Hello friends!
Growing outdoors the most common problem i've encountered is my plants drying out. Generally when it gets this dry in my region its hard to find water anyplace. Hauling jugs of water into some inaccessible terrain to guerilla grow spots isnt much of an option either.
To make it clear about the condition in my region. Either it pours and everything is soaked for weeks at a time. Or its dry as bone. Neither is good.
So this got me thinking. Why not bring the plants to the water instead of the other way around.
Now, i've had some luck with a swamp grow. Namely a big ol' bucket with leca in the bottom. About 4 inches of leca and then along the height of the leca i drilled holes all around the container. I then took an old bed sheet and wrapped it tightly and then inserted it all the way trough two of the holes so that it runs all the way trough the container and with two ends sticking out about 15 inches. Then added some potting soil with a few handfulls of lime to combat the acidity of this pine wood swamp. Surprisingly the ph was fairly good at around 6. But i figured better safe than sorry.
The bucket was placed on some thick branches so the bottom holes of the container never sat under the water level even at max water.
Then the container was concealed with some jute cloth wrapped around it and messed up with dirt, twigs, grass and other local things.
An illustration to further explain:
<img src="http://www.anony.ws/i/2013/07/17/89vBa.jpg" border
The idea of all of this is that the cloth would act as a capillary to draw up water from the always wet marshy/swampy land. If the pot gets oversaturated or it rains the water is supposed to drip down into the part below the holes forming a reservoir for the plant to put down roots into. I dont know if this would actually happend or if the wick just saturates the soil.
The project worked pretty good and produced a healthy plant as far as i could see. Even with the cold weather and heavy raining of this year.
Now for some debate topics:
Does the plant get enough aeriation with this wick type of system? And how could you improve the overall aeriation further without losing the soils capillary properties?
My goal is to just place the container with either a young seedling or just a sprout and then coming back when its harvest time. What nutrients would work best for this approach?
Ive been pondering the idea of building a stealthy self bouyant container and placing it in a freshwater lake using the same wick self watering system. Does anyone have any good ideas or maybe tried it themselves?
Cheers!
Growing outdoors the most common problem i've encountered is my plants drying out. Generally when it gets this dry in my region its hard to find water anyplace. Hauling jugs of water into some inaccessible terrain to guerilla grow spots isnt much of an option either.
To make it clear about the condition in my region. Either it pours and everything is soaked for weeks at a time. Or its dry as bone. Neither is good.
So this got me thinking. Why not bring the plants to the water instead of the other way around.
Now, i've had some luck with a swamp grow. Namely a big ol' bucket with leca in the bottom. About 4 inches of leca and then along the height of the leca i drilled holes all around the container. I then took an old bed sheet and wrapped it tightly and then inserted it all the way trough two of the holes so that it runs all the way trough the container and with two ends sticking out about 15 inches. Then added some potting soil with a few handfulls of lime to combat the acidity of this pine wood swamp. Surprisingly the ph was fairly good at around 6. But i figured better safe than sorry.
The bucket was placed on some thick branches so the bottom holes of the container never sat under the water level even at max water.
Then the container was concealed with some jute cloth wrapped around it and messed up with dirt, twigs, grass and other local things.
An illustration to further explain:
<img src="http://www.anony.ws/i/2013/07/17/89vBa.jpg" border
The idea of all of this is that the cloth would act as a capillary to draw up water from the always wet marshy/swampy land. If the pot gets oversaturated or it rains the water is supposed to drip down into the part below the holes forming a reservoir for the plant to put down roots into. I dont know if this would actually happend or if the wick just saturates the soil.
The project worked pretty good and produced a healthy plant as far as i could see. Even with the cold weather and heavy raining of this year.
Now for some debate topics:
Does the plant get enough aeriation with this wick type of system? And how could you improve the overall aeriation further without losing the soils capillary properties?
My goal is to just place the container with either a young seedling or just a sprout and then coming back when its harvest time. What nutrients would work best for this approach?
Ive been pondering the idea of building a stealthy self bouyant container and placing it in a freshwater lake using the same wick self watering system. Does anyone have any good ideas or maybe tried it themselves?
Cheers!
