Will this watering method work/be sanitary?
 

Hello all,

I just finished my GH project of putting a floor in. It now looks great and drains well. I would post a picture but there are plants all over as I had to rush them in before I could place them nicely on the shelves.

I wanted to take this opportunity to change the way I water. I used to use plastic saucers to keep the water from dripping but I no longer want to do that as spilling them out was time-consuming and invariably they dripped anyway.

I would like to put a tray under all the plants, punch a hole in the tray and, and then grade the tray so the wastewater runs towards the hole. I would have the hole hooked up to a flexible plastic tube that takes the water away to the drain area so no water drips on the plants below.

Will this work? Is it sanitary enough? I thought I would raise the plants slightly above the tray using rocks or styrofoam so the water from one plant isn't rushing from one pot past the bottom of the others. I will attach a poorly drawn illustration for clarity's sake.

Tell me if this will be sanitary enough.

A lot of people do it that way. Germophobes would not do it.

It is certainly a common way for draining water from pots. For basic bush-house or green-house where water on floors just goes into a porous ground, then no graded tray is used ------- so it would be a corrosion resistant (hopefully) metal grill platform for the orchid pots to sit on, and water just goes through the grill and onto the floor.

Otherwise, the other option is to use the tilted catcher tray installed underneath the drain grill platform ----- that routes the drained water away, leading to a drain hole.

This is just one possible arrangement. Other styles are based on the same idea.

This is what I planned on doing except I had wanted to use rocks or something else to raise individual plants above the tray. Will that work?

The problem is not so much the drainage as the whole structure drains excellently now. The problem is that I have multi-tiered shelving and I don't want the plants on the higher shelves dripping onto the plants below.

The shelves look similar to those amazon ones used to store dry goods. They are chrome and made of wire.

BS ----- I think the main things are orchid protection and grower convenience. A method where a grower can quickly move the plants around without needing to manipulate bits under the pot when orchids are shifted or moved around later.

And a method where drained water doesn't flow from the base of 1 pot to the base of another pot.

In your original diagram, it appears that the red line is sloped (not horizontal), right? It would probably be best if the orchids sit on a horizontal platform. This is assuming that the red line is on an angle.

I guess I could tape the tray to the underside of my wire shelf. That would solve that problem.

If the red line is indeed on an angle (sloped/graded), which is the platform where the pots are sitting on ------ then that would be an 'unorthodox' method ------ as in maybe uncommon. Some unorthodox ways can be very workable and effective ....... but then, some unorthodox ways can have issues associated with it.

But ----- overall - if you're happy with a method, and it works nicely for your needs, then absolutely ok to go with it.

Absolutely can BS. Fastening the tray to the underside of the wire-shelf will be excellent. That will work nicely.

Any contact of wet object to wet object can transmit bacteria, fungus and some virus. It becomes a question of whether you actually have this potential problem.

People growing in very humid greenhouses may need to worry about this. People growing in lower humidity home environments probably don't.

Instead of rock, many people use egg crate. They cut it to the size of the tray and set the plants on top.


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