It sounds like a nice experiment. Out of curiosity did the plants in the regular containers need more water during a week? Did you cover the soil surface with anything?

Gardengal I water the regular container every day or every other along with the rest of the veggie garden. No I don't cover the surface.

My "Vegetable Gardener's Container Bible" explains that "Like other living things, plants are made up almost totally of water, at least 80 to 90 percent. Water provides the firmness we observe in healthy plant tissue. Hydrogen, one of the basic plant nutrients, comes from the H in H2O. During photosynthesis, photons (energy from the sun) break apart water molecules, freeing hydrogen atoms. The hydrogen then combines with carbon (from carbon dioxide in the air) to form carbohydrates —the building blocks of plant tissue."

"Whenever there is not enough water around the roots of a plant, nutrients fail to move into the plant, and growth slows. If the soil dries even more, root hairs dry out and die. At this point, the plant is severely stressed and growth is interrupted. Even if the plant survives the ordeal, the quality, size, and taste of the harvest have been compromised, and that plant is not likely to become the plant it could have been…"

And further in the book it says "… a self-watering container creates a growing environment that is ideal for almost all the vegetable plants we would consider growing in an earth garden. The soil in this sort of container is consistently moist but never waterlogged. Roots grow throughout the moist soil, even to just below the soil surface; all the plant-growth processes that require water proceed uninterrupted: nutrients pass from the soil to the roots and translocate to other parts of the plant; hydrogen from water molecules is always available for photosynthesis; the carbohydrates created through photosynthesis move from leaves to other places within the plant."

All this makes perfect sense to me when it concerns vegetable plants that prefer a lot of water - as much as a gallon a day. When the temps around here are in the high 80s or low 90s, the top few inches in the conventional pots are dry. This would not be a problem for plants requiring less moisture but I can see where a plant that does best with consistently moist soil would do less than its best.

Hi Bea! Can you describe how you made the home-made, 5-gallon self-watering container? I love experiments like these!

Good to know! I'm going to be creating some self-watering containers out of 5-gallon buckets. I'm trying to do some bonchi peppers, and the first step is to grow them out for a year in a large pot, then cut them back and move them to a smaller pot. My cayennes are doing so well, they will be my first subjects. These are short cayennes, so probably will do well as bonchi.

The later pepper seedlings are just not growing. I'm upping the fertilizer dose to try to get them going. I as doing a 1/4 tsp. per gallon constant feed, but I'm going to raise that to 1 tsp. per gallon. They should be large enough now. I'm eager for them to grow, because two of them are bells, and none of my other bells came up.

I wish I could grow bells. I have grown cayennes, habaneros and Cubanelles successfully but for some reason bells don't like me. I tried to grow them for years up north with no luck. So I'm sticking with the Cubanelles. I finally found a pepper that likes me :)

I was curious since most of the commercial earthboxes cover the soil with plastic to limit the addition of rain water and prevent fertilizer strip dilution. Some of the sites claim reduced evaporation from the soil reduces overall water consumption.

Garden gal I fertilize all my veggies every other week and when I do I also fertilize those in self-waterers. I don't put their fertilizer in the water reservoir but from the top just like the conventional pots.

i suppose covering the soil could reduce evaporation. I've just never tried it so I don't know if it's effective. I kind of like letting the soil "breathe". I also wonder if covering the soil might not promote mold growth under the cover given our high humidity.

I also wonder if covering the soil might not promote mold growth under the cover given our high humidity.

Well, FWIW, the original earthbox was designed by a Florida tomato farmer as a way to get around the nematode/poor soil problem.

Also, you don't put ferts into the reservoir. You put a strip of fertilizer down the center of the box and then let that slowly dissolve. Theoretically it should last until your crop is done. That's another reason for the cover, so it doesn't get washed away when it rains.

ETA three videos with the creator of earthbox on how to set one up, but this is useful for any self-watering planter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y2QUifx2gg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TVeXRIRAp0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8muyGUUGQZU