Self Watering, Air Root Pruning Vegetable Garden

[crazyplantlady]

crazyplantlady submitted a new Showcase Item:

Self Watering, Air Root Pruning Vegetable Garden

Welcome to my garden. It is gravity fed by a float valve and is constructed from storm water size pvc pipe. All up 42 metres and 6m square. Along the pipe we have drilled 4inch holes (no particular distance apart) in which our net cups in fabric pot bags are placed into to wick up to plants. We use fabric pots so that the roots air prune. If you've not hear of this it is a brilliant way to grow plants. If using plastic pots roots tend to become potbound, with air pruning when the root/tip gets to the fabric it dries out which encourages the root to send out more roots further back, increasing the total root area utilising all the potting media and nutrients, growing to its full potential. It also means you can grow several plants in one bag.
We are trialing flexi washing baskets (pictured below) lined with shadecloth for longevity and ease of cleaning at crops end.
We are quite excited this week as we have finally got water in the dam, replanting has begun at last. We did manage to save our asparagus tubs and our comfrey and even got a choko to sprout.
We live in the sub tropics, on a rocky hill so top soil is scarce. We also don't live permanently at our acreage so needed a system that could look after itself for up to 2 weeks if necessary. I've made a mini system on our suburban block as well, i also have a couple of chooks to give us fresh eggs and hours of entertainment with their antics. We also have a black soldier fly compost bin...but thats another story.
Our system is called a hybrid rain gutter grow system developed by Larry Hall in USA.

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[Wanda]

I got inspired by Crazyplantlady’s rain gutter garden. I viewed some of Larry Hall’s videos on YouTube and decided to make my own from scraps laying around. I bought the baskets from the dollar store and the net cups and valve from Amazon. The wood and gutter piece I had on hand. I put fabric shopping bags in the baskets, covered the net cups with panty hose and filled them with a mixture of peat moss, perlite and a organic potting soil mix for raised beds. I added a cup of bone meal, ground egg shells, and Epsom's salt to the mix before filling the bags. Planted some seedling flowers, beets, peas, and pumpkins to see how they would grow.