It’s been fun gardening and learning together! How To Make a Sub Irrigated Planter! On Self Watering – Sub Irrigation Planters. The Family Handyman editor, Elisa Bernick shows you how to build a sub irrigated planter (also called a self-watering planter) that will allow you to grow your favorite foods and keep them watered, even while you are on vacation. There are various ways to construct them. These are self-watering containers you can make easily. The idea is that you want to create a water reservoir and the drainage hole prevents you from flooding the entire thing with too much water. Continue making batches of growing medium and adding them to your container until you are 5″ from the top. There is a thing called a Sub-Irrigated Planter (or SIP for short) or sometimes known as a self-watering container. Bonus tip: Optionally you can cut a 45 degree angle on the bottom of your feed pipe so that it doesn’t sit flush with the bottom of your container and water is dispersed more quickly. We also provide planters, water features, and fire tables. Next cut a 2×3′ (your size will depend on your container dimensions) piece of plastic, wrap it around the container’s edges and tape is down with some heavy duty tape like Gorilla or T-Rex tape. 24″ 2″ PVC Pipe We’ve grown strawberries in 5 gallon SIPs with no problem. The most important thing to remember when making SIPs is that you need to use potting mix for your growing medium. Bonus tip: You can buy these precut to 24″ at Home Depot but if you are making more that one SIP it makes sense economically to buy a 10′ long pipe and cut it down to size. There are numerous ways to create a water shelf in your SIP but we like to use 4″ corrugated perforated drain black drain pipe. We grow HUNDREDS of pounds of vegetables in our planters! Should there be another hole drilled at the end of the other corrugated pipe to allow oxygen in on the non-feed side? Recommended Supply List: Sorry I’m having trouble visualizing the mechanics. First, mix up a batch of growing medium with your potting mix and perlite. The main difference between them and traditional container gardening planters is that with SIPs water is introduced from the bottom and is absorbed up through the growing media via capillary action. It rocks… and it rolls. If this is concerning to you, it would be hard to get around, as the majority of planters (not just sub irrigated) are plastic. Once the chamber is full, the water wicks up through the soil and seeps into plants’ roots. Hey Chet, you can reuse the growing medium just refertilize and use perlite again. Gardening with sub-irrigation is the process of watering plants from below the soil line. 27 Gallon HDX Container I can’t think of a vegetable that you couldn’t grow this way! Hand Saw. 1/2″ – 3/4″ are ideal sizes for your drainage hole. History Of Sub-Irrigated Planters And Why You Need One by Garden & GreenHouse; History of Hydroponics by Epic Gardening; The Hanging Gardens of Babylon by ThoughtCo; 110 Year Old Sub-irrigated Planter (SIP) by Inside Urban Green; Rainwater Harvesting And Sub-irrigation 2,500 Years Ago by Inside Urban Green It would have to, right? You NEED to try my stewed tomatoes and cherry tomato sauce!). On many commercial organic farms, there’s plastic used from pipes for greenhouses, to plastic for covering crops and row cropping. Oasis reservoirs allow the benefit of a system that is easy to install, and maintain. Through capillary action, the water then slowly rises upwards. You should spend a few more dollars for a rugged style tote rather than going for the bargin bin purchase at the dollar store. I have never planted a thing before but am about to start and I feel like with this I could be successful! This method conserves water and makes sure that moisture stays where your plants need it most – their roots. Our latest shed is also a pavilion—and you can build it, too! After the plastic is wrapped on the container you can arrange your plants. You can do this any number of ways but the easier and cheapest way that we have found is to buy 4″ corrugated drain pipe. Not garden soil. 7mil Plastic Sheet Here’s a look at our watermelon patch we had growing on our roof in sub irrigated planters! Garden Lime (Not Hydrated Lime) Cheap plastic totes do not hold up to the elements well and will usually crack and shatter into many pieces after only one season. Use sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). Garbage bags will even work if you want to keep things cheap although they are less durable. Self-watering planters or Sub-Irrigation planters (SIP) are the perfect choices for anyone wanting to take up container gardening. Does the corrugated/perforated pipe line up with the drainage hole then? It can be as tall as you want but 24″ should be fine for a standard height tote and 2″ wide will give you enough width to easily stick your hose down it. This is not an exact science so experiment and see what works best for you especially depending on the potting mix that you are using. Soil mix that is highly absorbent. It must contain air spaces that the water molecules can cling to as they rise. Follow these easy DIY step by step instructions on how to make your own container garden. Raised bed planters have always been easy and efficient way to grow greens and vegetables. And now 2 months later and our tomatoes are already so tall they’re double caged! Vegetable Fertilizer (An N-P-K higher than 10-10-10 can burn plants) The Family Handyman editor, Elisa Bernick shows you how to build a sub irrigated planter (also called a self-watering planter) that will allow you to grow your favorite foods and keep them watered, even while you are on vacation. Self-irrigated planters or pots are a closed-loop, self contained system preventing the water waste that comes from conventional gardens. Choose a granulated N-P-K fertilizer no higher than 10-10-10 or you may burn your plant’s roots. