Never too late with watering again and always warned in time that the water reservoir is empty and never too much or too little. At the end of 2015 Wageningen UR Greenhouse horticulture is testing a prototype of a self-watering-pot. This pot is developed and made by the French company Parrot, yes the one from the Car Kits and Drones.
This so called Parrot Pot is equipped with a 2.5-liter water tank that waters the plants through four nozzles. The pot is developed to give water automatically based on the amount of water in the pot, EC, ambient temperature and amount of light. Every 15 minutes data is measured and sent via Bluetooth to the plant database and based on that, water is given or not. So the watering is plant specific.
56 pots are tested in Bleiswijk with several crops. There are 24 pots with basil and with basil six different watering strategies are tested. There are 16 pot with tomatoes, where four strategies are tested. The other pots are filled with lemon, ficus, olive and spathiphyllum, the different crops have four pots with one strategy and that strategy was developed two years ago.
Source: www.wageningur.nl