We live between two places right now. We have our home in Arkansas where we will retire and our home here where we will live until my grandson graduates high school.
This means we spend a good deal of time going back and forth between the two. Because I want to learn as much as I can about gardening I am doing some gardening in both places.
Since I don’t have anyone I want to impose on to water my plants I’ve had to get creative about how to keep them alive when I am not here to water.
One answer was the self-watering buckets which I talked about in the last post. Those worked well when we were last gone for 10 days. Which is a good thing as there has been no rain and the temperatures have been very hot. When we got back the plants looked great! The soil in the buckets was moist so the self-watering buckets are working great.
We did have one fail. The support we choose for under the lid failed as in it crumpled from the weight of the wet soil. So keep that in mind and use a sturdy support.
We are growing, or hope to grow a mini-orchard on our Arkansas property. To that end I have been ordering and planting berry, apple, peach, and nut trees. Unfortunately, I have the same issue with not being there to water. Also, summer is not the best time to plant trees.
I decided to wait to plant this years trees until they go dormant in the fall when watering won’t be as important but that left me with how to water them here while we are in Arkansas. I saw a YouTube for a simple self watering solution. You just use an inexpensive kiddie wading pool as a reservoir and set your plants inside the pool. You drill holes about 2 to three inches up the side of the pool to avoid overfilling and drowning the plants. We also had to put a few supports under the low end since our lot is slanted. For around ten bucks you have a kiddie wading pool waterer!
I’m happy to report it worked great! None of the trees died while we were gone 10 days and they all looked happy upon our return. We have bought a second kiddie wading pool as I am still investing in trees to plant in the fall.
If the trees come in a small pot or bare root, you will need to repot. I actually lost some of my trees, I think because I repotted in too small a pot. Since then I have repotted into pots at least double the size of the original pot. This also allows room for a better root ball to develop and increases the chance your trees will make it.
Click her for an article on self-watering buckets!
Wading Pool Waterer