Automation

We are leaving tomorrow and will return the 16th. Once again I am leaving the greenhouse in the hands of automation. I have a new 4-zone timer, plus two individual timers at the house. The zones are:

• Greenhouse outside, the barrel, pots and window boxes, running twice a day at 6:00 am/pm.
• East bed (strawberries), southeast bed (flowers), then running up to eight baskets in the east rafters, once a day at 8:00 am.
• West bed (tomatoes, peppers, basil, marigolds), southwest bed (onions), then up to five baskets in the west rafters, running once a day at 8:20 am.
• North wall (seed starters, dill, tomato, potato), once a day at 8:40 am. The seed starter and cutting trays are overflowing with water by the end of the cycle, so all of four have wicks to drain them. Three are just draining into the gravel, but one drains into the sunflower pot. I didn't want a sprayer above the succulents, so one of the geranium baskets is sitting on the ground. I watered it well, it will catch a little bit of spray from overhead, and it should be OK for six days. The two mum pots also aren't getting direct irrigation but I filled up their self-watering reservoirs and they also will catch some spray.
• The succulents of course are getting no irrigation. I watered all of them Tuesday. They will catch some spray from overhead, but they aren't getting hit with big droplets.
• At the house, the southwest zone includes the grow bags with tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, petunias (one bag), the perennials rescued from the deer, and the new in-ground plantings of Russian Sage and Butterfly Bush.
• Also at the house, the north zone includes three petunia/geranium grow bags, the new Monarda, and the recently donated bush whose name I do not know. The Monarda definitely lost three stalks to deer, so I put a little cage around it. The deer have never bothered the Monarda at the greenhouse, which includes one at the center of the barrel and two in small pots on the ground.
• The two sunflower bags by the shed are getting watered by wicks feeding from five-gallon buckets. I did two wicks and one bucket per plant. That should be enough water for six days, if it continues to climb up the wick as the level in the bucket drops.

Except for the north wall in the greenhouse and the north zone at the house, I am using misting nozzles. Particularly in the greenhouse, there isn't enough water pressure to connect more than five dripping nozzles. The misters send the water flying everywhere so nothing is missed, and I've got about 15 connected in a couple of the zones. It's not ideal to have wet foliage, so I'm running the inside zones early in the day to give everything a chance to dry.

When we went to Kentucky for eight days in early May, I only had a timer with one zone. I didn't need to do outside then, and didn't do the house, but there was just as much inside the greenhouse then. Of course with just one zone, everything went on at once and it was a fog in there. What succulents I had in the greenhouse, mostly Sempervivums, I took back to the garage, which I am not doing this time because now it would be a big job to move them. If they can't stand a humidity bump once a day, then they are too sensitive for me.