Here’s what an afternoon playing with fire and miniature screw drivers can get you:

the enterprise-grade machine in action

If you want to learn how I did it – as I know you are already on the edge of your seats – let me break it down for you. 

The Why

The collection of potted plants on our terrace has reached critical mass i.e. now I notice them everytime I step into the terrace (which is not that often to begin with but that is a different story).

Watering them is now done by filling three old coke/pepsi bottles with water and then turning the bottle over the plant that needs to be watered for a pre-determined time period, as demostrated by my two year old:

Proof that watering plants is not rocket science - unless of course my daughter is a genius waiting to be discovered

The How

This is the …mmm … simple part, actually. Also the most fun. I really don’t water the plants you know. My green thumb, although very much there, is hardly interested. Anyways…

Take one screw-driver and place it over your kitchen fire (given that gas is still being supplied) until you get it hot enough to pierce through an old coke bottle’s cap. In fact, I used pepsi caps on top of coke bottles – thanks to standardization of the world, the rival companies (Coke & Pepsi) do not have ‘proprietory’ bottle openings. Had they been Microsoft and Apple, this would have been impossible.

Anyways, do the poking (the real fun part), and do it repeatedly. You can get neat looking slits, like this:

And also on the bottle, like this:

The slits on the bottle are engineering masterpieces. They will not spill water even when the bottle is full and placed upright. They will hardly spill anything when you even turn it over. Water pours out of the slits on the cap only. This is handy for small pots:

And when watering bigger plants/pots, just give the inverted bottle a squeeze, and viola:

I just like this picture

The above design is copyrighted, patented, owned and protected by me. You can use it though. And while you are at it, make me a spare for I think I have lost the masterpiece somewhere.