Does any use Wicking raised beds?

[Sabz]

Anyone heard about those before? Or better, use them?

I am looking for a way to reuse water and reduce the time it takes me to water my garden.
I am already using raised beds for all the benefits they generate, so moving to wicking beds looks like the next logical step!

There is one thing I wonder about, maybe you can light my lantern?

One of the main advantages of raised beds with our cold climate is that the earth will warm up faster in the spring. The cold rains/snow melt will leave the earth sooner than if it was a normal in ground garden, so we can plant sooner.

With the wicking garden, I am wondering if we keep this advantage. Will the cold spring water still wash away as easily? I suppose the gravel underneath the earth will hold a lot of that water, but because of the capillary action, will it not get the rest of the earth cold?

I hope this was clear! hehe Thanks!

 

[vehve]

I was thinking of something similar, but we get so heavy rains at times, that I think it would just leave a wet mess. I built ours sort of the same way as you would wicking beds, but left the container out, so I need to water them a bit, but hay or mulch on top locks in water pretty nicely. I might try something like this next year on a small scale though. For potted plants I love wicking self watering systems, really nice way to keep them moist but not wet.

 

[Sabz]

I have never tried it, even with potted plants! For sure it must help for the watering task (takes me a lot of time, but maybe I have too many plants - orchids mainly lol).

You are right for hay and mulch. I use grass clippings on my garden, but I don't have enough to cover all of them! Maybe I should buy a bale of hay from a farmer near me.

When you say you built your raised bed like the wicking beds, do you mean that you have some sort of gravel at the bottom? Or just that they are raised bed in a sense that they are above ground level?

This year I added 9 raised bed to my garden First time using them. I have one 8*4 and 8 little 4*4s. It is easy for the crop rotations as well as removing the weeds since I never step on the earth and it is not compacted. I like it a lot, but so do the neighbour's cats, who use them as a litter So in the end, I am not sure if I'll yield more crops or not this years, but I certainly like the idea of raised beds It is also cute in the backyard!

 

[vehve]

I made them with a 10cm Leca-gravel layer on top of landscaping cloth to add drainage. On top of that we have about 30-50 cm of soil, sand and peat moss in different mixtures depending on the bed. But over here, dryness is usually not an issue. My onions have been too wet, the carrots a tad too dry, the salads, broccoli and cauliflower seem to be doing okay.

If you want a self watering pot, here's how I made mine. Take a large pot without holes in the bottom, this is going to be the water container and the outer part, so it should appeal to your sense of aesthetics, if you care for that sort of thing. Then you'll need an inner pot, this should fit nicely into the outer one, so that it hangs about 5cm (2") above the bottom of the outer pot. This is ok when using smaller pots, about 15cm in diameter max. With bigger pots, you can have a bit more space between them, but the wicking effect wont happen if the distance grows too large. In the inner pot, drill two holes in the bottom. Take a length of paracord, and slip both ends through the holes about 5-10cm, leaving 15-20cm inside the pot. Then just fill the pot with soil, leaving the paracord inside the soil (not under it), and plant whatever you're growing in there. As long as you keep the water level inside the outer pot lower than the bottom of the inner pot, but don't let it go completely dry, you should have a nice self watering pot which keeps the soil moist. On larger pots you might need some more holes and paracord. If you don't have paracord, basically anything that sucks up moisture will work, but I like paracord since it doesn't decompose. I've read people using old t-shirts as wicks for bigger applications of the same principle.

 

[Sabz]

This is a great idea! Thanks I didn't know what paracord was before I googled it, but I will find something similar for sure. Your method is logical, I can understand that it works! All the further repotting that I will do will use this method.. unless it is a plant that doesn't,t need that much humidity.

I love to try new things around the house and the yard, even more if they save me some time on the weekly chores

 

[vehve]

Paracord, zip ties and duct tape are items that should be found in every home - super useful for many applications. Paracord is nice because it has a high breaking tension on a thin cord, and it doesn't decompose. It's originally used in parachutes, but has become something of an must have for every wannabe survival nut

The self watering pots are really practical in my opinion. If you want to make monitoring them even easier, you can use a see through outer pot, although the water does get a bit mucky in there, so they can look a bit ugly.