Watering pressure destroying plants

Hardware
1

Hi,

I have recently taken the watering system of the new farmbot express XL into operation and tried to water the plants I had manually grown in the raised bed. Fortunately the plants seem to be strong enough to survive, but the water is almost killing the plants. Is there something I have missed?

2

Did you put in the 25PSI pressure reducer?

I have an older version of FarmBot and the watering head is OK for medium to mature plants. I am working on a custom design for a “gentle watering” head for seedlings and seeds.

3

I have a farmbot express system with preassembled parts. If I understand correctly, the pressure reducer is part of the system.

image
image366Ă—509 53.3 KB
. It’s the black part on the photo, right?

4

Hi,

See this thread for my solution.

Works well and doesn’t smash the plants. Don’t know if it will work with your setup but worth giving it a go.

Cheers,
Mark

5

Thanks, @markgregory8, this might be a good way to make it work. But do I understand correctly that the current farmbot express watering system is not suited for seeds and very small plants? Not to complain, more to understand where we are in the product development process…

6

The black component in the photo is indeed the pressure reducer, and at least with the municipal water pressures we’ve tested with it should lower the force of the water stream enough even for smaller plants.

It is possible though that your incoming water pressure is much higher than what we’ve tested with and so even with the reducer it is still too powerful. Perhaps a quick hack is to add a zip tie (or a few) to the water line going from the pressure reducer to the tool head. Slowly tighten the zip ties to restrict water flow until desired.

If you’ve set up any sequences yet to water based on time, you’ll need to make adjustments for this reduced flow rate.

1 Like
7

Hej @roryaronson, thanks for the ideas. In the advertising video (https://youtu.be/0s5GU9SWquQ) the pressure seems also to be a bit high. Did you grow plants from seeds to that size with the shown setup?

8

Not from seed, but many of the plants from small starts - some ~1/3 to ~1/2 the size of the plants in your video.

9

Thanks @roryaronson. I’ll see how it goes. Our goal is to grow plants all the way from seeds.