Self-Watering Grow Box Made From One Storage Bin

Overview

Growing a vegetable garden is a good start towards better nutrition, and there's nothing quite like the taste and look of a freshly picked tomato. However, vegetable gardening can be challenging if all you have is a postage stamp-sized yard or an apartment balcony in the middle of the city. Self-watering containers solve this space issue and make urban farming possible.

Design

Self-watering growing boxes are designed to conserve water. They consist of a plastic container, a perforated platform that separates the container into a soil chamber and a water reservoir, a wicking basket and a fill tube. The box is watered through the fill tube, filling the water reservoir to the overflow holes. Plant roots grow through the medium to pull water from the reservoir. Water is also wicked upward from the reservoir through the medium.

Wicking

Self-watering containers rely on capillary action or wicking to move water from the reservoir through the growing medium to the plant. If you hold a piece of paper in water, the water will move along the paper even defying gravity. This capillary action is also seen in old-fashioned oil lamps as the oil is drawn upward through the wick. In a self-watering grow box, a small plastic basket is filled with growing medium. The bottom of the basket sits in the water reservoir, while the top of the basket touches the medium in the soil chamber and acts as a wick between the two.

Plastic Mulch

A layer of plastic mulch is secured across the top of the container to block weeds and prevent evaporation. Small slits are made in the black plastic sheet to allow the plants to grow through, but the rest of the surface remains covered. The growing medium stays moist but well-drained, and weed seeds have very little opportunity to settle and take root.

Homemade Boxes

Several types of self-watering containers are available commercially, but a self-watering container can be easily made with 5-gallon buckets or storage containers. Carefully, cut the center of the bucket or container lid out in one piece, retaining the rim. Turn this piece into your perforated platform by drilling evenly spaced 1/2-inch holes across the surface, a 4-inch hole in the center for the wicking basket, and a 2-inch hole in one corner for the fill tube. The lid rim is used to secure the plastic mulch on top. Avoid using clear plastic containers for grow boxes, because they promote algae growth in the water reservoir.

Advantages

By using containers, gardens can flourish where no normal garden could grow, such as on a patio, a deck, a balcony or even a driveway. Self-watering grow boxes also conserve water by concentrating watering efforts completely on the plant, with none lost to weeds or runoff. Even the plastic mulch barrier deters water loss through evaporation.