Over watering?

[poulson01]

I have a greenhouse full of wild flower plugs and hanging baskets. Also some crates of lillies, mini glads and crocosmia. My wife and I started seeding and planting about 4 weeks ago and the great watering debate has started again.:bang:
My father in law has a phobia about over watering. AFAIK the only things that ever die in our greenhouses die from not being watered. We have an Irritol micro sprinkler and drip system with the injector and that's another source of contention.

If you're familiar with this system, you know, it's pretty simple. You program it and turn the switch to run. Whatever gets missed, you're supposed to spot water and voila!
You can also turn the zones on manually.

Last year, my in laws were at the point where they could manually activate the zones for 7-8 min at a time but they still watered the baskets by hand, even though there are drippers every foot all the way down, and across, the greenhouse. They just don't trust the computer.

This has been going on at least 5 years now and I've had it. I need to know if there is a way to calculate or maybe get feedback from the plants or something....anything...to make watering more of a science then a seat of the pants thing.

Hand watering in June takes a couple hours out of every day. There has to be a way to convince my father in law that we're not over watering with the Irritol.

Help please!

Edit: I've seen our sunbrights get rotten down near the plug. The stem gets brown and thin and the seedling falls over. My FIL says this is overwatering. I'm not sure. He whacks the seedlings with a 200ppm shot of 20-10-20 at 1:100. I think this is too much for seeds that have just popped and I suspect that the high nitrogen might be causing a bloom of fungus, bacteria or mold. Also, I've read that 5-15-5 plus is what you use for wild flower seedlings in 128 cell flats.

I have noticed that, every year, the pro mix gets green in the flats. I think that it's the high concentration of fertilizer doing this.

FIL says that we should be going through 10lb of fertilizer every week. I figure we have about 1200 square feet of flats.

 

[dafunk]

respect your elders! with that said they don't always have the answer, just what they think to be best. For measuring the water levels there are devices to do this, it might be called a tensiometer but I'm not sure, you could get one of said devices and test random flats throughout your plantation?

 

[poulson01]

respect your elders!

I do.....mostly!:blush:
I wish there was even a guideline to go by.
What I try to do is, after seeding, soak the trays once and put them on the heated tables. Then, after germination, move to the non heated tables and hit them with the micro sprinklers in the mornings. It usually takes about 10 min to wet the trays. By the middle of the day, they look pretty dry but are still heavy with water. Cold cloudy days, I water very little or not at all.

My mother in law likes to hand water everything with the rain stick. She really soaks the trays. I've watched.
I like the sprinklers because the mist doesn't beat up the seedlings and you don't see water draining out of the bottom of the flats after you've finished. Not to mention the time it takes to hand water.

I dunno?:dunno:
We got some Dahlia plugs in the other day that had really bad roots. Guess it happens to everybody.