How do you deal with vacations/required multi day ventures away from your garden?

[FlyingHigh]

If you can get a garden hose into your room, I can show you how to do ANYTHING with it. What kind of system would you like?

Well I do micro growing in a closet and it would be kinda hard to get a garden hose in there without it being conspicuous. When i tried to design my drip system my plans were having a reservoir tank with a pump pushing water through 1/2 inch tubing into the box and then having that branch into multiple 1/4 inch tubing to all the pots with drippers. That system would run off a timer for a couple of minutes until the plants have been fully watered. It was a big pain in the ass to get everything dialed in properly so i got way too fed up with it and figured fuck it. I put everything away until I get some new ideas...

 

[Lazyman]

Hmm ok, I did something similar a couple times, I got fed up with drip too (just too many little parts to break, clog, etc.) Found it much easier to do a small ebb and flow tray and just flood the whole lot at once, but I don't want to try and change your mind if you're not in the mood for a new system.

I've been looking at fertilizer injectors that siphon from a bucket/reservoir, and hook to a hose. If you can't fit a garden hose in, how about a 3/8" OD little poly line? Easy enough to drill through the floor inside a wall, and run it under the house (just spackle shut the hole when done.) If you're on a slab you'd have to run it through an attic and down, little harder.

Anyway, with adapters you can go from any outdoor hose to a 3/8 line, and you can plumb in water filters, shutoff valves, timers, float valves etc... This at least gets you a reliable water supply in the room.

From there, you can do a reservoir or not, I like them just as a handy place to mix up nutes. If reservoir, your pump/drip lines can be a pain, but the parts are easy to find and they're flexible. I did soaker hoses once for giggles, pump didn't make enough pressure to water 25 buckets well though.

How many plants are you growing currently? Just into soil pots? How big are the pots?

If you can just put the reservoir higher than the plants, I'd use these and just have a gravity line run down to them, no timers, no pumps. http://www.rambridge.com/info/tropf2/blumatqa.html Would those work?

 

[ReelBusy1]

Haven't had a day off in 35 months.

I know that feeling.
it's not work if you love what you do.

 

[Teeg420]

Haven't had a day off in 35 months.

same here..

 

[CANNACO-OP]

aero unit's can go for sometime unmanaged, depending on stage of crop.

but best solution yet was after a 16 day vacation to come back and find that your co-op partner cleaned up the place, up potted, took a bunch of cuts and re-wired that one lamp you had not done.

 

[The Southpaw]

I use hempy buckets ( 5 gal).. pearlite/vermiculite mix.. and a system to dump water/nuts twice a day for 1 minute. I am good to leave for about 6 days...(could stretch that by increasing res bucket size (now 5 gal).. every 2 weeks I run 5 gal of straight water thru..
Peace

 

[Lilly456]

I had to travel a bunch last summer and my cousin came over in the time I was gone to check things out, you never know what can go wrong. Since I moved but still had one trip to take I used soil in huge buckets, about 80% haze, but when the time came to leave I cancelled because I just could not handle losing one.I don't like to be gone for a day now, maybe I'm just paranoid or I run too much wattage and too many plants...Power outage, your timers f-up, etc, drippers pop out, bulbs blow up, cops show up, thieves show up, plants, esp haze get real thirsty and don't like salty water, i.e. re-used too much.I'm sure some of you have it down but I'm no genius I just grow pot...

 

[stoned teacher]

Automated drippers into coco...

 

[Mist]

Well I have been dealing with this issue for the past several days. I have been out of town since Sunday and am getting ready to head home today(Wed.).
It is sooooooooooo nice to have a wife that not only follows directions well, but has also got several grows of her own while we were apart for a couple years under her belt. It really takes the stress off. There isn't much that she hasn't dealt with, from bugs to hydro system problems like pump failures etc....
So I have been pretty relaxed on this trip even with them being in the middle of flowering.