Although we love having all our plants out in the back, we still have some in our diy greenhouse as well as a few sitting out on the porch. Remember the diy upside down tomato pot and the diy 2L upside down tomato planter I shared on this blog a few years back? Today I am going to introduce you to its cousin, the diy self wicking tomato watering container.
This is one of those diy 5 gallon plastic projects that we all love. You will need two of those buckets, actually all the required materials for this project should not cost you more than 10 bucks. It will take about half an hour to an hour to set up, but will free you from watering your tomato or even pepper plants for up to 3 days, that is a whole weekend!
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Here’s What You’ll Need:
- tomato plants
- 5 gallon plastic buckets
- standard kitchen sponges
- cotton towel
- small funnel
- scissors
- utility knife
- potting mix
- mulch
- clippers (optional)
- drill with 1/4 inch bit (optional)
The basic setup is two 5 gallon buckets sitting inside each other. On the bottom of the top bucket you mark out a 2 inch wide hole in the center and cut it out with the knife. Around that hole, mark and cut out 8 quarter inch holes these will allow some roots to go down into the bottom bucket. In the bottom bucket measure 3 inches from the bottom and cut out a hole about half an inch wide.
The cotton towel is cut into at least 3 pieces of about 3 inches wide. You then cut a small slit in one of the sponges and thread the cotton towel through it. Thread the towel through the center hole of the top bucket and then hold it in place with another sponge on the outside of the bucket. All that’s left to do is fill up the top bucket with potting soil, plant your tomato plant, water it and add some water the bottom reservoir as well.
You can get full step by step instructions on Instructables, here…
How To Build
A 5 Gallon Self Wicking
Tomato Watering Container
You can watch the video below on 1 of 2: How to Build a 5 Gallon Self Wicking Tomato Watering Container…
You can watch the video below on TRG 2012: 2 of 2: Filling & Planting the Self Wicking Tomato Watering Container…
You can watch the video below on How to Build the BEST Self Wicking Bucket! DIY Self Watering 5 …
