How to make a Self Watering Planter

hey this has been Hale with easy living yards and today I want to show you how to make a self-watering planter these are awesome ways to reduce maintenance in your garden or in your landscape both from a functional standpoint and a decorative standpoint so as you can see here I have two self watering planters I've made this one is growing some rosemary right now and basically how these work is they have a reservoir of water in the bottom and then the top you have your potting soil in your plant of course and you have this pipe that goes down to fill the reservoir down the bottom now there's a couple very important tricks which I'll explain later to show you how these things work because you can't just have a pot with water in the bottom that will kill your plant of course you can make these out of something really cheap really inexpensively these things are super fast so we can to construct so here's one made out of a five gallon bucket and some spare parts I had laying around this is a little bit nicer one I've made this is still really inexpensive it's a composite container the key here is if you do a nicer one like this you need to make sure it's a single wall container that's something you can drill through that's really important and of course the bottom as well has to be sealed so there can't be a drain hole in the bottom so if you find one of these containers you can make them look really beautiful and plant something really pretty in them to go on your front porch or in your patio and of course these guys they're not quite as pretty but they're incredibly functional they work super great they save you tons of work if you're trying to grow a potted garden or you know you don't care as much about having something prettier but you want to have some beautiful plants in your landscape these work great so I'm going to show you how to make these we're jumping inside here real quick just so I can show you how this thing actually works so you can understand what's going on and then also if you end up making any modifications you can do so in a way that still works alright so basically what we've got here is our bucket right and and you can see this little tiny thing on the side here that's an overflow hole we're going to be putting an overflow hole in there and that's really important so your bucket just basically doesn't fill up to the top as you're filling it and it ends up drowning in the roots of your plants you've got to make sure your plants have moisture but they don't get waterlogged because the roots actually need air and oxygen to work properly as well so that's the really key factor here is why self watering planters are so helpful they allow air space in the soil mix as well as good moisture and that's really important so let's go into just how this thing is gonna be built so we've got our bucket that little overflow hole we're gonna have a couple spacers in there what I'm using is some leftover sour cream containers whatever you use here you just got to make sure there's some sort of structure to to stand up and to hold up the next piece that I'm going to show you and this is going to help determine your water level of your reservoir so you want a couple inches height there but you don't want to go overboard you just want enough that you can hold a good reservoir of water in the bottom of your pot and of course these need to be permeable as well so they can fill inside with water and you'll show that as I construct this thing as well all right so once we've got our spacers in there the next piece is is a contraption that I'm calling the separator so what this is is a plastic disc that sits flat right on top of those those spacers you can see how they sit there and then there's this tube it's our filling tube that fills the water of the reservoir the really key piece here you can see that this is an angled cut at the bottom that's really important as well so it's not sitting flat on the bottom you don't actually fill your container so you got to sit angled so as you're filling this with water the water can go into this this space below another key feature here too you can see now these spacers are sitting just a little bit taller than your overflow hole so that way this this separator piece this flat plastic piece which is in the video is made from our bucket lid is a little bit taller this provides an air gap so let me put the water in now alright so you can see where the water is it overflows right at that water hole right right that hole we've drilled into the bucket you have an air space this allows what's called root pruning or air pruning for roots so as the roots grow down in this bucket if they get past the the wicking membrane which I haven't put in here yet if they get past that they'll stop growing at this air gap because air or plants don't like to grow where there's air basically with their roots for the most part of course any plant that we're gonna put in here and so this water it won't be getting up into the roots and causing root rot and disease issues and that sort of thing alright so we've got our water we've got our spacers to hold up the separator piece we've got our fill tube the next thing we've got is a wicking membrane so this I'm using a plain old t-shirt in the video and here so it's this gray material now that I've put in here you can see that a part of it goes down into the water so basically we pull let me go back a little bit our separator that we put in there you can see there's a hole right in the center of it we take the water out too so this is easier to see and I'll take those spacers out too all right so what we've got is our bucket with our separator piece okay it's right now it's floating in the air but it's gonna be sitting on top of those spacers it's got a hole in the center that's gonna allow our whipping material to be pulled down towards the water layer and then it's got a hole to fit the pipe in that's used to fill the reservoir okay so you can see that pretty easily there all right so let's put back in our water let's put back in our spacers so this shows the full construction now and then we're