Comments on: Self Watering Containers

By: Nayers

Nayers — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 17:44:08 +0000

No, it is the same with me! I moved into a ground floor flat and met the lady upstairs. She joked that the previous resident threatened to kill her when she watered her plants because the sheet of water drenched his almost dry clothes that were drying. (she admitted she was petrified of him)

I laughed it off at the time but having just experienced it myself….I won’t threaten to kill her but I will give her 2 choices!

1) water plants when I’m at work and not during anytime at weekends

2) move house as the management are strict on that type of thing.

Grrrrrr! x

By: Silvia

Silvia — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:01:21 +0000

My upstairs neighbor is of the opinion that water falling from her balcony from watering her plants is something I should have anticipated when I purchased a ground-floor unit and that I really just have to live with it. I appreciate her wanting to have a pretty container garden. But I don’t appreciate the sheet of water falling down from above onto my patio. Am I the unreasonable one? Should I just expect that the water from her plants will fall down on me and just ‘deal with it’ as she says?

By: Fern

Fern — Thu, 07 May 2009 07:27:52 +0000

sdat — OK. You win.

By: sdat

sdat — Wed, 06 May 2009 06:09:35 +0000

AZ is pretty far from both S. and C. America, last I checked. We may be using different maps.

It seems to be named ‘Earth box’ as an attempt to capitalize on any positive environmental association with the word (since it is marketed as requiring less fertilizer and water, and an aid to living more sustainably), rather than b/c it is filled with dirt. (In which case, they probably would have called it Dirt Box, which I already like better!)

By: Fern

Fern — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:14:46 +0000

sdat — Actually tomatoes are native to South and Central America, so Arizona isn’t that far off. The Aztecs grew them, and their territory included a lot of the American Southwest. So, I’m not sure how ironic it is to call a box filled with earth (i.e. “dirt”) an “earth box,” when it helps you cultivate plants that have probably been grown in this general area for at least several hundred years. If you want to be a purist, you wouldn’t be able to grow any vegetable. Everything humans grow has been slowly domesticated over millennia of human development.

By: sdat

sdat — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:27:07 +0000

Also, sort of ironic that a plastic pot which is designed to help gardeners grow exotic plants by reducing the burden of watering, is called an Earth Box. (By exotic, I mean non-native to the area where the plant is being grown. The linked article mentions the success of growing tomatoes in AZ, facilitated by an Earth Box, of all things!)

By: sdat

sdat — Wed, 06 May 2009 00:44:30 +0000

Yeah, I’ve seen these products and I know how they work… I know you can’t see the water resevoir, but I still can’t help but think it must be kind of gross. Hidden, but still gross… I can’t get over that part. Also, they are typically plastic and I’m sort of opposed to unnecessary use of plastics since they are so environmentally unfriendly. You can buy self watering inserts for other types of containers, if you want to make your own, but we’re still back to the ick factor. Clearly I’m not the target market!

By: Fern

Fern — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:57:46 +0000

sdat — Like Prue mentioned, you can’t see the reservoir. On most self-watering containers, the reservoir is filled with the water that normally would have run out of the bottom of the pot. Earthboxes have a reservoir below the plants that you cannot see. You fill the reservoir through a spigot and then the water is wicked into the soil from below.

By: sdat

sdat — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:21:21 +0000

But doesn’t the water resevoir of these self watering pots get sort of icky? I can’t think of anything involving standing water that doesn’t get some algae or whatever growth over time and become sort of icky…

(Although I can see how using the resevoir for water run off so you don’t drip on whatever is below your balcony as prue suggested might be a good idea.)

By: prue

prue — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:32:01 +0000

Hi Fern

Self Watering containers are awesome, except that I don’t use them the way I should. I just water the plants normally, from above, not in the reservoir, and the reservoir stops the water from going all over the balcony. I guess the it helps here in Oz to have such hot and dry weather, so the water saving techniques are a godsend. For some reason too the plants in these pots don’t suffer if the water stats in the bottom for a while, unlike the pots I have which are not self watering and only have drip trays underneath.