How to Build the BEST Self Wicking Containers! DIY Self Watering Tubs

these two pipe and the water reservoir created at the bottom of this or what make the whole system work so you have to have the pipe in here or something to hold airspace [Music] you what's up guys this is Daniel from arms family homestead and today we're gonna be out here in the high tunnel putting together I believe 18 more self wicking tubs now this was an idea that I got from Leon Sloane and Kingston Oklahoma Leon if you follow my channel at all you know Leon but this is his idea not mine I'm just gonna steal it and use it because it works magically so Leon has a channel called gardening with Leon and I'll leave a link to his video but the concept here is to build a self wicking tub that holds water at the bottom soil above and they self wick they are self watering you really only have to water your plants once a week or so now I built a couple of these a couple weeks ago and showed you guys that process one's got beets growing in it and the other has carrots now and they don't match their black tubs but that's two the first two I built and then we're gonna put together 18 more today for a total of 20 so what goes in the bottom is perforated pipe you could use one gallon coffee cans this is actually drain pipe like you're using a French drain so it's pretty thin wall stuff 6-inch pipe and we're gonna put two of those in the bottom show you that process I got to get all those cut up and then the landscape fabric a lot of people are asking how what kind of landscape fabric you use how do you get it shaped like the tub it doesn't have to be shaped like the tub you use one sheet of landscape fabric that's three feet by four feet and you lay it over those those two pipe you put it in the bottom and then you fill it with soil now Houston and I made the trip down to see Leon to get some more tubs and this go Holden beautifulness right here so good saying so you say so all the time Houston I made the trip down to Kingston and Leon hooked us up with some amazing potting mix if you're anywhere near southern Oklahoma North Texas and you need bulk potting mix Leon can hook you up the man bought out a factory he has semi loads and similar of this beautiful stuff so it's gonna be a long morning with a lot of work I'm gonna mix this stuff with some of my own compost to kind of fill in the gaps to bulk it up a little bit more I'll make sure I have plenty to go as far as I want to go so I don't have to make another trip to Kingston to buy more but anyways come on along let's build some stuff week and tubs today [Music] [Music] these two pipe and the water reservoir created at the bottom of this or what make the whole system work so you have to have the pipe in here or something to hold air space that's why I said you could use one gallon cans you go to your school your local school and get the 1 gallon vegetable cans they're probably gonna thrown away you could lay those in here when you drill your hole you drill one hole five inches up because the pipe are six inches and that creates a little bit of air space inside these pipe and that allows the roots of the plants not to drown so if you just put water in the bottom of this and you didn't have the air space it would soak up entirely too much water you wouldn't have the air in there to air prune your roots so as your plants grow you're gonna have landscape fabric in here but as your plants grow down they'll reach down into where them the soil is wicking up the water then you've got your air space in there it keeps everything from getting overly saturated it makes a perfect self wicking tub I've just got to get all the landscape fabric cut and put in here the other day when I made up those first two barrels I had two old-style pieces of ground cover that Leona had made specifically for that purpose a couple years ago and they were bag shaped they'd actually sewn them together and some people notice that but I want you to understand you don't have to have a piece of fabric that's bag shape I cut a three by four square and I'm just gonna push it in around the tubes the main thing is is I want to get these ends covered I do not want soil to go in here so as I push my fabric down I took it over the ends this way it'll make like a pouch where that'll sit down in the water reservoir so I'm just going to push it in like I said and tuck it on the ends and when you do that you may have some pieces that stick up that's not a big deal it doesn't have to fit right around the edge perfectly because you've got two pockets on either side you tuck this around your ends of your pipe there's no soil gonna get in the pipe and you have your two areas to where the soil will sit down in your water reservoir don't overthink it keep it simple [Music] so it's very important to not forget to drill one hole in the side because remember these pots don't have holes in the bottom we want to rent a reservoir of water to stay in here so that the the roots can wick and the soil can wick the moisture up so you've got to have a water reservoir and we're going to measure up five inches from the bottom and I've got a half inch paddle bit on here and we're just going to drill one hole five inches up one hole [Music] now the real work begins so what I'm going to do is take and kind of mix make my own mixture my own blend so I've got Leon's potting mix that I bought and this this is not dirt this is not topsoil this is my own compost that I made it's it's probably well over a year old now having this is from an old pile but it was clean out from my goat barn so goat manure hay straw wood shavings all kinds of different good stuff and maybe even some greens from the yard grass clippings leaves all different kinds of stuff so I'm going to mix it just to make this