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lucillle

Wicking, individual or community?

lucillle
14 years ago

Do you use a permanest tray and eggcrate or individual reservoirs? Walmart just put plastic covered sandwich containers on sale and I was thinking of wicking each plant, what have you found is best?

Comments (10)

  • fred_hill
    14 years ago

    HI Lucille,
    I do both methods. I keep all my seedlings and leaf starts on a communiy tray with egg crating and my plants that I am growing for show on individual containers. I use pint deli containers for a reservoir and cut two holes in the top lid. One hole is for the wick and the other to fill the reservoir. I also use a plastic bag for a liner inside each container which saves washing the containers when they becomoe green from algae.
    Fred in N J

  • nwgatreasures
    14 years ago

    I'm doing both now. It simply is a time issue with me since I have over 230 plants now. As I repot, I'm making "trays" with the eggcrate and setting that up to water the entire tray at one time. It's about 90 seconds to fill the tray with a half inch of water versus 6 or 7 minutes to lift each cup from the resivoir and fill it and replace the cup and put it back on the tray.

    I'm being more careful about consistently using my Marathon sprinkles and my BBB spray so that there's nothing to 'spread' amongst the friends in the tray. So far (knock on wood) it's working.

    The guy at Cedar Creek Violets shared a fabulous tip with me about the tray watering.... if anyone is interested, I'll be glad to share. It's working very well for me and those that I've shared it with.

    Dora

  • lucillle
    Original Author
    14 years ago

    We're interested, spill!

  • ima_digger
    14 years ago

    Dora, I'm also interested. I have most of my larger violets on individual containers. The smaller plantlets are sitting on a grid on permanest trays. I find the trays much easier to water.

  • fuzzyleaves
    14 years ago

    I am also interested in your tray watering tip, Dora :)

  • phoebesviolets
    14 years ago

    The suspense is killing me! Please share! I just lost the better part of a tray of wicked violets this week--not sure why, but suspect fertilizer build up. The tray was about dry... I need to spend less time on the puter and more time checking my trays!

  • Christine
    14 years ago

    Hi Lucille,

    In preparation for a vacation I converted my AVs that aren't in self-watering pots to wicking a couple of months ago, using Permanest and windowsill humidity trays and individual containers.

    The community tray plants are usually much faster to water (unless I need to take off all of the plants and wash out dirt, etc. from the trays). The plants really like the increased humidity too. Phoebesviolets has a good point and fortunately before I wicked, I saw someone's advice to fertilize at a lower strength since water evaporation concentrates the percent of fertilizer left in the solution.

    What I like about the individual reservoirs is that I can put individual plants where a tray wouldn't fit and not have all of my eggs in one basket so to speak. I like Fred's idea of lining the containers and might just try that!

    Donna

    p.s. I'm also interested in your tip Dora!

  • ima_digger
    14 years ago

    Dora, we natives are getting restles for the answer. LOL.
    Where are you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • dixiebug
    14 years ago

    Okay, I am going to open this up again cause Dora never told what the Cedar Creek Violets guy told her about tray watering.

  • minimac
    14 years ago

    Dixiebug,

    Dora hasn't been here for awhile. Miss her posts. Wish she'd come back. But anyway.. she did answer in 'Community Watering Tips'. The one where you asked her about the 'green trays'. It's where she was referring to the PVC couplings.

    Glad you've gotten back into violets again.

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