The Global Bucket idea..

This is a fairly commonly known about thing on the internet now, but pretty unknown to me up until I got my Earthbox and started reading up on sub-irrigated planters. The idea is, you have a container that holds a soil-less mixture to root your plant that sits on top of another container that holds a reservoir of water to supply a constant feed of water to the first bucket. This idea keeps a constant, regulated amount of water available to the plant always, so you don't get swings of a lot of water, followed by a drying out of the soil, and over and over.. this swing in moisture level is more a problem in some plants than others, namely the tomatos I've got going on the back deck in the containers. This yo-yo-ing effect is what I believe is causing my Blossom End Rot problem. This is how I built this so-called Global Bucket (Global Bucket - Earthbox, get it?), following some ideas I got online:

Take two buckets of the same type, one that fits neatly inside the other, like these two. Drill a hole in the bottom somewhere to fit in your wicking cup. I used a 2.5" hole saw I got from Commando Rob (thanks!) to do this..

Make this hole so a standard sized plastic cup (wicking cup mentioned above..) will fit neatly in it, up to the rim of the cup.

Then, drill a zillion holes in the bottom of the bucket. This is to give breathability to the roots, as well as drainage.

Cut slots in the cup, like this:

Get yerself a piece of PV pipe and hack a 45 degree angle in one end, so the pipe is just long enough to fit out through the top of the bucket with the angled part to the bottom. This will be your fill pipe. The angle is so the water can get out through the bottom with no blockage issues, like a flat bottom pipe might cause. Next, cut a hole in the bucket lid, sorta like this one that you see here.. Normally, had I grown the tomato from a seedling, I'd have cut smaller hole in the bucket top, not one so large as this, but I was going to stuff one of my already full sized plants into this bucket, so I had to do a huge hole in the top.

All together, the thing sorta looks like this:

Put your one bucket into the other bucket and drill a drainage hole, just below the bottom of the upper bucket (the one with all the holes in the bottom). This allows the bucket reservoir to be filled to the highest point without overflowing and totally soaking the soil-less mix of the upper bucket. That black line indicates where the bottom of the inside bucket comes down to..

Now, you pack the soil-less potting mix well into the blue cup as seen above, and then lightly pack the rest of the bucket with the mix afterwards. Stick your plant in there and then seal the thing all up with a piece of plastic, like this:

Now, had I grown this from seed or small plants in here, it would look nicer, but I had to hack it a little cause I've got a fully grown plant that I had to get into there. Now, the whole thing is like a sealed up, closed system. The fill pipe is used to fill the lower bucket reservoir with water until you see water start to leak out the hole you drille in the side of the bucket. This way, you cannot overfill the water and drown the plant. It's also stupid-easy to properly water all of these containers, as you don't have to sit there and tediously fill dirt filled pots from the top anymore. Just fill the reservoir and be done with it. The blue cup with the soil inside and all the slots on the outside gathers the water from the bottom reservoir, cause it's the only thing submerged, and wicks it up into the soil-less mix in the upper bucket where your plant is (this won't work with standard dirt, roger?). This way, you always have moist rooting soil, but not over watered, and not under watered. The slow release fertilizer you put into the upper bucket, just under the plastic wrapping keeps seeping nutrients into the mixture slowly over time, and the plant grows without competition from weeds.

So far, this thing has kept the above-seen tomato alive for three days, and the soil-less mix at the top of the bucket always feels just barely moist.. but not wet and sopping. So far, it usually drops down about half of the reservoir, so it looks like I could go about two days between waterings, but it's so easy to do, I'd rather not chance it.

We'll keep ya posted on this thing as we go along.. I hope to have a bunch more of them for next year's deck tomato's too.. these regular buckets just stink in comparison.