Self watering tomato planter

This tomato seems to be the happiest!

Plenty of flowers

Still early days, but looks like the container works!

Self watering tomato planter

I ve had a go at making my own self watering container for tomatoes, it's a experiment which I m hoping will save me some time, and maybe give me a bigger crop?
I did a lot of research on the web, but I was very unsure what to use as the wick between water reservoir and the soil, I ve gone for strips of an old work Tshirt ( it was a cotton polo shirt, if your wondering). I couldn't accept that using a soil based wick could be good for the plant, as it would constantly be soaking wet.
So the tomato plant was potted up over a week ago, all seems well ( so now I brave enough to tell the world)

I have been watering from the top to start with, but from now on it'll be watered down the pipe, and fingers crossed the tomato will help its self.

Paddy fields?

The allotment site has a slight decline.

We have two allotments, number 1 being on the slightly higher ground.

But number two is just a bit lower, so the bottom row off allotments

are suffering with a lot of standing water.

This photo ( excuse the finger) is of the plot next to mine, ours is not 

too bad, as we had rotovated just before the rains came, 

so the soil depth is still quite high.

Lots of standing water all around the bottom of the allotment site, 

7 hours after it had stopped raining.

The good news is when we do manage to get our main crop potatoes in, this is 

where they'll be going, they should like the extra water this allotment will give them.

BUTTS

We now have well over 2500 litres of rain water in our water butts, which is great news.
If I had been asked 4 weeks ago when we finished putting both of the EMPTY 1000 litre IBC
in there final position, if we would get them filled, I would have said
"not before christmas"
but here we are, there full!

Now for some sunshine?

1000 litre IBC on allotment 2 

Weather

Even with this epic rain, its the temperature that bothers me, I ve got some plants in the greenhouse and I don't think they are happy at all. I m considering a greenhouse fan heater.

Rain

It's been raining which is very good news, and thanks to JH The shed on allotment 2 now has some massive guttering Alongside a newish roof. We modified the old roof, taking out the rotten timber, Replaced one whole side of the pitched roof and refelted. It's not pretty but as of today the water butt has about 30-40 Litres in it, just another 960 more to go until its full! The thing about collecting water, it's all about surface area! As the 100 litre butt on the house filled in one night. The aim is to have over 3000 litres of stored rain water This should see us through....... For how long is just a guess but it's a start!


some photos of the shed roof, not massively exciting. Nice weather tho.

New roof on very old shed

Water Butt in place

All the guttering has now been changed

A massive THANK YOU to JH

After we had finished, I am pretty sure that bit of roof won't leak,

butt there's a hundreds of other places it will

No photo with the new felt, so I ll sort that asap or imot.

But basically we slapped on some black sticky glue, then a neatly cut sheet of felt

and hammered plenty of clout nails in.