In an ongoing drive to improve our home garden crops in a drought affected region I decided to investigate the feasibility of the Earthtainer for our back yard.
Image Credit
So I decided to do an experimental ‘earthtainer’, but first some background. A simple explanation of the concept from www.slade .com
The EarthTainer is a "self-watering container," which isn't a novel concept to most gardeners. It's essentially a big pot with two chambers—the top one, containing soil, is where you put your plants, and the bottom one is where you add water. As you can see in the picture below, the two chambers are connected by a central "wicking basket"; through capillary action, water is absorbed from the bottom chamber through the wicking basket and into the top. It's impossible to overwater your plants in the EarthTainer, and it's almost impossible to underwater them, too: You fill it with water every few days, and your plants drink up only as much as they need.
Now what I like about this is you do not get nutrients leeching when watering, and also one can add nutrients to the water.
I bought two cheap plastic buckets with lids and proceeded to cut a hole in the one lid and in the bottom of the other bucket.
The purpose is to house the ‘wicker’ basket which in my case would just be a seedling pot with holes in.
I drilled a hole in the side of the bottom bucket (water container) through which I can add water and nutrients when required.
And assembled the ‘stack’ and filled the top bucket with some seriously poor (lifeless) soil
This was yesterday and by this morning I observed that the top soil was damp, very encouraging so tonight I will plant a chilli seedling and see how the plant progresses.
Thanks for reading and if this is a success I will follow up with a more sophisticated arrangement.
Reference:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/04/a_revolutionary_way_to_grow_tomatoes.html
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Very interesting!
Thanks for reading.. I must admit I am excited by the concept
hi @themagus
It is a nice concept.
keep it up
Thank you @ogochukwu ... we need to find better ways to do sustainable crops. Water is no longer an infinite resource
I predict that you may get a sprout, only to have it die due to too much moisture. The key is the moisture being pulled up by a wick. Perhaps you have one and I missed it in the pics.
Hi @heykathy... I reckon I am in more danger of there not being enough moisture as my 'wicking basket' probably does not have enough holes..it is the black seedling tub {meanders off to re-read post to check if I did indeed show the wicking basket}
Good post, instructive, thank you.
Interesting set up. Simple concept and easy to construct. I'll look forward to see how the project is coming along.
ah i see, may solve my problems