Water Trouble

Today I'm leaving NYC for Thanksgiving, which means there's no one to water my plants. I've frequently considered in the past a way to make an automatic watering device, but it would be pretty difficult. Assuming I have an automatic timer that can flip a switch and then turn it off anytime, and that I can get my hands on some kind of motor, I don't know how I would be able to make a machine that extracts just as much water from a reservoir as I need. The problem is made worse because my plants all require different quantities of water. At some point I would really like to get such a watering device.

In reality, this won't be a problem for the next few days though. I allowed the soil of my plants to dry up yesterday. Today I will give a double-portion of water, so it'll last for today and tomorrow. Assuming the plants don't drown (which they probably won't do if it's just one day of flooding), then they'll just have to survive for one day without water, because I'm coming back in 3 days.

The only problem I have is with the little strawberries. There are currently about 15 little plants in the bowl (some doing better off than others). I don't know whether they'll be able to survive the flooding/drying routine, because they're so small. To make things worse, they're not all at the same elevation, so some strawberries will endure too much flooding while others will endure too much drying. I also don't want to take them with me, because it's more likely they'll die on the voyage than while staying here. It seems like I have no choice though. I suppose that this must be an application of survival of the fittest.