Drain Hole

[coastal-tony]

T.D., thank for getting back to me. The 5-gal. buckets will be used for grape, small pears, and cherry tomato plants. I'll use a 3-2-1 mix, and hand water from the top. The buckets will be sitting on a 12"x12" marble slab, with maybe 4-5 1-1/5" tiles to keep the buckets off the slab. I have WAY bigger planters for the indeterminate large plant. But, I still need a gauge for the size & amount of holes to drill.

[rnewste]

Tony,

What Don says - - only one "correction". What I learned about Self Watering Containers came from a guy named "Earl" who posts here from time to time. I just simply built upon his efforts, then applied a lot of trial and error experimentation of new ideas like the integrated cage system to see what worked best.

You have a challenging environment in S. Florida temp wise as well as fungal risk. For your area, I would follow what Don recommends and get containers that are at least 10 gallons per plant. There is a guy up in the Panhandle who posted here last year "Bingster" and he put two Big Beef plants per 18 gallon SWC, and had excellent success. 5 gallon pails would cause you nothing but grief in your locale.

Do a search on "Bingster" and you can see his Thread and picture record of success.

Raybo

[dice]

[fill tube]
Self-watering containers have a reservoir in the bottom (no
holes in the bottom of the container). The fill tube is for
filling it up. There is a shelf above the reservoir to support
the container mix, with a hole through it for a wick (usually
a net pot or similar). There is also a hole through the shelf
for the fill tube. There are overflow holes in the sides about
1/2-inch below the shelf, so if rainwater fills it up the excess
water has someplace to go, instead of drowning the plant.

When using 5-gallon containers as conventional containers,
I either remove the bottoms completely or drill lots of 1-inch
holes in them, so that plants in them can root into the ground
below the container. (I, too, would want bigger containers for
large tomato plants. They have a lot of leaf surface area, and
they get real thirsty in warm weather.)

[coastal-tony]

Thanks, thats a darn good suggestion. There are a LOT of tree farms in Palm Beach County, Fl.