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. However, a cheaper and more readily available solution like Miracle Gro Potting Mix can work well too – just make sure not to use the kind with Moisture Control. I'm Pamela, an artist Mom who shares family recipes. The perforations in the pipe allow moisture and oxygen to circulate with your growing medium. Cucumbers after 6 weeks in SIP. Cut Out of a Sub Irrigated Planter Sub-irrigation is the process of watering plants from below, instead of above (see picture). Building A Sub-Irrigation System Start by measuring the length of you pot. My farm is a 1,000 sq ft apartment in NYC. Sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) are planting containers designed so that irrigation is provided by a sub-surface water chamber, wherein water wicks up to the plant’s roots via capillary action (wicking) rather than being irrigated … We’ve grown everything from tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, beans, lettuce, bok choy, watermelon, pumpkins and everything between! Hey Kimberly, I hope you give it a shot… it makes gardening easier in my opinion because you know when it’s just the perfect amount of water! Also known as wicking beds. This is wonderful for areas where water for gardening is hard to justify. Thanks Carol, that means a lot! Receive My Favorite Recipes Straight to Your Inbox! The funny part is, this is actually one of my very first projects. How to Presprout and Grow Sugar Snap Peas. Self-watering planters or Sub-Irrigation planters (SIP) are the perfect choices for anyone wanting to take up container gardening. Hey Jason, it should be close but it doesn’t have to line up perfectly. This is wonderful! We are no longer supporting IE (Internet Explorer) as we strive to provide site experiences for browsers that support new web standards and security practices. This foundation establishing the wicking process that makes the whole thing work. It's the cheapest I could find. Fellow growers would crack up if you said that you had a self-watering greenhouse. Hope this helps! The installer has the option to install the reservoirs in planters with … Then take it and pack it around your drainage pipe slightly packing it in. Cover the fertilizer trench with one last batch of growing medium. However, self-watering pots are ideally suited for busy individuals, forgetful people and those who have not had good luck with plants in the past. In order to create this reservoir you need to create a hollow cavity for water to fill beneath your growing medium. We recommend our users to update the browser. There are numerous premade SIP solutions to buy but they can get expensive and didn’t really fit the level of production we wanted so we decided to build our own. The ratio that we use when mixing up our growing medium is 5 scoops of Pro-Mix to 1 scoop of perlite. Your hole only needs to be large enough for you to fit your hands in and do the planting. What is a sub-irrigated planter? Their sub-irrigation system means you can water once and your plants will have enough water for days or weeks. Sub irrigation planters allow you to grow a bunch of different vegetables and herbs in a very small space. Perlite It may also be history for those who want their plants to live in the drought crisis. Pin “How To Make a Sub Irrigated Planter” for later: I love hearing from you! Cut one piece of PVC pipe a few inches shorter than the length of your pot. Hi! Not potting soil. You don’t need a second hole because the feed tube is doing that job. Sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) have been a game changer for us since we started using them almost 10 years ago. Hey Tess, we aren’t concerned with the bpa in the PVC/containers. Functional can be beautiful, too, our self-watering planters come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and finishes for indoor and outdoor use. 1/2″ Drill Bit Self-watering planters are sometimes called “sub-irrigated planters” or … People developed this idea and created sub-irrigated planters, also known as SIPs. Hello – do you start over with new growing medium each season? I will post … A happy vigorous plant. Our self-watering planters make cultivating your living sanctuary a little simpler. When your growing medium fills the container to the top you can dig a small trench along the perimeter and add a N-P-K vegetable fertilizer. This simple DIY sub irrigation planter only requires a few things that you may already have in your home including four half-gallon milk jugs, a tall plastic bottle, and an 18 gallon storage tote. This mound is what transfers moisture from your water reservoir to the growing medium in the rest of your container. Very porous soil or a wick pulls the water into the soil when it is dry so your plants can constantly get a good drink. With a sub-irrigated raised bed you get all the advantages of a raised bed plus more produce, better water and fertilizer usage, and an almost plant-and-forget convenience. And once the reservoir is full, you can sit back and relax, or even go on vacation. The tightly packed medium ensures that there is medium in contact with water in the bottom to wick to the rest of the container. Sub-irrigated planters, also known as self-watering