Possible holiday watering solution

knithryn

Seeing many people worried about watering plants, especially pots I thought I'd mention that Aldi have a water and feed gel at the moment.
Apparently one 'dose' of it will water and feed the plant for a week.
At £1.50 a bottle, perhaps a couple of bottles of that would be fine for the first week, and someone could come in and give them a second shot of gel if you're away for two weeks (ie less messy and quicker than using a hosepipe?)

alanobrien

Whether this works or not depends on the temperature.
A week of elevated temperature and the plants are toast.
A very simple and more reliable method is capillary matting with a reservior. Cheap and it works. used this method for years in trays with large numbers of pots.

Orange_King

What did you store the water in? I have a watering mat and it laps the water up in no time at all - think I'd need a paddling pool to keep the plants watered for a week!

knithryn

Thanks for the thoughtful post alanobrien. I didn't buy any myself as I'm not going on holiday and I have enough plant food in stock anyway. I hadn't considered soaring temperatures (hey this is England... in the summer... wishful thinking !)