Self Watering Planters - Build a Self Watering Container Video

What is a self watering container or planter? FIrst let’s be clear about the terminology. What is normally considered a self watering planter doesn’t actually water itself. But it does address the greatest problem usually seen with container plants, and that is maintaining the right moisture level.

Instead, it is usually a container or planter that has some type of water reservoir. The reservoir in the planter holds more water than you could normally put in the planter without saturating the soil and ending up with waterlogged plants. But there is usually some type of wicking action between the soil and the water that allows the water to be drawn up into the soil from the bottom, so the end result is a steady stream of moisture, with soil that is appropriately moist but not saturated, that is ideal for many type of vegetables and water. So the true advantage of a self watering planter is that it reduces the intervals that you need to add water while providing a more constant growing environment.

One other area that it’s important to watch is the growing medium. Usually these planters do best with some mixture of peat or compost, along with a generous mix of vermiculite or perlite to improve the drainage. The other area to keep in mind is the fertilization of your plant. In a small container, you will need to make sure that it’s got an adequate source of fertilization, and that’s especially important when preparing your soil mix.

Now there are commercially available self watering containers, the most famous is the Earthbox Garden System, which does a great job. But many gardeners like to design and build their own garden creations. So let’s take a look at what it might involve build one of the these, including a quick video overview of building one from basically scrap materials.

Design and Build Your Own Self Watering Container

The elements you need for a self watering container:

• The planter area for the pot soil and the plants
• Some bottom water reservoir that should hold a few days worth of water
• Some way for the water and soil to make contact and provide a wicking action to draw the water up
• An overflow hole or drain that allows the reservoir to be filled without danger of saturating the soil

The video shows one example building a self watering planter with a pair of 5 gallon buckets.

A great resource for not only building one of these containers, but for tips on the types of plants and planting medium that work very well is the book Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers. It includes advice on making a planter, the right soil mix, maintaining the right moisture levels, about 100 pages of selections for picking the right varieties for containers, controlling pests and diseases, and more. This will definitely get you going in the right direction.