.

About the same principle, pots with automatic watering work. A cache-pot is a decorative container in which the pot itself is placed. In addition to the fact that it serves as a kind of decoration, it is into it that water flows from the drainage holes. The essence of autowatering is simple - water is poured into the pots, which feeds the plant through the same holes. In purchased models, a special float is built into the planter, which shows the amount of water. At home, the water level will need to be checked independently at regular intervals.

Droppers can also participate in the water supply. No needles are needed, only a water container, straws and a flow regulator. Advantages of the system:

• transparent material looks unobtrusive;
• the tubes can be joined to the required length;
• you can easily adjust the amount of incoming liquid.

In order for the flow to be constant, it is important to correctly position the end of the hose and the container of water.The container should be above the level of the pot, with the hose at a slight angle. Its length is easy to cut. To prevent the hose from moving, it is loosely tied to a plastic or wooden peg.

From tubes from droppers and hoses that are suitable in diameter, but borrowed from other areas of hoses, you can create whole systems for watering several indoor plants at once.

It will be good if you have the opportunity to check the efficiency of the device you have created and see the reaction of the plant.

• Automatic watering, although done by hand, must correspond to the type of plant. For moisture-loving, your supply may not be enough, but for cacti it will be in abundance.
• If the water supply is from the bottom, you need to make sure that the soil is moistened to the root level. Plants with short roots may never get it. The moisture content of the soil can be checked with the same wooden toothpick or skewer.
• Track how quickly the water is used up. A container with a large volume may be needed. Or not one system, but two.
• It's good if after a few days someone can still check the condition of the plants. Water supply systems can be pinched or malfunctioned in any other way. Come and look at the flowers is not as troublesome as watering them fully. In extreme cases, during their absence, they can be monitored through cameras connected to the Internet.

For information on how to organize auto-irrigation of indoor plants using a dropper, see the video below.