Thursday 14 May 2009

How To: Make A Self-Watering Pot

Right, I've received quite a few emails asking how I've made the self-watering pot that is the home to two of my Radish seedlings. I thought it would be easier to blog it. Here goes!

Take an empty pop bottle - I have used a 2 litre water bottle:

Cut your bottle into two pieces. Making sure that bottom of the bottle is shorter in length - I measured mine the bottom piece is about 4.5" and the top piece is roughly 7".
Yours doesn't have to be the same:

Next, make holes around the neck of the bottle. These will be the holes the water travels through. I put about 8 holes in mine:


Also make a larger hole in the base of the bottle. Make this about 3" up from the bottom as this will be your hole to fill the water-well.


Next, slip the top half of the bottle inside the base of the bottle. With the neck pointing down. You might need to use a bit of force to get it to fit inside. Make sure you wedge it in tight and you should have something that looks like this:


Now test it out!

The bottom of the bottle should fill up. Then you will notice the water feeding through the inner holes. Once you've got that to a T, empty the bottle and start filling it with compost!
Make sure when you're filling it to pack the compost tight into the neck hole of the bottle. This stops the water getting into the compost easily and turning it into sludgy muck.

Your plant will go days without the need for watering, no need to feel the soil - Just check the water-well. If it's running low, top it up! Hey presto.... A self-watering pot!

2 comments:

Fiona said...

I like those pots. :-) Any ideas on adaptation to make them into easy-water devices for flower pots or baskets?

Your strawberries look like Alpine ones, what variety are they?

Living Dead Girl said...

I'll have a sit down and think about flower pots or baskets.

I have no idea what they are. My Mum grew them from seed last year and has 4 of those pots full (to be honest I'm not sure she know's how to look after them) so she's given me one, to see if I can do any better. I should really ask her, but I doubt she'd remember.