Blumat – Watering the plants by itself

I like plants. I really do. I especially like watching them grow and I like it when they’re green, and what’s better than to grow your own tomatoes? They grow fast, they don’t need all that much care, and you can eat the fruit of your efforts (or vegetable rather) before they die in winter and the whole thing can start again in spring.

However, as it goes, I’m not always in my apartment every weekend or holiday, so I’ve been looking for a solution of watering my plants while I’m away. And I found one.

It’s called Blumat and I bought it off of the German Amazon.de website and after about two weeks of using it I can say that it works like a charm. Here is how I set it up at the moment (click for a large picture):

Blumat

On the left you can see the plastic thingy with my tomatoes in them and on the right you can see my cocoa plant. I was worried about the latter since there isn’t much soil in there, but with a little effort I managed to get the Blumat in the pot anyway. It ends in a cone made of clay (I suppose) and has a little tube attached to it.

So the cone goes in the pot with your plants (if it’s a really huge pot, you might need more than one Blumat) and then you need some sort of a container to keep water in. The important thing here is that the water level in the container can’t be higher than the top of the Blumat. This is why on the image you see I use a cut-off plastic bottle as a water source. If I fill it to the brim, the two plants between them would probably finish it in three day or so. Naturally, if I go away for a longer period of time, I will need a bigger container. I could of course use a big bottle, but then I’d have to put the plants on something to raise them.

I paid around 12 EUR for a three-pack of those things (that includes postage) which is about the same you pay for them at Amazon.com. You can also look for them on eBay.

Isn’t this better than bugging your neighbors to water the plants? :)

2 Replies to “Blumat – Watering the plants by itself”

  1. Thanks for posting this. I ran into your blog completely by accident, but I’ve been looking for something like this for years. I’ll be shopping for a Blumat!

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