Super easy DIY self-watering planter from any container

it seems like every video I've ever seen to make self watering planter at home is like super super complicated and it makes you feel like you need a degree in engineering to get it done but I'm here to tell you that it's really not that hard at all so let's go step by step and I'll show you exactly how you can make this right now at home and make sure you stay tuned till the end of the video where I'm going to show you an even easier like super snappy quick way to do it I'm Amy and a pretty purple door calm I teach home gardeners how to create landscapes that are uniquely you let's get started I drew this diagram to just sort of explain everything to you really simply and I'll leave a link to this in the description below so that you can take a look at it but basically all you need is a planter and what we're going to do to make a self-watering planter we're just gonna make a false bottom into the planter underneath that false bottom there's going to be a reservoir of water and then we need something to wick that water up into the dirt and then something to keep the dirt from falling into the water we have a pipe here that will fill the water into the bottom so this is really it and I don't know why people make it look so complex the first thing you're going to need is a planter now there's two things that you'll need the planter to be before you get started number one it has to be deep enough so this is a pretty deep height wise and number two it has to be watertight so you can't use anything that already has holes these are holes too like drill afterwards but if the planter already has drainage in it then you can't use it next we're going to need to make a false bottom but before we make that false bottom we're gonna take a look at a wicking chamber so what I'm using is just a simple Dixie cup actually doubled it up just to make it a little bit more sturdy but it doesn't have to be anything fancy anything that you know laying around and then you're gonna poke a series of holes in this Dixie cup now the reason that we're poking holes is because this is going to sit into the water reservoir right in the middle and we're gonna fill this with dirt and the water is going to soak into the dirt that's in this and that's what's going to actually water your plants from so once you have your wicking chamber item selected we're gonna need to make that false bottom now the thing about the false bottom is it should be the height of your wicking chamber so once you have this then you'll know what you need to make I had some PVC pipe laying around so I just made some random contraption here out of PVC but you can see here that the height of the PVC stand is the same height as this wicking chamber and that's really the only criteria you can even cut like four pieces of PVC pipe and sort of just stand them up in the bottom I like this because it's a structure that will stay in place here it's not going to collapse you're not gonna have to worry about the little legs tipping over or anything so it makes a really secure bottom so all my water is gonna go in here my wicking chamber is going to sit here so it collects the water and brings it up into the dirt the next thing that we'll need is some sort of screen to kind of cover this area here this is going to separate the dirt on the top where your plants are from the water chamber so I'm just using this is called Hardware cloth you can get it at any hardware store they have it so what I did is I cut a hole in the hardware cloth so that my wicking chamber will fit onto this but won't fall through it so you want it to kind of be a tight fit so this isn't slipping out and obviously you're going to cut this hardware cloth to fit the width of the container here now this other hole I have is for this PVC pipe I have here now this PVC pipe this is an inch and a half there's no real criteria for the width of this you just need something that you can fit your water and can into so that you can pour water into the chamber and the second thing is that you need to cut some sort of wedge because when this sits down if it was if it was this side down and you and you put it into the bucket obviously the water can't really seep out of the body it'll get stuck in that tube so we just need like a notch of some kind cut out of the tube and then this tube should be about the height the exact height of your planter it could be a little bit longer just so you have somewhere to pour into so that's what this other hole is so hole number one is for this wicking chamber hole number two is for this PVC pipe so when this sits down it'll kind of set like this and then we'll plant and you'll have a hole to put the water into the chamber at the bottom now that's pretty much it and the only other trick to this is that we need to fill this wicking chamber with soil and the biggest trick to this is to kind of dampen the soil first and then after the soils damp you're still gonna add more water you want to pack this Cup really really really tight and you kind of want to mound it up at the top so I'm gonna do that now just to show you have some soil here so take your soil and smash it in there really really really tight so it won't come out [Music] [Music] the only other thing I like to do is to drill a vent hole in the side of this right at the water level so when you do this as you're filling the PVC pipe you can take a look at that little pin hole that you drilled and when water starts seeping out of that pin hole you'll know that the reservoir is completely full so I'm actually gonna turn this so I kind of want it to be on the same side as my PVC pipe just so I know where it'll be looking for that water to escape it's going to be right here so the trick to this is to put just a little piece of masking tape or painters tape on your container where are you going to drill and this will make sure that the area out here won't ship there's my little pinhole and you can't even see it from the outside so once I have this set up the only other thing I'll need to do is create kind of like a case to put my potting mix into because if I pour it onto the screen obviously it's going to fall right into the water and we don't want that so I like to use just a garbage bag you'll have to cut a little slit to make this come out of the plastic and see what I have here something here just use scissors don't be like me so I'm just going to cut like a kind of like an X and your pipe here this will be on the outside of the garbage bag so I'm just gonna fold this over so it's easy for you to see the only thing left to do is to get this wicking chamber kind of connect the bag underneath this dirt we just want to make sure that the soil that we're gonna put into here doesn't get into the bottom and really that's it all you'd have to do now is fill this with soil just like normal and then cut this off at the edges when you want to fill your reservoir you'll use your tube here and you'll just pour your water from the side into this hole here until it's completely full if you have to go out and buy a planter but you don't like any of the self watering ones that you see here's an option that you can use and it's actually a little bit faster and easier than the method I just showed you which is hard to believe because that one's pretty easy too but what you would need for this is again a tall planter no holes in the bottom and then the other thing about this is it's tapered so you see the sides kind of go in at the bottom so it gets a little bit narrower and what I found a tractor supply where I got this planter just a bowl it's for Tex fiber reinforced molded rubber series it's some quart it's some sort of like feeding trough thing for farm animals what's really cool about this is it used to have a bottom and it's just ignore that for now but when I set this in it kind of fits in here nice it creates a reservoir so I don't even really need anything at the bottom of this because this container is tapered and the other thing is that it leaves kind of holes in these edges and they're perfect size to fit your PVC pipe right into the side here so you don't need to cut a hole for that you just need a hole in the center to hold your wicking chamber and what I used to do that was this is called a hole saw you hook - your drill and this one is three and a half inches and this three and a half inch size is perfect for a solo cup so if you want to try that you can drill your hole into your feed trough and then you have the hole for the wicking chamber I already have it in the in the bag from the last time so I'm just gonna drop that in while it's still in the bag so I don't have to redo that part covering it up here and you can see that my mounted soil here is inside of where I'm going to put the rest of the potting soil potting mix but it's separated now because of that feed trough it's separated from the reservoir at the bottom so now you just fill this up cut off the excess and then fill the reservoir with water and you're good to go [Music] [Music] [Music] again I don't know why everyone makes this look so difficult it's not so if you liked this video check out the related videos next to it and I'll see you in the next one you can learn some more cool DIY projects for your home and garden

Channel: Pretty Purple Door Garden Design

Views: 388,349

Keywords: prettypurpledoor, gardening, garden design ideas, self watering planter, diy container garden, diy garden, self watering container, make planter self, how to make self watering pot, gardening projects at home

Id: cjwVDqUp5qw

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020