[Growster...]

We always use big 10" pots, and place four per watering tray, so we only feed the water in the tray, with the occasional splurge over the foliage, or into the pot if dry on top.

That raises two questions in my mind

Why occasionally into the pot if dry?  I'm thinking you could always do that (excess would drain into the tray and be reabsorbed, or evaporate increasing humidity / reducing temperature, both beneficial).  Or if you always water into the tray, only, capillary action would happily lift the water into the pots, and perhaps keep more air in the compost? (no idea on that one!), but I'm not seeing a situation where the compost is too dry for capillary action to work.  If you left it a week maybe, but I'm figuring if it ever got to that point the plants would be in dire straights!

The pots have a mixture of good quality compost and garden soil, and a gut feeling is that when the tops dry out, what few roots there are not getting all they need!

Other question is "splurge over the foliage" - I try to keep water off the foliage of my Toms, curious what your thinking is on this one pls.

This is because we spray with Bordeaux, or as last year, soluble aspirin. I also like to keep humidity up in there, and wetting the leaves does no harm!

I am now wondering why, when I used to grow in containers I didn;t stand them in gravel trays. I watered them 2, sometimes 3, times a day!

The trays we use are in fact growbag trays, and we also grow cucumbers in them, but using a good growbag like a Levingtons.

The fancy watering pots are designed for grow bags ... but I saw an alterantive at Chelsea last year: a fancy gravel tray for a growbag!!! the Hozelock growbag waterer:



Bag is put onto tray which has "spikes" containing capillary matting strips which penetrate the bag and facilitates watering from the water reservoir in the tray (up to 14 days watering I read ... presumably only when the plants are tiny!, its a 15L reservoir per growbag).  Then you fill the tray through a poxy tiny little hole   Quick look on Amazon suggests they are £20-25 each

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A lot of this is about having the time to do everything

Very true.

[Kristen]

Thanks

wetting the leaves does no harm

I thought it facilitated Blight spores to "germinate"?  Obviously no problem if there aren't any about.

[Annen]

I got 3 of the plant haloes last year and I thought they worked well, certainly better than planting straight into the growbag.
They were not cheap I know, but I got them on special and they look like they will last a long time, so I think I will use them again this year.