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Flower pots tend to come in two main types. One type is
a simple container that can hold a fair amount of water,
which can actually be too much for a plant (the roots can
rot).
Another type has a hole in the bottom, and this type sits
in a shallow bowl. When water is added to the pot, much
of it flows out the hole into the bowl. One can use the
water level in the bowl as an indicator of when more
water should be added to the pot. However, here the
problem is that the the dirt in the pot can be mostly too
dry, since the water is mostly down at the bottom, and
only the bottom-most dirt is wet all the time. The plant
as a whole might not be getting enough water.
So, imagine an empty flower pot, the kind with a hole in
the bottom, that also has a kind of "terrace" on the
inside wall of the pot. We don't want this terrace to be
flat/level, we want it to be able to hold some water.
Now imagine two or three such terraces inside the pot
(or more if the pot is tall). We still have the central
volume of the pot for holding the plant. And it should
still be easy to fill it with soil.
When we add water, we pour it along the inside wall of
the pot. This water can fill the terrace, and then flow
over the inside terrace wall, and down to the next
terrace. Then that terrace can be filled, and so on.
Eventually water flows out the hole at the bottom, and
starts to fill the shallow bowl.
Since the plant is in the center of all these terraces, only
its side-ways-growing roots will reach them. The plant
actually has a choice regarding how much root to
grow/immerse into the saturated soil in the terraces.
As before, the water level in the bowl lets us know when
more water should be added to the pot. Only now we
know that while the bowl has been drying, plenty of
water had also been present inside the main volume of
the flower pot. The plant should have a much-lower risk
of dying of thirst.
Slackware
http://www.slackware.com/ No, [bigsleep], Slackware is still going strong. I do admit I was deliberately studying a more difficult distribution than, say, Debian. [Vernon, Jun 12 2013]
[link]
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I've been doing some stuff with Linux recently,
and it has various pluses and minuses, compared
to Windows. The particular flavor of Linux, this
time, is called "Slackware v14.0", and it came with
something called the "K Desktop Environment" or
KDE for short. Many of the applications have
names beginning with "K"; the web browser is
called "Konqueror". |
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Certain other events today inspired this flowerpot
Idea, so I thought I would post it using that
browser. For some reason, as yet unknown to me
(perhaps a configuration issue), only the first line
of text got posted, and the rest was lost. This
happened twice, only the second time I didn't
actually lose the text because I copy/pasted it to
a completely different application before clicking
the OK button here. |
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After that I tried opening my Web-email access
point, and sending a message to myself, using the
saved text. Nope, that didn't work either; only
the first line of text was sent; Konqueror was
definitely having a problem. |
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So I took that other application, saved the text as
a file, and then emailed the file to myself as an
attachment. That worked, so I could open the file
with a different browser on a different computer,
and finally post the text to the HB. Sorry for the
delay; there was a TV show that I had wanted to
see, that just started as the first attempt to post
the idea had failed, using Konqueror. And that
distracted me from noticing that the title was
misspelled (now fixed). |
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I use slackware too (still v13). I agree [bigs], it's not a consumer product. |
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Anyway, folks, I was just trying to explain why this Idea failed to meet my usual standards, when I first tried to post it. I was hoping for some feedback about whether or not this really is a better flower pot, not a discussion on Linux. |
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I had already bunned it and was hoping for a continuation of the Linux discussion. :) |
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As to whether it's a better flowerpot, I imagine that would have lots to do with the water-retention properties of whatever's being used for soil. |
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But using the soil for water-retention essentially
takes the pot itself out of the equation! |
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It would be easy enough to test: bury some bowls right-side-up in a flower pot. Eventually the roots will knock them over, but it will be awhile. |
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