I'm looking at two products for next year to put in my outdoor pots:
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For large pots, and
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For the smaller ones.
I have a pretty big container garden, several dozen containers. I don't have a problem watering every day, my main concern is keeping the moisture level of the soil balanced so it isn't over watered and it doesn't go dry.
My concerns about these are:
1) Flooding when it rains. I think this might be solved by putting about an inch of volcanic pebbles on the bottoms of the pots, then setting the reservoir on top of that.
More importantly,
2) Buildup and concentration of fertilizer and minerals in the soil. I like to use a liquid fertilizer, and I'm concerned that over the months of the summer the fertilizer might become too concentrated in the soil. Top watering and draining through the bottom washes out buildups and impurities, so it seems that bottom watering through what's essentially a bucket of water under the soil takes away this element.
3) Seeds. I plant most of my seeds directly in the containers. For some of my larger pots, will the water make it to the surface to keep the seeds moist as they germinate?
4) Disease. Won't a bunch of water under the soil in a bucket accumulate fungus, algae, and bacteria over the summer months?
For anyone who has used anything like these outdoors (I am in zone 5) I'd appreciate hearing your experiences.
I'm using several of the selfwatering containers from gardeners.com. The first looks like it has a water level indicator similar to the their Fiore selfwatering. I can tell you this is very unreliable in determining when the reservoir is full. I started prodding and pulling them to try and see if they were stuck. Invariably I would be watering away and suddenly it pops from near empty to over maximum in one second. I think the floating styrofoam gets caught down below and suddenly rises.
This confuses me. The water resrvoir is a contained vessel and will hold a few quarts of water in it. To raise the reservoir up with rocks won't prevent roots from growing down into the reservoir. DO these pots have no drainage holes of their own? If the reservoir is over full it should drain excess through regular drainage holes.
One concern on all S.W. is the growth of roots through the plastic mesh and into the reservoir--letting them sit in water. I won't know how bad this is till end of season when I intend to empty the containers and check out how the S.W. influenced root growth and see how many made their way down. I was thinking, if it is a problem, maybe a layer of cheesecloth could prevent it.
I top watered seeds since they have no roots to start with.
However, if the soil is dry the capillary action might not bring it up. WHen the soil was moist to start with and I used bottom watering (10" deep dirt, 2" reservoir) the top dirt never dried out. It is important for the moisture to exist already and have it wick up more. I've added dry dirt on top of existing SW and found it does not wick up sufficiently--or at least did it slowly. But with moistened soil it works great.
Don't know yet. I can say my biggest problem has been fungus/mold on the top. Two of my planters didn't have proper drainage. Each developed a white fungus across the top. All the plants were hurt by this. Others developed green dirt and I let the reservoir dry out before adding any more.
If anything I'd say the reservoir may keep it too moist. Unfortunately I'm in the NE where we had two months of rain so it is difficult to figure out how much was caused by using SW and how much was just too wet too cold spring.
I am growing minature pumpkin, a small patch of corn, potato, lettuce, four kinds of pepper, snap peas, a tomato plant, herbs and flowers in the SW containers. I didn't buy the kit to retrofit any older pots. I can tell you all my plants got through the weeklong heat wave we had and the only ones that wilted were ones in small pots (chiefly clay pots). Corn is five feet high, Pumpkin has stretched out for 4 ft from the container, the tomato suffered from the fungus, but is over 2' tall and has first fruit. Two of the peppers are almost 2' high. DIll is 2.5', snap peas produced, lettuce was good and didn't bolt during the heatwave. All my flowers are growing despite that I crowded them.
Since this is my first year, I wanted the SW as an insurance policy. I think it worked cause I've got a nice looking little garden. The only problem is, in fact, overwatering.
DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email) Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY, 1 mile off L.I.Sound
You may not need to fertilze as often because runoff is reduced.
There is a cap for the fill tube (at least on the first one you are looking at). Mine all have caps. After 4 months none of mine show any sign that something bad is going on in the water reservoir--no bad smells or visible problems other that what I already explained.
It might be worth experimenting with one and learning before going any further.
DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email) Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY, 1 mile off L.I.Sound
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