How to Make Flower Pots with Drainage Holes into Self Watering Planters

I have two large planters in my patio garden that have drainage holes in the bottom of the pot. I grow vegetables in them but they they need a little more attention in the watering department than the rest of my container garden that is planted in self watering flower pots.

I tried using these terra cotta watering stakes   to get the drainage pots on the same watering schedule as the self watering pots with varying degrees of success. I think the watering stakes work better when I’m going to be away from the house for a bit than as a full time self watering solution. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience.)

I’m redesigning and adding more space to grow herbs and vegetables on my patio. Since I am removing and remixing the current potting soil with new in all of my planters, I figure it is a good time to plug the drainage holes in the green planters and convert them into self watering planters.

How to Make a Self Watering Container Garden

Save this tutorial to your Pinterest boards for later! Share this idea with your friends!

Container Garden Organization Ideas and Friday Favorites Week 586

 Lacey realized that all of the plants in our patio garden are herbs and vegetables and tries to sneak  snacks from the small pots whenever we go outside. I needed a fast (and hopefully less expensive) solution to organize all of the new plants we bought from the garden center.

The white tubes are watering tubes. You read my DIY self watering planter tutorial here. 

Zero Waste DIY Recycled Penguin Gift Box

I finished the last of my birthday mango green tea (thanks sis!) just in time to recycle the tea container into a cute little penguin gift box.

Pin this idea for later! Share it with your friends!

If you don’t have a round tea container, you can use any round container you have like an oatmeal, snack container, or what have you.

You will need:

How to a Make Tomato Cage Plant Stand

This year’s Tabasco and Habanero pepper plants aren’t doing as well as they could planted discretely in our front flower bed as they could on the sunny backyard patio. They only way to do that is to eek out space for two more plants on my small patio container garden with  four plant stands.

Which was a fantastic excuse to check out our new IKEA store! I saw a self watering planter and stand on the IKEA website that would do the job nicely.


Until I got to the store and an associate told me they were discontinued. *sad face*

No worries! I swung by Home Depot on my way home to buy tomatoes cages to make into a quick and easy modern plant stand.

Quick and Easy DIY Modern Plant Stands

Pin this idea for later and to share with your friends!

You will need:

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

Chinese Takout Container Drawer Organizers and Friday Favorites Linky Party Week 360

I'm embarrassed to say that not only do I have a kitchen junk drawer, I actually have two. They are full of flotsam and jetsam and who knows what else because I can't buy a set of drawer organizers that fit what I need to store inside such a large drawer. Please tell me I am not the only one!

How did you cram all of this stuff in a drawer and actually shut it, Lisa?!

Turns out I already had the perfect size junk drawer organizers on deck in my craft room - plastic takout meal prep containers! (affiliate link for your convenience if you end up running out of containers in the middle of the project like I did.)

I emptied each junk drawer, sorted what should stay and what surprising things should go (like the owner's manual to a car we got rid of three cars ago!), and organized like with like in the containers. Once I finished with one junk drawer I moved onto the next messy drawer.