It could one of two things I'm thinking or maybe even three.One you may not have a good soil connection between the wicking basket and the soil just above it in the box. 2 you said you filled your reservoir up a week before plant out, was it sitting around long before that? That could have dried out the soil too much. 3 you put too much perlite in with your mix, but this would have to be quite a bit of pelite, so I'm thinking 1 or 2.I would suggest showering from the top several times in one day, it will eventually get wet again and wick just fine.

Damon

I filled the reservoir and watered the soil from the top so it wouldn't dry out before I planted. I'm wondering if the perlite has something to do with it. I read a couple of forums that talked about drainage and how with SWCs the fruit can taste watery. Several of the suggestions were to add perlite to the mix, but never said how much. I used one bag of perlite and two large bags of potting soil. Do you think that was too much?

I suppose I could always start over with the soil. The plants are still small enough that they could be transplanted without harm.

A whole bag of perlite? How big of a bag are we talking here? Worst case is you can empty them out and maybe mix another bag or two of potting mix to everything and that will probably put you back on track. And then you'll have a bunch of potting mix left over and you can make a couple more swc's (wink)!

Damon

Yep, the whole dang bag. I think it was an 8 quart bag, but when it was mixed in it just didn't seem like that much. I'll probably have to empty them out (sigh). It's ok though, since this is my first attempt at these, at least I'll know for next year!