DIY Self Watering Planter for Container Vegetable Gardens (Wicking Pot)

How to make a simple DIY self-watering planter using a plastic bucket and a few other materials. Using self-watering planters can not only help keep your fruit and vegetables watered in the heat of summer but also reduce the amount of water you use. Less watering from the top = less evaporation!

These containers are designed to hold a reservoir of water at the bottom, which can wick up to the potting mix below. It’s a simple idea and you could use alternate materials based on what you already have in your garden store.

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For this project, I used the following materials:
– 40L (10.5 gallon) bucket
– 5″ plant pot
– Perforated twin wall drainage pipe
– 1″ PVC pipe
– Landscaping fabric
– Multi-purpose potting mix

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00:00 Introduction to the project
01:07 Materials and Tools
01:16 Cutting the pipes and perforating the plant pot
02:51: Make a DIY Self-Watering Planter
05:35 Planting tomatoes in the planter
06:46 Filling the self-watering planter with water
07:09 Final advice on using the planter

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[Music] if you live in a cool to temperate climate then green houses and poly tunnels are a fantastic tool to ensure that you can grow crops that love the heat that love the Sun that love being protected from wind and here in the aisle of man that fits my bill and so I’m growing tons of different types of heat level plants here in my Greenhouse this year and one of the things that I’m going to be doing with each of my different containers is ensuring that they have some kind of water on top that they can essentially tap into and one of these different techniques is this here beside me this is a self-watering pot that I’ve made with mainly recycled materials from the garden it has a reservoir of water at the bottom and you can top it up with this little tube over here and that way this plant will never dry out especially when it gets going and those roots are really deep let me show you how to make one of [Music] these this project begins with a bit of cutting of materials the first thing being the tubing the plastic tubing you want to put your tubing in the container and then kind of measure up about 1 to 2 in you can guesstimate it if you want and cut it there you don’t want it to be any lower than the lip of your container because you want to avoid getting potting mix and Gunk into your water reservoir down below you also need to cut the drain away material now I’ve used this material for the self-watering pot because it’s already perforated on the sides it’s really strong as well so it can hold the potting mix up from above and I’ve cut these so that they come up to about a third of the way of the container so when you’re creating a water reservoir in this container or your type of container about 25% to 30% of the container should be where the water is the rest of it should be where the potting mix and the plants are growing the last bit of prep work is the little pot there’s going to be some compost or potting mix in this pot and it also needs to be able to get soaking with water and for that reason you’ll need to perforate it with a nail and plastic can split it can break if you use just an ordinary room temperature nail so if you find that is happening heat the end of the nail with a lighter make it warm to hot and that will push through the plastic much easier the first thing that we do is we put the perforated plant pot in the center of the container and then we put the drain way tubing all around it and you put in as many pieces as you can squeeze in basically this does nothing other than help keep the compost from falling into the water reservoir and again if you don’t have this tubing available you could use more plant pots just make sure that they’re sturdier plant pots and you will have to perforate all of the sides to prevent the water reservoir from overfilling we need to drill a drainage hole so put a hole in just at the top of where the drain away pipes are in and this will allow any excess water to drain out of the pot and away from your plant next we’re going to line this container with fabric and the purpose of this fabric is to keep the potting mix that we’re going to put in from going into the water reservoir and this is a geotextile fabric style material but you could use other materials if you would like the important thing is again just to keep the potting mix from going down into the water reservoir and you can see that I’ve pushed it down here into the center pot and then pulled it around the sides here what I’m going to do now is fill this plant pot with potting mix this is a multi-purpose Pete free mix and I’m going to crem it down into that plant pot if you haven’t gotten the gist of this idea yet I think you’ll understand it now so underneath this fabric is a water reservoir and this container of potting mix is able to get wet because it’s perforated and that wet potting mix will Wick moisture up the water gets into this pot once it’s filled through this pipe and you want to put it in now and I’m putting it in in here against this handle because I found that it’s easier to kind of lean your watering can here on the handle to fill it and you want to put it in now because if you try to get it in later it’s a bit more difficult once all the potting mix is here and now the next step is filling this up so I’m going to fill this up with the same potting mix the same Petree potting mix multi-purpose and I’m going to fill it up to about an inch from the top of the container to finish trim the fabric so that it is flush with the top of the container and it is then ready to plant in the first one I have planted with a MX Marvel tomato so it’s a local Heritage variety of tomato and the second one is tigerella it’s a striped tomato it’s a little bit bigger and it’s a good General allpurpose salad type I’ve got string hanging down from a bamboo cane just above and I’m going to be winding the plants around this as they grow and to actually get it started all you do is you dig the hole for the plant and then you put the string at the bottom that’s all you need to do you don’t have to wind it around the plant at all and then you set the plant on top good healthy little plant and then just bury it all together and as the plant grows and The Roots develop they’ll wind around the string and keep it held down and secured and to finish this off off I am going to water it in because this plant is not able to access the moisture compost or potting mix at the bottom and we also need to fill all of those gaps around the roots and help it get established so let’s give it a little drink got my watering can here and then after it’s watered in I’m going to start filling the reservoir here so the water goes in through this pipe and you can see how I have the watering can leaned against this handle and I’m just going to fill it up until water comes out of the hole that we drilled earlier and that tells me that it’s filled up so that’s two DIY self-watering pots done and dusted as far as how often do I fill that water reservoir it’s going to depend on how hot it is and how much water your plants are using so top it up regularly until you get a feel for how often and again the water will come out the drain hole so you will never overwater your plants here if you are applying a liquid fertilizer of some sort I wouldn’t put it in the water reservoir it could probably contribute to it getting murky and Mankey and pretty disgusting so stick with watering from the top for liquid fertilizers or you can opt for a granular base fertilizer and work it into the potting mix as you fill it if you’ve got any question questions about these pots leave me a comment down below and if you’re interested in another water saving technique that you can use in your Greenhouse or out in your garden watch my video on DIY OAS next there’s a video just up here on the screen thanks so much and I will see you soon for another video here on Lovely greens bye for now