The indoor gutter system my wife put up last month is going well, but it wasn’t perfect. With a busy schedule (you wouldn’t believe how much time kids take!), watering every day was proving to be difficult and we wanted these plants to survive this time!
We added a reservoir system that automatically watered the plants with a minimal thought on our part. Using vacuum pressure, we only need to “water” our gutter system every other week now. Here’s how it looks!
We added PVC pipe that was sealed off on both ends. A hole was drilled in both sides (on the top of the pipe) for access to the water in the pipe.
Each potted plant hanging out in the gutter was given a hollow water bulb. Each bulb has a hose running to the reservoir just beneath the gutter level.
Here, you can see the bulb and the hose a little more clearly.
You can see our strawberry plant is doing very well with the suction watering system. For our smaller gutter, we used a plastic Tupperware dish to hold the water. It works just the same as the PVC pipe. As long as the water level is just below the soil level, the dry soil will “pull” the water through the hose when it needs it, reducing a lot of watering time.
As long as the tip of the bulb stake is above the water line, you’ll have an almost hands-free watering system. We have to fill the reservoir only on a bi-weekly basis.
The plan is to transfer our cabbage, strawberries, broccoli, and flowers to our outdoor raised beds (I call them our white “coffins” and you can sort of see them in the first picture above). Once they’ve been moved, we’ll start up some herbs for the kitchen that can grow year round. Who doesn’t love the smell of fresh basil?
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