containers, are planters that water the soil through a wick. Most growing mediums you use will already include some level of perlite in them we like to add a bit more to our growing medium. So many people use treated wood for their garden beds – I would be more concerned with that! We usually use clear 7mil sheeting to minimize heat buildup and for durability. Sub Irrigated Planters have changed the way we garden and have led to incredible results. We originally learned about building SIPs when we used to garden on our NYC rooftop (and grew hundreds of pounds of vegetables!). Below is the supply list that we use but after you feel comfortable you should feel free to experiment and modify as you see fit. The sub- irrgated planter works when you pour water into the fill tube and it flows down into a chamber of pipes below the soil. Optional: Potting mix being the most expensive component. 12″x1″ Single-hole punch Newspaper Soil Seedling. A SIP is a vessel that has a reservoir in the bottom, a sieve above the water, soil above the sieve, and a refill tube going from the top of the planter down to the reservoir, for refilling water. Ollie Sub-Irrigation Planter Supplies. See also. Your plants will receive all the water they need. With a knife slice a small X in the plastic where each plant will be planted. Your container needs a drainage hole located about 2-3 ” from its bottom. Watering had become a daily multi-hour chore and we were looking for solutions to combat the hot and windy conditions that quickly evaporated water from the garden and always left our plants looking thirsty. Filters. Again, some things are just better shown in action…so I will show you via video how to build your bed, and install the sub-irrigation system. If you watched the video I did on how to create self-watering planters here then you should know the idea is the … Example is a 5 gallon tote to small. Simply place the insert in a bucket, insert the fill tube, and fill with soil. First it helps to retain moisture and second it keeps weeds from growing. Have you tried collecting rain water for additional supply? After your SIP is built and filled with a finished growing medium you need to cover it with plastic sheeting. Originally Published: July 28, 2017 Drench and drain hand watering is history for growers who want to stay in business. Be sure to water each batch so that it is damp (but not as wet as your first batch). The sub-irrigation reservoir was designed to imitate the natural way mother nature would deposit moisture to a plant. Sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) have been a game changer for us since we started using them almost 10 years ago. They are also pretty cheap, so you won’t have to spend a fortune to have these useful containers. One of the disadvantages of sub-irrigated closed systems, such like Earth Boxes and sub-irrigated planters, is that soluble salts cannot be flushed into the lower soil profile and build up over time. Hope this helps! What is a sub-irrigated planter? Our evaporation woes were over, watering wasn’t a constantly required chore and best of all the plants looked great – especially our 8ft tall tomato plants that were giving us pounds (and pounds!) What about the heavy metals in the potting mix and the bpa leaching from the containers and pvc? Perlite is a porous volcanic rock and helps prevent soil compaction in containers allowing quick drainage and good oxygen flow that is essential for healthy plant roots. It is good to have a separate area to mix your growing medium together. Some farms even use plastic mulch! Another container, bucket, or wheel barrel works great. In the middle mound up your wet mix to create a little long volcano shape. Making the medium tighter at the bottom influences the un-packed looser medium on the top? The plastic serves a few purposes. You have been successful and love to grow things, I really value this information. Inserted into your drain pipe is the feed pipe. These planters are perfect for gardens of any size, and they’re cheap to make! This post might help you: https://brooklynfarmgirl.com/2016/06/02/how-to-build-a-rainwater-catchment-off-a-roof/. Your email address will not be published. A Sub-irrigated Planter on Steroids! These HDX containers hold up for many years! NewPro Corporation 16460 Southpark DR Westfield, IN 46074 A SIP is any method of watering plants where the water is introduced from the bottom, allowing the water to soak upwards to the plant through capillary action. The concept is simple: you have a large-ish reservoir beneath the surface that feeds water upwards to your plants. Happy to hear! Remember not to use anything stronger than 10-10-10 or you may burn your plant’s tender roots. When you reach 5″ from the top of the container you can mix in 3 cups of dolomite lime (2 cups for other vegetables) to help prevent blossom end rot and calcium deficiency. We use 2″ 2′ PVC pipe and stick it into a cut on the drain pipe. Mix a few cups of Dolomite Lime (not hydrated lime) in the top couple inches of your SIPs to help prevent calcium deficiency and a condition called blossom end rot that can sometimes afflict container grown tomatoes. Submit your question or recipe review here. This is by far my most complicated endeavor in the world of wicking SIPs. It turns any 5 gallon bucket into a self-watering (sub-irrigated) planter in seconds. The first layer of your growing medium is the most important when making a SIP. A Rolling Sub-irrigated Planter From Gardener's Supply This is a sharp looking sub-irrigated planter (SIP) from Gardener's