Indoor Watering problem question

[Surfer Joe]

Hi everyone.
I am planning a new grow in soil and am trying to find an inexpensive way of watering the pots if I am away for about 5-6 days.
My idea is to set up an aquarium pump in a bucket of water on a timer and have it turn on once while I am away and fill the bottom of a big plastic tray (1 meter square) where all of the potted plants sit in. Then the plants can just soak some water up from the tray into the soil.
My concern is that they will likely sit in a few inches of water for a couple of days since all of the water will probably not be absorbed.
I will only need to do this once during the grow and it will be around the time that they are into the early/middle stages of flowering.

I had considered trying to rig up a series of little hoses from the water pump so that I could direct the water into the top of each pot (there will be about 6 or 7 plants at that stage, depending on how many of my plants turn male- I planted 9 in total) rather than having to flood the whole ground tray where they sit.
The timer lets me control the settings down to minutes and allows different settings throughout the week, so I can chose to give the plants water pretty much whenever I want.

I figure that if I give them a good hand watering the day I leave, and then use the water pump once while I am away about 3 days later, I would be back a day or two after that and I could then drain any excess water out of the floor tray that hadn't been soaked up, but I worry because you are not supposed to leave your pots standing in water too long. Would doing this once be a serious problem, or do I need to be able to direct the water to the tops of each pot instead?
I am looking for an inexpensive solution since I can't afford to buy some expensive automatic hydroponic equipment to do this.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[kosherkush]

HELLO

What you`re talking about is pretty much an autopot system, what you must have is an air pump inside your`e res of water/nutes so the mix will always get oxygen and you need an airdome if you plan on letting the pots sit in a few inches of water aswell you must have this so you won`t have any roots rotting! aswell the tray must be sealed imo.

 

[Muddy]

Unless you've got big plants in small pots, watering every 3 days could be a bit excessive. Even my mature plants, in a soil less mix of peat and perlite, 2.5 gallon pots, usually only require water every 5 days or so. Of course things like air pots dry out faster. While bottom feeding them once probably won't hurt.

 

[Surfer Joe]

Unless you've got big plants in small pots, watering every 3 days could be a bit excessive. Even my mature plants, in a soil less mix of peat and perlite, 2.5 gallon pots, usually only require water every 5 days or so. Of course things like air pots dry out faster. While bottom feeding them once probably won't hurt.

Thanks. Yeah, right now, they are 5 days since the last watering and the soil is still a bit moist at the top, but they are still small and don't use as much water as they will in a month's time. My pots are about 11 L in size.

 

[Muddy]

I wouldn't worry about it. If they are still moist on top after 5 days then they are probably still wet further down in the pot. Water them before you leave and they should be fine when you get back.

 

[Surfer Joe]

Thanks everyone.
I put together a small water pump in a 5 gal bucket with a hose and splitter and with thin aquarium tubes running from the splitter to each plant.
The flow at the end of each tube is a gentle stream, not enough to erode the soil if placed on it, so now I can sort of drip feed all the plants from the top for whatever time I want if I am away.
I am testing the setup and measuring the actual output from each hose to see what the amounts are so that I can set the timer correctly.


This is not something I want to use except during an emergency, or for a single timed watering during a short length of time if I am away. If it works well, I may use it manually as a convenient way to reach water to all plants when I am watering.