DIY Compost Station

When someone asks why we started composting, my husband and I say it’s because we had to because all we had for garden was clay and zero topsoil. We sang the condo blues over how very little would grow in that pretending to be soil, researched how to amend it, and experimented with composting in a DIY compost bin.

I made our first compost bin by drilling a bazillion holes in a black plastic trash can. We loaded it up with food scraps and paper from our paper shredder and in about a year we had compost! We added the homemade compost to our soil and after awhile our tan clay soil started to turn black with nutrients. I practically dance the first time I dug a hole and found an earthworm – it is another indicator that the soil is improving!

 

We take our composting very seriously. Why do you ask?

 

And we’ve been composting ever since.

How to Make a Self Watering Flower Pot

Last summer Husband and I planted green and Apache peppers in my DIY self watering planter box the Mark 2. Self watering planters are fantastic for nightshades like tomatoes and peppers because they looooooooove being watered from their roots.

There are other benefits to growing vegetables in self watering containers: you conserve water by only watering the plant and not the surrounding sidewalk or patio with the sprinkler (or is that just me?) and may be less likely to kill the plant if you forget to water it every day (also me.)

I built the Mark 2 in the Earthbox style (learn more about it here) with a plastic aeration screen making a false bottom to fill with water. Unfortunately the aeration screen collapsed during the winter under the weight of snow and heavy wet soil. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience.)

There is another style of self wicking planter that creates the water chamber with gravel and allows the water to wick to the plant roots using a layer of  landscaping fabric as a wick. Both water conserving planter ideas work well but I want to to reduce potential spring maintenance of replacing aeration screens that collapse under weight of wet soil or decomposing cloth wicks on a yearly basis.

I combined the two styles to make self wicking and watering tomato planters from pretty flower pots for my container garden.

How to Make a Pretty Self Watering Container Garden