Gardening

We've been working on getting a garden going for a while now. Of course we only have a deck so we are stuck with a container garden. These usually require lots of watering, which was worrying since we are hoping to do some traveling this summer and didn't want to have to ask someone to come in every day to water. So we decided to make self-watering containers! We found the directions online; here are some photos of the process. We did this yesterday while waiting for General Conference to start. We thought the talks were wonderful!
tracing the lid

john cutting pipe

fitting the screen

The basic idea is that the screen rests partway up the container, perched on supports, with soil on top of the screen. There are holes in the screen so water can drain. Here I was making the screen while John cut support pipes. Of course, Benjamin helped!

We traced the location of holes and supports on the screen:

Then we attached the supports with zip-ties. Those are fun to play with! You can see the sand bucket with holes drilled; the soil goes into that bucket and is in contact with the water in the reservoir below the screen. This is how the soil stays damp- the moisture moves up into the rest of the container from this wicking chamber.

Here is a picture showing the watering pipe, which extends down from the top into the reservoir:

Then we filled the containers with damp "soil" and filled the reservoirs. The container on the left was finished last week and has so far only needed one quart of additional water added (of course, it did rain, so that has helped keep the soil wet). So far we have finished three of our planned five containers.

There is one additional step- I will add a strip of fertilizer and cover the bins with black plastic held down by the remaining outside edge of the lid. This helps hold the moisture in. I will do this once all the plants have been transplanted in or sprouted enough for me to see where they are at! Here is a picture of the germination tray our friendly downstairs neighbor gave us. Most of the plants are up, although the peppers seem to be taking their own sweet time! The closest plants in the picture are the tomatoes.