Remember when I told you that I was setting my small newly-potted figs in an inch of water in a pan so that they would be continuously watered from below? 

Well, I went out of town for a week and the kid tending my stuff just filled up the pan, which was about ten inches deep.  I came home to find four of my figs drowned; the rest seem to think that they will recover. 

A lesson to me; from now on the "pan" will have a drain hole drilled in it an inch off the bottom. 

No huge loss; I have way more figs now than I can keep. 

One other item of note:  I have both a Chicago Hardy and a UCD Black planted beside my barn.  Both froze to the ground last winter despite having some modest cover.  Both are recovering, about three feet tall at the moment.  (They were cuttings in 2008)   It is the UCD Black, the Pakistani fig, that has fruit showing. 
Ox

You cannot trust plants to a non-plant person. If they are not used to taking care of plants, they just don't "get it", no matter how much you explain it.

My kid never had much interest in plants, but now with a house, he is landscaping. Trying to get him to understand watering is an ongoing process. Always thinks "not enough" is really enough.

Glad they didn't all go to the orchard in the sky. Probably most folks on F4F don't have any experience with evaporative coolers (or "swamp" coolers, as we call them in Arizona, but they use a cheap little float valve to keep water in the reservoir pan at the correct level--the valve connects to a 1/4 inch line like you'd use to supply a refrigerator. With the drilled drain hole you mentioned, along with a float valve and water supply, you wouldn't even have to remember to water it yourself, let alone get a neighbor kid to take care of things properly.

i left mine with a local plant nut that i knew i could trust, I saw (james?) that lost all of his plants to someone not watering - over a hundred plants, i think?  yeah....  i'd rather lose just four than all of them.  i lost around 6 plants, all of which were newly rooted.

Tucson;
I have one of those valves in my tool box, new, from the days when I had homing pigeons to keep happy. 

I agree that such an arrangement would be useful, but in this case it was too MUCH water, not too little.  Had the valve been in place I would still have had to make provision for an overflow. 

What I really want to do is set up a drip system.  That way I could do without the kid.  I may have to find a new helper anyway.
Ox