How to make a homemade pipe planter
You too, huh? Guess there are a lot of us. To date, I’ve killed every plant that’s been put in my charge. Wicked smart, dude! I think me and my ‘black-thumb’ will be trying this. They are pretty ugly, and expensive, and we found they just don’t work as well as these too. The self watering pots in stores are usually super ugly. Ĭool! I hadn’t realized I could make one on my own and to any pot!! This expands the variety of pots that can be used. Your email address will not be published.Ĭomment Category I have a question I have a suggestion I did this! Notify me of follow-up comments by email. (At the initial planting, you should also water the top like a traditional planter, but for the rest of the season, you’ll only need to water through the pipe unless the top gets really dry.) You’re done! Plant away! And load it up with water.
(This will make for easier filling and it will ensure that the water can escape at the bottom and you aren’t just fruitlessly filling the tube with water and not the pot.) As you are filling the pot, pull the top of your watering tube towards the edge of the planter so that it sits at an angle. Make sure that the plastic bottle wick is filled first, then load up the pot. Carefully start filling your planter with potting soil. This will do two things: keep the soil from holding too much moisture and it will let you know when you are done watering by spurting water out the side when it’s full. You can either measure or eyeball it, but the drain hole should go through the planter and be just under the base of the saucer. Add a drain hole to your new self-watering planter. Insert the plastic bottle and the watering pipe.Īlmost done! 6. You only need it to be 2 or 3 inches above the soil line, so mark that spot and cut down your pipe as needed. You don’t want it to stand too far out of the soil and look like you planted an ugly PVC pipe. Place the pipe inside your planter and look at how tall it is. Depending on the size of the saucer, you may need to turn it up-side-down to have enough space for the water, like this:ĥ. Test the size of the saucer before you buy it, it should fit into the planter and hold itself up about 2 to 4 inches from the bottom of the bottom of the planter. The tutorial is for a 3-gallon planter, so if you use a different size, adjust everything accordingly. K? It’ll make sense when you see the pictures. This bottle will be filled with soil and absorb the water from the lower section as the plant needs it. To get the water to slowly wick back up into the soil and plant roots, we’ll insert a cup (or cut off bottle) with holes in it, into the center of the saucer. To get the water to the bottom, we’ll insert a watering tube through the saucer. The lower section will be your water reserve, and the soil and plant will sit on top. The general idea is this: the saucer will go inside the planter to create an upper and lower section inside your planter. (Some of the links above are affiliate links, which help support Little Victorian at no cost to you.) Yes…a human helper is a little handier, but I’ll take what I can get, especially with that face. A hand saw ( just a simple one, or whatever else you have that will cut plastic).A drill ( our favorite that has lasted us over 5 years of remodeling).An empty plastic one or two-liter bottle.A plastic planter saucer (a sturdy one like this, not the flimsy 50 cent version).A planter (with no drain hole in the bottom), like this, or this pretty one.Here it is: Supplies you need to make a self-watering planter (from any pot): So, we tossed around some ideas and came up with this. You can buy self-watering planters already made, but they cost quite a bit and they really don’t work as well as the homemade version. They are really handy during summer travel or just for people like me, who forget to water. It was pretty easy AND cost under $20 for a 3 gallon-sized planter.
How to make a homemade pipe planter how to#
We didn’t want 5-gallon buckets sitting on our deck, so we figured out how to make our own pretty self-watering planters out of ANY pot. Their tutorial is great, but it’s pretty ugly. Last spring, we learned how to make a self-watering planter from Root Simple.