we are going away on wednesday for 2 weeks and a friend agreed to take care of my 2 meyer lemon trees and about lemon seedlings while i am gone. but yesterday when i went over what he had to do - watering the trees about every couple of days, etc (i have 1/2" chc as medium), he was a little reluctant to take on the responsibility.

so now with 3 days before i leave, i am looking at alternatives. would any of the self watering devices work on fast draining medium such as chc? something like this?

http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=1&cat=2,2280,54307,62642&p=62642

thank you,
kay

For a medium as rapid draining as CHC I doubt that the system you linked to would work. - Millet (1,258-)

What I have done for my potted citrus on my patio when I go on vacation is setup a dripper system. I used a timer on my hose. Ran the hose near the pots. Then got the attachment pieces to convert the hose to dripper tubing. I installed one or two 2 GPH drippers per pot depending on the size.

for an automatic watering system for chc, you probably would need similar to a flood and drain hydroponics setup, basicaly a pump that pours water in faster than it can get out for say half an hour (long enough to soak the chc) then it turns off to drain the pot and dry out till the next watering, a hose in each pot from an automatic watering timer would do the job, if you can be sure it wont overwater it, probably best to under water it and test for a week or so to get settings right as well

thanks guys for the suggestions, i dont think i have time to setup a drip system. i was hoping to be able to just buy something that will work well enough just to keep them alive for 2 weeks and i will give them lots of TLC when i get back ...

what about something like this:

http://www.blumat.at/blumat_im_detail_en.php#blindoor

I don't see the problem. You are in Vancouver, not in the death valley.
You just water them the day you leave and everything will be OK for two weeks!

usually the leaves on my trees start to wilt about 2-3 days after watering. so leaving them for 2 weeks without water maybe pushing the limit a bit.

> usually the leaves on my trees start to wilt about 2-3 days after watering.
Waouh! You might think of a more retaining substrate.

> so leaving them for 2 weeks without water maybe pushing the limit a bit.
OK, I understand.

There is not much responsibility, or concern of damaging your trees from over watering, because your trees are planted in a fast draining CHC medium. Who ever takes care of your trees while you are gone, will not have to worry about over watering, even if he/she waters the tree 5 or 6 times a day. Remember it is not the amount of water that kills a tree, it is the lack of soil oxygen the kills the tree. With 1/2 inch CHC, your tree's root system will ALWAYS have plenty of oxygen, no matter how much the caretaker waters.. Your caretaker can just take one minute out of their day, and using their garden hose flood the container with water once a day, or once every two days. A new CHC medium simply CANNOT be over watered. - Millet (1,357-)