Self Watering Planters

Last year I made pallet planters but most of the greens ended up dying because they dried out when I left for a few days.  So this year I wanted to have self watering planters for the greens as to not disrupt my sailing schedule.

The basic idea is similar to commercial products, where water sits at the bottom and is wicked to the soil.  Water is added through a full length tube shown on the left, and soil is contained using a liner.

I used the tops of the bins as the divide and set them on PVC pipe to allow for the water reservoir.  These are only for greens and herbs so I went with the shallow container.  The hardest part was finding a #5 bin (which is deemed food safe) because most of the bins I found they were not marked.  I finally found labeled storage bins at the Home Depot.

I cut the lids to size using a hack saw and tin snip.  Then drilled many small holes and put in one large hole in the center. 

 Here are the tops cut, with the PVC pipes attached using kitchen/bath silicone. 

I pushed the liner into the center hole so that some of the soil was in contact with the water to create the wick affect.

Then I planted some starters and some seeds.

The cedar box should keep the rabbit out.