Building Self Watering Containers

One of the reasons why I have started growing my own vegetables is to make sure that what I am eating is organic, and also pesticide and other potential harmful chemicals free.

So first and VERY IMPORTANT thing  that I have found and what I would like to point to other folks out there is to use food grade buckets for you plants, especially If you are planning to grow edible plants.  I will not go too deep into chemistry but some kinds of plastic have a low density and can be porous and that means that container will absorb previous storing material that was inside and that also means that your plant  will be exposed to it.

 For my containers I always look for the recycle logo that has number 2 in the middle and the letters HDPE.  HDPE stands for High-Density Polyethylene. This kind of plastic has excellent barrier and rigidity properties.I would even suggest replacing kitchen storage containers for HDPE plastic.

Self Watering Containers are working on a principal of creating a water reservoir bellow so the plant can feed from below using capillary action ( wick water to the plant roots).


I have build two kinds of self watering containers,  I used 5 gallon containers that are pretty deep around 12 inches, and that is perfect for deeper roots plants like ( tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers.. ), but there is no need using them for shallow roots plants (salads, baby spinach ) because they dont need more than 6-8 inches of soil.( so you can maximize the use of the potting mix that is not cheap).
So for shallow plants I have used old storage container and my milk containers to make self watering containers for shallow roots plants.

Building a self watering container is very simple, just watch one of my two videos bellow and pretty much everything is self explanatory.


 Deep roots container video: