Drip irrigation for hanging plants on front porch

[Thomas G. Marshall]

I have a front porch with routinely-killed hanging plants. Basically I seem to be genetically designed to turn every living plant creature into dust through water-negligence.

I am in need of suggestions for brands, and whether or not to concoct my own mechanism.

I also need to run the water from inside my house to use water- softened water (to avoid turning coloring my porch rails to rust).

1. What brand is best?
2. What kind of water timer?
3. How to I physically drill from inside the basement to the porch? Should this be as high up on the banding joist as possible?

THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ransley]

I am doing basicly the same thing, Toro offers one but my HDs and Ace dont carry it. Rain Bird and Drip Mist have a better set up, contact a place that sells sprinkler system supplies, my local plumbing store carries everything so I got lucky. With the minimal water used with a timer you shouldnt have run off or its wasted water, Id say get a timer and try your outside spigot first. Lime away removes rust stains if you get them.

[JimR]

I am doing basicly the same thing, Toro offers one but my HDs and Ace dont carry it. Rain Bird and Drip Mist have a better set up, contact a place that sells sprinkler system supplies, my local plumbing store carries everything so I got lucky. With the minimal water used with a timer you shouldnt have run off or its wasted water, Id say get a timer and try your outside spigot first. Lime away removes rust stains if you get them.

I'm also doing this in an outdoor orchid shade room I built. In my case I just ran the flexible 1/2" flexible plastic tubing up a support, then plugged in 1/4" hose sections to the larger line and ran them across a headpiece, with a couple of misters and one spray nozzle aimed at the plant area. HD has all the pieces, including brackets which can hold the 1/2" and

1/4" tubing in place. So do most irrigation supply companies, which will have better items.

In your case with the hanging planters on a porch instead of sprayers and misters you might want to try the 1/4" soaker hose, which you can cut to size and which has laser-drilled pinholes which drip waer into the pots without a spray. This should minimize water outside of the pots.

Rather than drill a hole, just hook up a battery-powered timer to an outdoor hose bib and run a length of hose to the point where you hook up the 1/2" plastic tubing.

[Smitty Two]

If your plan is to stop killing plants, you might want to re-think watering them with soft water.

[Thomas G. Marshall]

No, they do fine with it. The killing is from lack of water. When I have someone do it relentlessly from the faucet, they're fine.

[ransley]

Isnt soft water, Salt Water, and the minerals you remove you pay to add back in the form of fertilisers?

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Yes and no. There is considerable reason for me to be VERY leary of the unsoftened water in my neighborhood.

The folks on my street, in fact my town more or less, have had no end of rust stains on everything that touches water directly from the pump. In fact, many of them ended up with rust colored clapboards (not just foundation walls) as a result after only a few months.

These are plants that will drip onto my front porch. I am spooked by the orange I've seen elsewhere.

[SMS]

Use Gatorade to water the plants. It has electrolytes. It's what's plants crave.