My SO is spending more and more time in the garden and the greenhouse, which is great. But she has now said that she doesn’t want to go away for more than a week this summer because she doesn’t trust anyone to water the tomatoes in the greenhouse. So I’m asking an open question about automated watering solutions…

Ideally this would be for the greenhouse only, so battery operated to use water from the water butt.

Hozelock have some well priced looking timers, does anyone have any experience of these?
I could make my own using a timer and solenoid valves etc, but the off the shelf products are just as cheap.

I use the cheapest Hozelock ones (like this) and the oldest has been fine for two summers. They do all the watering on a roof terrace and the front garden. Had a no-name one from Amazon before that failed after a few months.

that wont work from a water butt will it?

i think you need a submersible pump of some sort – i looked into it a while ago – you can get a solar one iirc the some sort of drip hose to go around the plants.

In the end i gave up and asked a neighbor to do it.

I use the cheapest Hozelock ones (like this) .

I used two of them last summer to water the tomatoes while I was away for a month – worked just fine. Good crop when i got back.