going to put back on our wicking membrane all right so the wicking membrane you can see it goes all the way around the edges of the pot and it's going to go just a little bit below the edge of the separator - it's gonna fold around the edges if we can do it it's sometimes it's tight fit but you want to get it as tight as possible this prevents the soil from percolating down into your water reservoir and clogging things up and it keeps the nutrition up in the in the space that the plants can access and then it's really important that you get a piece to go way down in that reservoir you know as far as you can so that it can wick the water up to the upper membrane it's really important that this wicking material is made of cotton or some sort of natural fiber so just a regular cotton t-shirt works great just an old t-shirt that you don't use anymore and it works better than the plastic you know polyester or something to wick material so the last thing of course is going to be our soil mix and and the important thing here is to use a potting soil mix it allows proper wicking action through the through the soil profile so what we're going to have now is we've got this water reservoir we've got an air gap and then a thing that separates the water or the the potting soil from the water area so it doesn't get soggy in water and it also separates the roots from being able to grow down then we've got our wicking material that pools the water up and as soaks up into the rest of the t-shirt it's actually going to the potting soil is going to use capillary action to pull the water all the way up through the soil profile so you can quickly check just play poking your finger in the top of the soil a couple inches down to see if it's still moist enough so that's basically it for how this thing is constructed alright let's jump over to what materials we actually need here let me get this video out of the way there we go alright so what we're gonna need for materials we talked about these already but most important thing is a bucket or a single wall planter that you purchase if you're going not for looks five gallon buckets work great try and get one with the lid as well it makes life a lot easier or you need a piece of plastic that you can cut into a circle that fits down into the the bottom of your container or your planter alright you need a piece of PVC pipe I went with a 1-inch piece of pipe here just whatever outside diameter or that pipe you need a drill bit that fits it as well you need an old t-shirt that will be used as your wicking material you need some old containers you can be old planting cups yogurt cups sour cream containers as I used here something like that of course you need a plant and the things I forgot to show here are you need some soil mix and some water of course alright the the tools you'll need is your drill bits so for the side hole and then the holes in the little containers to make sure they don't have a giant bubble of air in them you need about a quarter inch drill bit I went with a 5/16 inch here whatever you have laying around that's about the size of your pinky finger will work you don't want too big just because then you get critters inside your container you don't want too little because then your water can't properly fill through your cups your separator or your spacer cups there and then also your overflow hole it needs to be able to drain out quickly and easily alright and then you need an inch and a quarter drill bit or whatever size is the outside diameter of your your pipe you're using to fill and you also it's going to be the same drill bit that's used to drill your center hole to pull your wicking material down into the water reservoir I also had a rasp this one's actually I didn't have a rasp laying around so I use the metal file very gently but you want to rasp to kind of clean off the plastic burrs that end up going everywhere you don't really need this but it's a nice to have you need something to cut your pipe so one side of the pipe is going to be a 90 degree cut and the other is going to be an angled cut as we talked about you need a jigsaw or some sort of saw that can cut your circular separator that goes down into your planter and of course you need your safety materials your gloves and your safety glasses you need a marker I have a marking cran here that didn't work in the picture so you need a like a sharpie marker or something and of course a drill to use your drill bits all right guys let's jump into actually building this thing now okay so I'm just gonna jump over now to a quick fast forwarded view of the build so let's get started alright so first thing I'm doing is I'm taking those spacer cups that are gonna determine the height of our reservoir and I'm marking about an inch below them that's gonna be our overflow hole for the water reservoir so that you don't fill your water reservoir too full of course don't forget your safety equipment now I'm using a 5/16 inch drill bit to make that hole you just want something about pinky size doesn't have to be 5/16 it's the size I chose alright so again I double-check that height to make sure it's the the cuffs will sit higher than that hole that's really important you can use here I'm using some old sour cream cups you can also you can see off to the side I have some some planter cups as well as some old yogurt cups whatever you have laying around just make sure it has some holes in it so that the water can percolate through the inside of those cups as well so that they can be part of the water reservoir and they don't just you know want to float up or whatever cleaning off some of the plastic shards there and just showing you how they'll sit inside the bucket alright let's take them out now we're gonna get that lid ready that lid is gonna become the separator so we're gonna cut out the middle piece of that lid first I'm going to drill two holes one in the center for the wicking membrane which is gonna be a t-shirt and then a hole off to the side for our filling tube so that's that filling tube I have a pre pre built or pre-cut piece with that bucket in the background there so you can kind of see all right