How to make a selfwatering container

I'm as absentminded as a college professor and keep forgetting to water my plants. Self watering pots (or containers) have saved many a plant's life in our home. They are expensive, though, especially when you need big ones. That's why I'm making my own.

You need this

Plastic box/container (in this post I'm using the plastic box FLAJ from IKEA.)
Leca
Synthetic fabric or tulle
Plastic tube
Soil

Remember to check that the place where you put the container can hold heavy objects. The pot described down below weighs twenty kilos (44.5 pounds) when it's finnished.



1 Start by covering the bottom of the box with a thick layer of leca (at least 7cm/3inches). Dig a hole in the middle to sink part of the soil into the water, this part will wick water into the rest of the soil.



2 Cut the plastic tube into the prefered length and cut an opening at the side of one end to allow water to flow into the magazine. The best length of the tube is from the bottom of the container to the rim or one centimeter (1/2 inch) above it.



3 Put the tube, with the opening end down, into the leca layer, close to the corner of the box - that way you'll loose the least growing space.



4 Take a piece of synthetic fabric/tulle and cover the leca layer as well as a big part of the sides of the container. It will keep the soil from drissling down between the leca pebbles. You don't have to sow any fancy bag, just cut a square big enough in roughly the same shape as the box. To fit in the tube, just make a cut from one of the corners towards the middle of the piece and wrap the two ends around the tube.



The reason to use synthetics is that your soil may carry worm eggs. These hatches and the worms tend to eat anything from natural sources. (And no, you don't have to use as fancy fabric as I do on the pictures - that's my old bride's veil now serving a better prupose. Usually I use brown tulle.)



5 Fill the container with soil. Be carefull in the beginning untill you have stabilized the tube, then you can dig away till your hearts content. Be sure to leave a rim of at least two centimeters (one inch) so you wont get problem with running soil.



The advantage of using semitransparent boxes is that you can see how much water there's left in the magazine. This box store about two and a half litres, which means you'll have to water twice a week when it's sunny outside.

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a home made selfwatering container.

Added light for windowsill, part 1

My son is ill. This means that I spent the for noon at home together with hubby and offspring. This was a coincidence too good not to be used in some way. Since I keep everything I need at home for putting up added light for an entire windowsill, fluorescent lamps, armature, chains for hanging the armature and bracket to fasten the chains in something - to make the lamp shine on the right spot you have to fasten it in something a bit away from the wall. This I discovered when I put up the added light for my herbgarden, and had to use some more rustic methods.

I started by opening the armature and stare mystified at the contents for a while. It isn't that hard, everything is colour coded, you have a short and helpful manual and the only thing you really need to worry about is one lamp and one cord. But the presence of hubby triggered my bad confidence in handling mechanincs and heavier crafts. I think it's something that is impressed on girls through simple and double messages all through the years. And hubby was walking around discretely eager to be of help, if only to put a battery into its recharger. The urge to ask him almost overpowered me, but neither hubby nor I did yield.

The armature is made for moist places, like djungles and the bathrooms of teenage girls. This means that the cover has strong clips and and packings, plus two rubbergizmos meant to seal the hole for the cord. All of this were packed in a plastic bag together with some extra clips as well as packings for the attachments. According to the manual two screws should have been packed too, but I didn't even find a glimmer of them. Perhaps this is a good thing, since I'm about to hang the lamps in chains I was going to use steel loops anyway. If I ever need to seal the lamp completely I plan to use some silicone rubber.

One of the big problems was the shelf. The brackets needed to be placed on such a distance that I can't hang the chains directly from them. It's not estetic to have chains hanging diagonally when their only function is to hold a lamp! A simple solution to the problem is to place a shelf on the brackets and fasten loops under it for the chains and the cord. Unfortunately we didn't have any piece of plank long enough for this purpose. My thoughts went to the discarded indoor rails we keep on our attic, hubby suggested a broom stick.

Broomstick it was, then.

Time to get some work done. With a bracket in one hand and a ruler in the other I climbed a chair from IKEA to meassure exactly where I should put the bracket. I wanted the bottom side of the shelf to be in line with the windowframes. In that way I thought I would get an horizontal shelf. Turned out that our windows are not in line with each other. We live in a house built in the 80s when desing was in, but not building up to standards. I used a few foul words while fighting the ruler to get a line that at least would be visually logical. Hubby wondered why I didn't marked the holes where I should drill - and I asked why when I only needed a line to aim after.

Time for the cordless screwdriver. Looking at it I instantly imagined bloody mishaps and emergencies and secretly hoped for hubby to offer his help. He didn't. What we did do was to localise the supporting frames for the walls. They have sucked small amounts of moist into the plaster boards to the extant that our wall papers are striped with grey on their places. Quite practical on occasions like this. The point was to screw directly into the frames instead of using special gizmos to make the screws hang on to the plaster. Yeeha! I could use the frames. This shelf will stay put.

Back on the chair, bracket against the wall, the screw in the bit (that is magnetic) and then I screwed directly into the hole in the bracket. Well, halfway through I discovered that the bracket was som tiny that the screwdriver actually tipped it a bit. The whole thing was skew, and da rned how the mechanincs worked slow! I jumped down to fetch our small, flexible screwdriver - which proved to be even weaker, of course. The non mechanical one was a joke! My helpfull hubby added an extension to the big one, and I could work again. Except for the last hole, where the supporting arm of the bracket was placed in front. What is the reasoning behind a construction like that? "We put a hole here for a fastening screw, but let's make it purely ornamental"? Above that I managed to drill out the treads in the screw by being to squeemish in pressing on while screwing.

BAH! That's what you get trying to prove your competence!

Finally I had fastened the screws, all three of them. Well there was half an inch left for the last one when the screwdriver said.

MeeuuuUUUUUUhh!

Battery's out, and no extra to use.

I told my hubby that putting a battery in the charger was so easy that even I could handle it, and put the battery in the charger. Then I returned to contemplate the lamp. I unpacked the things in the bag, read the manual thoroughly, squeezed the rubber thingys gently. This seems to be easy. I only need to drill a hole for the chains. Explains to hubby what I am about to do. He agrees to my plans - good, saves me a lot of fuss. Then we take out our foldable working bench and I fasten the cover in that. I take the opportunity to fasten the loose clip too.

The battery has been in the charger for a while. I fit it into the screwdriver again, hubby gives me right drill and I press it to the cover. Askew again, I pause and correct the position before the plastic has been to damaged. Drill against the cover, a better grip on the screwdriver and....

MeeuuuUUUUUUhh!

Not much use in that battery.

Hubby concludes that this work isn't meant to be done right now. I agree. It's some kind of sign. So my report on this work so far is; after half a days work I've managed to put up one (1) brackett.

Successes so far

I'm of the firm belief that analysing successes are more important than analysing mistakes



*I added extra light – apparently it's pretty dark, even in the windowsills since the sage and mint are growing in a completely different way ever since I put up the plantlamp.



Hm, this list of successes was short. My goal is to have other proportions on my analyses in the future; the mistakes shall be in singular and the successes shall be legio. Furthermore, prepare yourselves for a picture series on how I'm assemble, decorate and put up flourescent lamps to widen my growing space.



Decorate? You can't imagine how uggly they are, and I have to live with them...