With Chicago area weather up into the 80′s for a couple of days, it was the perfect time to get my self-watering bucket containers filled. I had made one self watering double-bucket that included a PVC fill tube extending into the lower bucket. The problem with that was it was taking twice as many buckets to accomplish what just one could do.

Back on April 4th we posted a video showing how we made our single self-watering buckets and today we took a few photos of what we put into them. Last year we had good luck using dried leaves and since we couldn’t find any vermiculite at the neighborhood Home Depot, we decided to use it again this year to keep the soil loose. We used some larger leaves in the bottom of the bucket to keep the soil mixture from getting past the outer edges of the platforms we installed above the water reservoir. Then we mixed the three ingredients in the photos, including finely chopped leaves from our leaf mulcher

Without knowing whether our mixture would ‘wick’ properly, we cut some old cotton socks in half, lengthwise, and added them from top to bottom. I had seen one person post a video using ONLY a cotton wick without adding any soil to the small container in the lower reservoir so it seemed like good insurance.

By days end, we had managed to complete six buckets with three Celebrity and three Big Boy tomato plants. We also planted eight pepper plants, four per bucket. We may be sorry that we put that many in one bucket but we were running out of our self watering buckets.

Using self watering buckets will cut down on having to water the plants almost everyday. It will also reduce the amount of wasted water than ran out of last years bucket drain holes. I’m not sure if I will even bother with any upside down planters since they are also a big waste of water, allowing the excess to run out the bottom as well. What I have come to like about these self watering buckets is that the soil gets moist naturally and the root area is allowed to breathe through the platform drain holes which sits a good inch above the water in the reservoir. It would be hard to drown these plants with that setup since it allows for natural drainage. We had a couple of heavy thunderstorms the past two days and with my big rain bucket, shown in an earlier post, we were able to collect a very large quantity of fresh rain water. This came in handy today for watering the soil as we added it to the buckets.

Today, we stopped by Ace Hardware and decided to add a few more plants to our 2011 crop. To add to our Celebrity and Big Boy tomato plants, we bought some cherry tomatoes, some Early Girls, and some Jet Star plants. To go with our Carnival and Habernero peppers, we bought some green and yellow bells and also some Hungarian Wax to use in our 2011 salsa sauces. The next several days will be busy making more self watering buckets since we can’t use last years buckets. I thought about trying to seal up all the drain holes in them but decided against it. I have a number of litter buckets in the garage with things like fertilizer and weed-and-feed in them. They will get a good scrubbing before using them.

The rectangular holes that we added to the litter buckets seemed to hold the tomato stake quite well and once the soil compacts more from the moisture, it should remain solidly in place. I’m not sure what I will do if the plants grow higher than the stakes since it will be too late to install tall tomato rings or longer stakes. Last year we allowed the taller plants to lean on one another and that seemed to work well since the buckets were fairly close together due to the large quantity that I planted.

Hopefully the predicted storms will hold off until the evening hours so that I can complete planting my latest purchases. Then again, I may not have my additional buckets ready in time. It takes less time to build them now that I have my system down pat and a lot of extra platforms already cut out. My favorite support under the platforms has become 1/2 of a large metal coffee can. Instead of drilling holes in it, I just use a ‘church key’ to puncture a number of holes along the bottom edge. The only holes I drill in it are the two for attaching it to the platform with two plastic wire ties. Being so large in diameter helps to support the weight of the soil in the bucket. We’ll post more photos once we have completed this years ‘bucket brigade’.