so there's those two holes now we also need to cut out that insert piece for the separator that's gonna sit on top of our little cup spacers and so to do that I'm gonna take a jigsaw or whatever kind of saw you have you don't have to use a jigsaw pre-drill a small hole which I forgot to do there as you can see and you want to cut just a little bit inside that RIM doesn't have to be perfect but you want it to be a little bit inside the rim so this piece will fit down inside the bucket with just a little bit of room wiggle room to spare try not to cut through your tube filling hole is as well there that I just passed and now I'm going to take the rasp and just clean up that the birds and stuff a little bit just to you know just to kind of clean up the work so you don't have plastic bits flying everywhere inside your your system it's just kind of nice to get that stuff out of there okay so that RIM once we're done we can also put on top of the bucket just to add some rigidity now you can see this is just a piece of PVC I had laying around I think it's some PVC conduit and you can use I have some PVC cutters you don't have to get fancy here though just get you know you can see this pool saw I have off to the right here as well that works just fine just something to cut your your pipe and I think I have one inch conduit so it ends up being about one inch and a quarter on the outside diameter whatever the I'd say outside diameter of your tube is just make sure you cut the hole appropriately now I just show you kind of what the internal mechanisms going to look like we saw a good view of that as well in our little demo before this now I'm pulling the wicking material through it's just a cotton t-shirt make sure it has a good amount of cotton or it's 100% cotton ideally you want to make sure all the edge of this as of edges of the shirts still overlap around that the sides of your separator and you want to pull that piece down a couple inches at least so it reaches down as far as possible into your water and here I'm cutting a small hole through the shirt where the the water filling tube will go through and put the angled cut down through and your shirt is going to fit on top your your wicking material so you have a small piece going down into the water reservoir of your wicking material the rest sits on top to help wick that water up into your planting mix and so now I put all the cups in you put the separator in with the wicking material t-shirt and your filler tube and now you're basically set so I'm going to fill with some potting mix what I'm using here is organic mechanics container potting blend it's a wonderful mix I really like organic mechanics I'm not sponsored by them maybe I should be but yeah they make some good stuff if you want to make your own you can do a nice sustainable mix using a third compost one third coconut coir and one third rice hulls it'll do pretty good and here again I'm putting a trim on just to add some rigidity to the bucket and then I'm gonna put my plant in so the plant I'm planting here is just some pre started organic spinach I got the both the planting mix and the spinach from Whole Foods they have a nice supply each year of plants and soil mixes as well that are nice sustainable mixes organic plants if you want if you're eating greens and stuff you know you kind of want to eat organic stuff and of course you want to water it so I'm using some of my rainwater that we collect on our landscape it's great stuff you can use a hose or whatever I gently water the top because you want that you want that potting mix to get wet and moistened or else it doesn't work very well and then of course filling up that reservoir through the tube and that's what the tubes they're for keep an eye on that bucket just down to the lower right of that warning label you can see on the bucket there you see I emptied this hole this hole filling pot and I'm adding more so keep an eye on and see when it starts to overflow you know your reservoir is full and you can use a funnel it's usually a good idea there you go you can use a hose as well so you can see it overflowing so that means our reservoir is full and we're basically done that's really it guys okay don't forget to clean up your mess plastic you know we have a major issue now with plastics getting into our waterways into our oceans it kind of seems pretty far away but a plastic floats really well it gets into animals and all sorts of creatures and it causes a lot of problems you guys can see I love self watering planners they're awesome they're easy to make make sure you build some yourselves guys that's pretty much it for how to create a self watering planter I am super psyched to share this with you because this is a huge time saver it helps save plants look nobody's cursed with this thing of you know I just have no luck with plants or whatever and nobody's blessed with just this innate ability to take care of plants it takes work it takes time it takes failure to get there but self watering planters are a huge way to do it all so if you guys have no idea how to plant a plant so it won't die I created an awesome resource just for you it's called how to plant the plant so it won't die this is a free resource go on and check that link in the in right there and you can see it it's an awesome resource goes through the basics of what to do and what not to do to take care of pretty much any plant that you want to plant so check it out also I'm always available for questions all you have to do is go over to easy living yards calm slash ask and go ahead and ask me a question I'll get back with you I'd love to help you with your problems in your landscape let's all work to make this world a more beautiful place a more beautiful habitat for the world around us the creatures that live around us and let's let's go out and make a positive difference alright guys thanks for tuning in make sure you live with passion and make tomorrow better than today

Channel: Easy Living Yards

Views: 46,087

Rating: 4.9447131 out of 5

Keywords: Self watering planter, diy landscaping

Id: byBeDfKb02Q

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020