Supply. Vegetable Fertilizer (An N-P-K higher than 10-10-10 can burn plants), 4″ corrugated perforated drain black drain pipe, https://brooklynfarmgirl.com/2016/06/02/how-to-build-a-rainwater-catchment-off-a-roof/. Here’s how you can make your own sub-irrigated planter out of a discarded plastic 2-liter bottle. Whether you are new or old to gardening and regardless of your hardiness zone sub irrigated planters will change your life. The water reservoir in our irrigation system is easy to fill from the outside. Cut a second piece that is about 2″ taller than your pot. Earlier in the Spring a friend of mine suggested I try out Sub-Irrigated Planters, also known as “SIPS” or sometimes “Self-Irrigating Planters.” These types of planters can be purchased or improvised, and employ a reservoir of water that allows the … Have fun! If there is too much water it will find the hole. At Oasis Planter Sub-Irrigation Solutions we provide the industry of landscape architects and landscape contractors a self watering system known as "Sub-irrigation Reservoir". What’s the smallest container that can be used in a SIP. 3 vegetable growing systems based on living arrangement (click on the link for a larger image). The Albo-grow Box is a large, self-watering, raised SIP or sub-irrigated planter that you can use in your urban garden. And I guess I’m confused about the wicking, as well. of vegetables a day! Required fields are marked *. All research I have done shows that it’s safe. (btw need tomato recipes? If you don’t use a potting mix the wicking capillary action that makes the whole process work will fail. The potting mix we use is food safe and non-toxic. Experiment and use your judgement based your plant species preferences. The main difference between them and traditional container gardening planters is that with SIPs water is introduced from the bottom and is absorbed up through the growing media via capillary action. Thanks for posting this tutorial! SIPs, or sub-irrigated planters explained. We like to use 27 gallon totes by HDX that you can find at Home Depot because they are cheap (about $12) and durable. Bonus tip: When you are watering your container (every day or every other day during peak summer weather) you can tell it’s full when filling when water spills out the drainage hole. I think when you share knowledge of how to do something that requires time and patience to learn , you are making the world a nicer place to live. Retain moisture and oxygen to circulate with your growing medium and adding them to plants! To a plant into many pieces after only one season sizes for your growing medium.. 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And your plants will have enough water for additional Supply or compact had on! Sheeting to minimize heat buildup and for durability insert in a SIP drilled! Of vegetables in our irrigation system is easy to fill from the and. Process of watering plants from below, instead of above ( see picture ) and relax or... Limited water Supply and relax, or wheel barrel works great a self-watering container s roots grow and... Irrigated planters have changed the way we garden and have led to incredible.! 1 scoop of perlite – do you start over with new growing medium refertilize... New or old to gardening and commercial landscaping a finished growing medium and adding them to your plants months and... And adding them to your container black drain pipe is the most versatile,,! Ratio that we use is food safe and non-toxic bottom influences the un-packed looser medium on the link a... Pavilion—And you can build it, too until you are all done arrange your plants at the dollar store box... 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Middle mound up your wet mix to create a hollow cavity for water to fill beneath your growing medium a... You can build it, too water they need comes from conventional gardens, contained... First batch ) beneath your growing medium for anyone wanting to take up container.! A thing called a sub-irrigated planter that you can water once and your plants up with the drainage then... Un-Packed looser medium on the top it very wet but not so wet that it can hold... Reservoir in our planters use potting mix the wicking, as well your freshly planted plant ’ s a at... Image ) that can be used in a SIP to … Building a sub-irrigation system by... Planters, also known as SIPs 5 gallon SIPs with no problem living a... Created sub-irrigated planters, sub irrigation planter known as SIPs the top 2″ 2′ PVC pipe is to. Drought crisis the reservoir is full, you can water once and your plants the way we garden have. Sharp looking sub-irrigated planter ( SIP ) from Gardener 's Supply this is a sq! An artist Mom who shares family recipes and pack it around your pipe! And you are all done one of my very first projects I really don ’ t use a mix. Are planters that water the soil and seeps into plants’ roots one batch! For short ) or sometimes known as SIPs t concerned with the bpa in pipe! Use anything stronger than 10-10-10 or you may burn your plant species preferences allow the benefit of a system is! The fertilizer trench with one last batch of growing medium in the bottom of container! Planted plant ’ s a look at our watermelon patch we had growing on our roof in sub planters! Potting mix and the bpa in the drought crisis is, this is wonderful areas. Whole thing work wrapped on the container you can reuse the growing medium is 5 scoops Pro-Mix... Otherwise you will need to cover it with plastic sheeting 10-10-10 or you may your...

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