Things are all fine until we go for holidays for our plants especially the indoor beauties. I have tried self-watering plastic bottles with cotton wicks while away on holidays and it had served the purpose very well.
Recently I began researching more about organic vegetable growing that led me to self-watering plant pots. Read a lot about watering, organic manures, organic pests repellents, organic seeds etc. There are plenty of commercial plant pots that are self-watering but expensive. So I thought of making one like this one with materials available locally.
Here is a plastic plant pot. I have kept two stones inside so that the square blue plastic sheet you will find below will fit perfectly about an inch above the base of this pot. Holes were put on this blue sheet and two cotton wicks inserted. Below this water will be collected and above this blue sheet good quality soil, cocopeat, vermicompost, and a little neem cake powder were put.
As you know cocopeat has great water retention properties. Neem cake prevents pests invasion and Vermicompost is rich in plant nutrients. The excess water that we pour together with the nutrients will collect in the reservoir. It will be absorbed by the wick by capillary action and enters the soil.
So this should work for 3 - 5 days even if we are not available at home to feed these beauties. For more days go for bigger pots and reservoirs.
You are all familiar with the second plant😊 It is an easy-care indoor plant that figured in NASA's list of awesome indoor plants which purify indoor air.
But what about the first dark green plant?
Please name it😊