SFG wicking boxes

AKA self-watering containers ala SFG. Last year, someone on the forum was looking for info about them. I had never heard of them so I thought I would try one this year. On paper, it seems like a good way to deal with high temps and low humidity, or for an absentee gardener who can't water regularly.

There was lots of info when I googled 'wicking box'. A popular technique is to make one from Tupperware tubs. Basically, I took that concept and applied it to SFG, and this is what I ended up with.



In the above pic, ignore that it's on a table or that it has a 'roof'. A SFG wicking box is a box with a plywood bottom sitting on a box that will hold water.

In the next pic, Mel's Mix fills the box and goes into the holes to fill the 'basket' in the water below. The soil absorbs water as it dries out.




I haven't watered since I planted this box in mid-April, but I don't have a clue how well it could really work since we've had an usually cool and wet spring.



I have more assembly pictures if anyone is interested in trying one.

friggin AWESOME!!!!

I think I'm definitely missing something here in conceptualizing what you are doing. What stops the Mel's mix from falling through those large holes on the bottom of the box into the bottom tray?

'baskets'

think of a 3 lb (if there is such a thing anymore) plastic coffee (Folgers) can with about 50 1/4 inch holes drilled in it. One is placed under each hole in the plywood. I'm looking for a picture.

I had coffee cans all drilled and ready to go- then I found these at an auction. This is the top box flipped upside down.


This is the bottom box- it holds 50 plus gallons

Great idea. It looks like you made 2 boxes and lined the lower one with plastic to hold the water. I may have to try this I love the 2 I made out of the Rubbermaid containers and I recently made the little one out of 2L bottle from instructions on this site.
The green one is currently holding 2 tomato plants

The blue one is much bigger. I have 9 corn plants in this one.

They are so easy to care for. I am also hoping to make some from the 5G buckets which I can move into the house over the winter to extend my growing season.

Yep, those kind of Rubbermaid tubs.

There's more there than plastic-I was doing it on the cheap, but I don't recommend how I did it. I would recommend spending the money on pond liner, shower pan liner, or EPDM.

An option, in lieu of the lower box, is to dig a hole about the same size and use a liner. Or, even a kids wading pool could work as a tub.

Love your self-watering sfg
I plan on making a small table top sfg for winter.
Hmm...it would be 10x better if I could make it like yours.

Here is the free display pallet I will turn into my tabletop sfg.
For now, I've painted it white.

1chichi wrote:
Here is the free display pallet I will turn into my tabletop sfg.

Thanks Boffer -- the light dawns. Really neat idea. I might try it using the hole idea with pond liner.

You did a fabulous job on that boffer!!! You could make some good moola selling those!!! :idea:

The cheaply lined tub finally started leaking in September. But the whole idea has worked out so well that I'm going to splurge on a good liner and try it again next year.





The tomato plants had the most fruit of all the toms I grew, and I was surprised at how small the root system was when the plant had unlimited water. Here are two stems and root balls before I moved them. The carrots are markers showing the center of the basket holes. I expected the baskets to be packed full of roots, but there were very few.



here are the small root balls

Cant believe I missed this ...very kewl thread/topic.

*** brain wheels turning ****

Thanks for posting this is such detail, I remember considering this and in my case for the hot weather and gophers ! my wheels are turning too, hmm, like the idea about the kiddie pool liner. Do you have to replace the water ? will it eventually evaporate or be used up ? we live in two different climates so I'm thinking mine propbably would , how would I know and how would I replace it? maybe a tube sticking out , something like Josh's feeding tube but shorter ?

Great minds think alike! You can see in the second pic from the beginning that there is a black ABS pipe in the right rear corner. That is the fill tube.

I put water in the tub every couple weeks, just for peace of mind. It never went below 3/4 empty. The water is used by the plants, and I had a small leak. There is very little lost to evaporation which is one of the advantages of a wicking box. The MM on the bottom stayed consistently moist, and the top inch or two stayed fairly dry.

This is the fill and check pipe. A piece of cork with a wire stuck in it floated in the pipe to show me what the water level was. The pipe should have either the miter cut on the end, or the holes drilled. It doesn't need both. They help ensure the water leaves the pipe easily when filling.



Next year I plan on growing 6-8 indeterminate tomatoes in this box. They say BER can be caused by erratic water uptake. I don't think a tomato plant can be watered any more consistently than this, in soil. We'll see. Maybe next year it will be warm enough for me to get a bunch of red tomatoes!