>> "better than water" mats
>> "As Seen On TV" infomercials ... absorb water 10 times better than sponges.?
?? I don't know of them, but I have seen "official" capillary mats that were built for the purpose of watering a whole shelf of pots. I'm still hoping to find a cheaper DIY version.
Is the TV super-sponge like the water holding crystals / gel that some people add to soil to hold more water? Without knowing anything about it, I wonder what advantage it has over plain old water sitting in the tray?
If it can provide water without changing the water level as the plants drink it, that would be an advantage. As long as the water DOES drain back out of the super-sponge as plants drink it!
It think the commercially-made kits for unattended cap-mat-watering handle the water level changing by propping the plants up above the water level and dangle the cap mat down into a big tray that holds enough water to last through a whole vacation.
I have a cat-watering-gadget that is basically a bottle inverted so that its only opening is under water in a shallow tray that the cat can drink from. When the water level drops below the opening, it goes "glug" like a water cooler and the tray fills back up until the opening is under water again. That might work, too, if you can prop a water bottle over each tray and they don't tip over!
I always thought it would be cool to set a gallon jug or 3-gallon jug on a shelf above the trays, and lead cotton wicks down from the jug into each tray. The wicks would have to be very carefully sized to transport enough water up and over the lip of the jug, then down to each tray so that plants didn't dry out ... and trays didn't overflow and flood my bedroom. In other words, "cool but stupid". Or at least impractical.
It's probably much better to imitate the commercial "self-watering trays" and leave a quart or two of shallow reservoir UNDER the pots, and let a big wick pull water UP on demand from the plants. If you're like me, you would rather invent something better or at least DIFFERENT, but I think the existing design would be hard to beat.
If I could think of a cheap and reliable sensor for detecting water level down to a fraction of a millimeter, I could imagine an automated system with computer controlled solenoid valves and a small water pump and lots of tubing and wires. Except for the software and testing and maintenance and electrocution protection, it MIGHT be made as cheap as a few hundred dollars, but probably not as reliable as the existing much cheaper commercial systems. Sigh.
