Self Watering Pot – an easy opton for Balcony Garden

Self Watering Pot – an easy option for balcony garden. I was surfing on net for few times to get a ready made one and surprised. It is available from Rs. 500 to 4700!!! I was looking for a cost effective options and diged for DYI sites. Ohh. It’s too easy to make and budget ?
1. Two old paint bucket @ 75 each = 150/-
 2. Piece of pipe = 20/-
3. Effort = moderate
Other Tools : Drilling machine, 22 mm hole saw cutter , 5 mm drill bit and a piece of 2 ½ ‘’ pipe which will act as wick (length should be up to bottom of the container when it will seat on collar. Basics of self watering Pot : It’s a pot with it’s own water container. Water comes up by following simple physics law which you know as capillary action. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capillary_action if you need some more details General arrangement will be as per the bellow

Steps : A. Making of Wick
1. Make few holes on the pipe by hole saw cutter
2. Fix a protective net inside so that soil should sit in wick

Now Wick is ready .  

Steps :B. Water Container (the bottom one which is a little bigger than the soil pot.  Just to make a drain hole at the junction point of two buckets. It will overflow the excess water


Steps :C.  Main Pot :
1.Make one 2 ½ ‘’ hole in center to accommodate the pipe- the WICK.
2. A ½ ‘’ hole at side the run a thru pipe to container which will be used to fill water at container (see up most pic or the bottom most - the black color pipe. 

Step D: Fill the pot with soil and plant the tree you like. put sufficient water in water reservour AND IT'S DONE.........Wait for the beautiful result