In another article you will read how to make a “Box Fulla Veggies” box garden out of a Styrofoam veggie box using some weeds and a bit of potting mix, it is ideal for almost any area I thought, until I met a lady who had problems with the water draining out of it when she watered. It appears that she lived in a second storey flat and only had the balcony to grow her veggies on and while she gave it a go, she had to keep apologising to the folks below for raining on their parade. The answer of course was to put together a box garden that did not need to drain by turning a Styrofoam broccoli box into a wicking bed.
The wicking bed is also very water efficient so if you veggies are without care for days at a time and/or you live in a hot area you may consider this as a more water efficient alternative to the standard veggie box garden. We use a Styrofoam broccoli box because it is light, available and cheap - there are some things that are totally undervalued by our society and in my opinion the Styrofoam veggie box is one of them.
The process is simple –
Get hold of a broccoli box, a bag of potting mix or similar growing medium, some material to support the potting mix such as wood chips, gravel, perlite etc. (gravel is heavy and perlite is expensive so I go with the wood chips) and a length of filler pipe (I used some 55mm OD PVC because it is what I had hanging around and it is wide enough to allow you to see the water level).
1.Cut the filler pipe so that it is several inches longer than the depth of the box and then using a band saw or hand saw, cut a vee shaped notch out of the bottom of the tube to allow water to fill the support material
2.Place the filler tube into the box and then half fill the box with the support material.
3.Using a hot electric soldering iron punch a hole through the side of the box roughly level with the surface of the support material. This will be the overflow hole.
4. Place your growing medium into the box up to the level of the rim or slightly lower and then place organic mulch such as sugar cane mulch (bagasse) on top.
5.Plant your seedlings through the mulch then fill up the water reservoir through the filler tube until water comes out the overflow hole.
Once you have your box put together but before you add the water I suggest you position it roughly where you want it to go because putting in the water is likely to add another 8 to 10 kilograms of weight and moving it around after that will definitely be a two person job.
To keep up the fertility of your box garden apply a liquid fertiliser every two weeks. By making multiple boxes you will be able to produce all sorts of veggies and can even use crop rotation by not planting veggies from the same family successively in each container. The level of the growing medium will drop over time and need to be topped up.
This is another project that is good to involve the kids with; it’s fun and will teaches them something about growing their own food, so give it a go!
