My EASY Wicking Bed System ( IBC ) - Drought Proof Gardening

hi my name's roger osborne when i'm not fishing one of the things that i love doing is gardening and growing my own fresh fruit and vegetables and in today's video i'm going to teach you how to turn one of these into amazing garden beds like these ones here which i built just a few months ago so i'm going to take you now step by step through the whole process of building your own beautiful garden beds using recycled timber and ibcs which are called intermediate bulk containers [Music] in this video we are making what are called wicking beds the beauty of a wicking bed is the water-saving and self-watering aspect you can go away on holidays for a couple of weeks and your plants will thrive so here we have what's called an ibc which stands for intermediate bulk container these are used for transporting water and food grade products generally but can also be used for transporting chemicals so when you buy one or more than one make sure you ask what's been in it because you want to make sure it's been carrying food products so when you grow your vegetables you don't get any chemicals that you don't want they cost about 150 dollars to buy and you'll get two garden beds out of one i'm just going to dismantle it now simply remove the base from the frame i now mark the halfway mark on the frame so that you get two equal sized frames for your garden beds because you get two beds out of each ibc now measure the center of the polypropylene drum and draw a line completely around the center ready for cutting using an angle grinder carefully cut the entire drum in half when positioning your wicking bed place the cut metal struts at the bottom so that you don't have sharp metal edges poking up and you have a nice smooth framed edge on the top how good is that it's a good idea to give your ibcs a rinse before you start filling them up and getting them ready because sometimes there's some detergent or residue even though they're food grade so i make sure that i give them a good rinse with the hose get any impurities out before i start building the garden i now have my wicking beds in position and it's super important to make sure that you have them on a level platform i've got a slightly sloping block here so i've had to level out the soil and make it level for them but they're now ready to go and the awesome thing about creating a wicking bed is that because you're not really surface watering much and they're drawing the moisture up from underneath and you fill the reservoirs that you can go away on holidays for a week two weeks and your gardens will flourish because all you need to do is fill up the water reservoir before you go and the plants will draw the water up by themselves i've been down to bunnings my local bunnings thank god for bunnings and i've purchased some pvc piping which is going to be for my inlet pipe and also i have my egg pipe you can buy egg pipe pipe which is either covered with this sock or uncovered it doesn't really matter so i've got my egg pipe and also i've got my geodesic cloth which is actually called here it's just called drain matting so i'm going to get started on putting these components together now it's time to drill some holes in the side of the drum for my overflow valve pipe to go in i've actually chosen a cutting bit that's the same size as the pipe which means it's difficult for me to push in but it makes a really tight seal which is great because it stops leaking we'll need to adjust the height of the overflow valve but not until after the water reservoir step is complete these are the components i'm using all the details for everything in this video are in the description don't forget to hit like and subscribe if you're enjoying this content it really helps my channel and i appreciate the support to create the inlet pipe i've got this pvc piping i'll put into the ag pipe by about 10 centimeters set the pipe upright and hold it in place with a brick or something heavy i now want to cut this off about this height here make a coil of approximately three meters of egg pipe at the base of the wicking bed this will be held in place by the blue metal layer for the water reservoir in the base of the wicking bed i use blue metal that i buy at a local nursery i then fill it up to the desired height in the wicking bed the total height of each wicking bed is 50 centimetres you actually only need a soil layer of 25 centimeters otherwise the wicking doesn't work properly so your water reservoir underneath is approximately 25 centimeters in depth and then you have the soil layer on top cover the blue metal with geodesic cloth and have it coming up the sides of the container by about 10 centimeters this will prevent soil from leaking down the sides into your water reservoir so i've siliconed around the edge of my overflow valve just to make sure that's watertight but the actual height of the water flow valve needs to be in line with the top of the water reservoir part of the garden bed which is the underneath part so i now need to trim my pipe to be level with the top of the water reservoir so that if it rains the water is able to overflow and not go beyond that point this particular garden bed i haven't put soil in yet on purpose just to show you how the water levels work i've got my geodesic material and my blue metal in there and then we're going to start putting water in it and you'll be able to see how the overflow valve works before i put the soil in now it's time to fill the beds up with soil i use a premium garden soy mix from a local nursery i later add organic matter like cow manure and various fertilizers before planting the next step is to build the timber frame that goes around the outside of the garden beds for this garden i've actually put three garden beds back to back so i am creating one long rectangular bed with three sections i'm using 70 millimeter by 40 millimeter timber battens for my framework these i screw to the metal struts of the framework of the ibc it may be necessary to countersink the holes depending on what size screws that you're using that's good beautiful there you go moving on now to the hardwood planking that goes around the edge for this i'm using a large drill bit to countersink the holes for the screws i pre-drill the holes for the screws that are going into the timber i use a drill bit that is slightly smaller than the diameter of the screw i only pre-drill through the hardwood basically and i don't touch the software because i want the screws to bite into the soft wood when you reach your overflow valve all you need to do is carve a gap for it and screw the plank in as normal [Music] once all of the side panels are on the last step is the top edging first make sure that you fit some off cuts into the gap between the side panels and the top of the metal frame countersink and screw them into the timber frame they are now sitting on next using chalk i place a mark to indicate where each screw is in the off cuts this is really important because when you go to screw the top edging into the offcuts you don't want to hit another screw so wherever the chalk is that is where you don't want to screw your top edging into fortunately my neighbor had a drop saw which he kindly lent to me and i was able to use that to cut the 45 degree angles for the corners i built these garden beds in my spare time over a period of weeks just a few hours here and a few hours there but it was actually a really enjoyable thing to do it's not too hard i don't have any great carpentry skills i'm just a weekend hacker so if i can do it anyone can do it well it's been four weeks approximately since i completed these wicking beds and i'm really happy with the result so excited to be growing more fresh vegetables and i've actually got a couple of crops of potatoes you can see wanted to grow my own potatoes so i've got two beds of potatoes coming up and some herbs at the end i can certainly highly recommend building this style of garden bed once you've done that little bit of work to get it finished you're going to enjoy it for many years to come and if you're into fishing make sure you check out some of my fishing videos or share them with your friends who are into fishing if you've enjoyed the instruction in this video make sure that you like and subscribe and i look forward to seeing you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Roger Osborne

Views: 72,707

Keywords: wicking bed, wicking beds, wicking garden bed, wicking bed garden, wicking bed design, ibc, ibc tank, ibc water tank, gardening, garden beds, wicking raised garden beds, wicking beds diy, wicking bed diy, wicking bed plans, wicking beds how to make, wicking bed construction, wicking bed ibc, wicking bed build, self sufficient living, garden, gardening tips, gardening australia, gardening for beginners, water saving garden ideas, water saving

Id: kMX8VOE6SHw

Length: 11min 13sec (673 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020