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At 1 litre this chap's the perfect size. Big enough to not have to constantly refill it - with marked increments up to 1 litre (the standard dose for most fertilisers and supplements), yet still small enough in the hand to give a squeeze and water away, minimal effort required.
Traditionalhangingbaskets are notoriously difficult to water and keep moist, but these baskets has a reservoir that means there is an extra portion of water that the plants can use on the hottest days. Rather than overwatering, just because you can only water at certain times of the day, (which will encourage your plants to use more water), you can fill the reservoir anytime and know that you haven't saturated the compost.The second surprise result is that irrigation applied 5cm (2in) below the soil surface, through porous hose systems, increased plant quality even though the upper soil was dust-dry. Scientist Tijana Blanusa and a team at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, with funding from the RHS, set up experiments using petunias and busy lizzies to monitor amounts of water take-up by the plants. Hanging baskets are notoriously difficult to water. A recentRHS surveyfound three quarters of respondents wanted advice on how to water baskets and containers. Janet Manning, former RHS Water Management Specialist, trialleda variety of watering methods to find the best one. Hangingbasket watering techniques trial Small spout outlet for precise watering, especially succulents and a perfect alternative to messy watering cans.
The soil moisture content has an influence on the amount of water that is lost by drainage. So when the compost was really dry, (SMFC and SUB), as much as 42% of the water applied ran through or off the surface of the media. Conversely, when the compost is kept wetter (SOL and TD Hi), 30-70% of the applied water was lost. The questionnaire results confirmed that very few gardeners, even the expert ones, have given any thought to how much water their soil is capable of holding, and therefore how much might be draining away out of sight. This confirms the need for training expert gardeners as well as improving advice to members and wider horticultural community. Automated drip irrigation systems can stop wastage because the slow drips have time to soak in before the water runs away, and on a larger scale can be set up to match the rate that the plants are using the water. When people were asked how much water they thought the basket could hold, most had no idea and several admitted that it hadn’t occurred to them to consider it. Estimates varied hugely and only some of the most practical horticulturists were close to guessing 3.4 litres of water holding capacity in a 5 litres container, which is equivalent to 68% soil moisture by volume. They also had no idea how much water the plants would need, confirming the need to improve the advice on how much and how often we should be watering. The field capacity of three baskets was measured at the end of the trial and found to be similar to the fresh compost. The 5 litres basket was found to hold 3.4 litres water at the start of the trial and ranged 3.05-4.19 litres at the end of the trial, so the compost has not degraded significantly and in some cases improved, maybe due to microbial activity. baskets with 6 petunia plants that were given one litre water per day on average, produced a similar amount of flowers as baskets given 300 mls water per day on average with most of the excess wasted.
The climate is changingand gardeners are having to adapt to the less predictable extremes of weather such as the cold spring of 2018 and the long drought through the following summer. The winter of 2019/2020 saw many gardens flooded, and we know gardeners would like updated watering advice to cope with these extremes. Slow the flow when you are watering and don’t be in a rush to get the water to soak into the compost, it will run off the surface or drain through the bottom of the container, where it will be wasted.
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