Container Gardening Exploits

Every six to twelve months there is something new that I just have to learn. Right now, it's vegetable container gardening. Back in March I had a bevy of seedlings taking up space in my kitchen. The survivors have now been transplanted outside.

Two gardening "aids" captured my attention and I obsessed about them for about a month. Self-watering planters and the Wall-O-Water season extender. These are by no means essentials to gardening, but I'm a sucker for better mousetrap technology. And because my husband gets annoyed when I spend a ton of cash on my little hobbies, I tried to duplicate these little wonders on the cheap.

Self-watering Planter

Container grown vegetables tend to require a lot of watering so the idea of a self-watering planter sounds genius. I even read a book about these and I am really curious to see if it will work for me. I found some 19-gallon tubs for $8/each and set about trying to make them semi-attractive and self-watering. As far as the attractive part goes, a little direct-to-plastic paint helped.

The self-watering part is tricky because I want to minimize the number of parts involved. There are a handful of building plans on the web, but most include a lot of parts. I narrowed down to the following essential elements: soil aeration tray, wick and a fill/overflow hole.

Soil Aeration Tray

This holds the potting soil above the water reservoir. I bought large plastic, terra cotta colored planter trays (20" diameter) and drilled a bunch of holes in the base. I cut a space for the wick in the center and then attached the inverted tray to the inside of the tub using zip ties.

Wick

This is how the water will be distributed from the bottom of the container to the rest of the soil. I combined two methods that I read about -- a soil chamber and capillary wicking fabric strips. The soil chamber is a mesh basket attached to the soil tray with more zip ties. I also threaded a capillary strip down from the soil tray through the mesh basket.

Fill & Overflow Hole

Just as the name suggests this hole on the outside of the tub is dual purpose: used to fill the water reservoir and to allow any extra water to drain back out. I used a small hole saw to make the hole just below the level of the soil tray. (I've always wanted an excuse to use a hole saw.)

My neighbor/friend, John, has already stifled laughter at my contraption. He's an accomplished gardener but I'm holding my chin up. My motto with this container garden thing: I can always hide or discard the evidence if things don't work out.

Homemade Wall-O-Water

Another interesting season extending idea: use water to trap sun's energy to protect plants from cool temps and frost. But I'm not about to pay for something that looks about as sophisticated as recycled packaging material (visualize the air packs Barnes & Noble uses). I read about people using recycled 2-liter soda bottles to mimic this design but talk about big and ugly!

Small and ugly would be much better so I used my FoodSaver to create water chambers in a regular gallon-size zipper bag. I used these during the hardening off period but didn't really think they were that great. Glad I didn't buy the real thing.