stuff go a little farther I'm going to blend in some of my own compost that's one thing you don't want to do is use topsoil don't make these tubs and just go out and get garden soil and put in there it'll get too compacted you want something light and fluffy with lots of organic material in there you could add in peat moss or shredded leaves or you want lots of organic material to wick up the the water you want it compacted because then it'll just make that hard crust and it won't ever soak up the moisture [Music] [Music] [Music] we've got all my tubs filled with soil the next step you cannot forget its fertilization if you if you meet Leon and he tells you anything at all about gardening the one thing he will tell you is you don't have to feed your plants every day but it is pretty important to feed them on the days that you eat so while we do have really good soil here it is still very important to go ahead and fertilize and we're gonna be using a combination of fertilizers the first is called sustain it's a four six four so it's not like a triple 20 or 10 20 30 it's a four six four it's an organic fertilizer Leon tells me that it's made out of composted turkey feathers but I'd I believe him I just haven't found that information on the bag anywhere we're gonna use per tub now here's we're gonna do per tub we're gonna use 1/2 a cup of sustain and the second fertilizer is AC mineral so it's just like evaporated seawater so it it adds tons of trace minerals into your soil so we're combination to feeding these two and then when we water will use a another fertilizer that's a water soluble fertilizer called nature's source and we'll get to that later but right now we're gonna add 1/2 a cup look I brought my wife's measuring cups outside she's probably gonna be mad but a half a cup of sustain and a quarter cup of sea mineral per cup and we don't just want to sprinkle it on top and leave it we're gonna work it down into the soil several inches because we want the dirt we want the nutrients to be down where the root zone is [Music] [Music] and now we're on the last step before we're ready to plant and that is adding our PVC pipe to get water into these plants into the reservoirs at the bottom so the main thing is we're not just gonna water directly from the top and let all the water soak down through we want the water to be down here in our reservoir so we cut PVC pipe that's the only thing I don't have enough up today I've only got three and then you know a lot more so I'll have to buy some PVC pipe but this is one-inch PVC pipe and you see how it's cut on an angle it's pretty important to cut one end on the angle it doesn't have to be both ends but when you're cutting pape you cut it on an angle there's no reason to level it out so you're gonna slide this down in between the landscape fabric and the side of the tub you don't want to put it down into the soil you want it to go down in between the fabric and the side of the tub so that when you fill this with water you go straight down into the bottom it's not overly complicated I mean you want an angle so that when it sets on the bottom the water can still come out if you cut it flat your water won't be able to come out of the bottom of your pipe so cut it on an angle and then just slide this down to the bottom of your tub and then when you fill it up you can fill up from right here you can stick your water hose on here and fill it up and get water down to the bottom so it can start wicking up and that's really all there is to it these tubs are super easy to build there's not a lot that goes into it one thing I will say make sure you get commercial-grade landscape fabric don't just buy the cheap stuff at Walmart stuffs not gonna hold up over time it's gonna fall apart you're gonna have to redo your tubs within a year - you're commercial-grade landscape fabric and be sure to feed those plants I'll put a description a little a little I'll put a link in description box down below to Amazon I know for sure you can buy that sustain fertilizer on Amazon I'll see if I can find a good quality brand of the Sea Mineral to add in and take Leon's advice and every day that you eat feed your plants because they got to eat too so anyways guys that's all I've got for today got eight teen tubs built and not record time by any means it's been a long day been a long project but anyways we got it done and I'm gonna plant a few crops and I'm real soon maybe I have a few few plants ready to go that need to be put in the ground excuse me have a few plants that need to be put in the ground now and then we're gonna start a bunch more seeds we got the Hoss tools seed tray seedlings popping up over there lots of other seedlings popping up everywhere it's spring the weather's beautiful it's garden season its garden season oh look at my Swiss chard I just love showing this off look at it isn't it pretty rainbow light Swiss chard okay anyways guys that's all I've got for today thanks for watching hope you enjoyed it y'all have a great day and as always we'll see you on the next video [Music]

Channel: Arms Family Homestead

Views: 1,468,853

Rating: 4.8840852 out of 5

Keywords: Arms family homestead, farm, farming, homesteading, wicking bed, self watering, self watering container, vegetable gardening, container gardening, sub-irrigated planter, self watering system, self watering garden, how to, water conservation, self watering pot, self watering bucket, diy self watering container, self watering 5 gallon bucket, self watering system for plants, wicking barrel, how to make a wick system, how to make a self watering container, gardening with leon

Id: k429cPlH6mM

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/sudostahp]

Anyone have a link for those red tubs he's using?

[u/Kramasz]

Even pill bottles?