Making a Reservoir for Houseplants

Today i want to show you how I turn a Folger's coffee can, into a reservoir pot for my indoor herbs. To do that, I'm going to take, obviously an old plastic Folgers coffe can and this circle cutter that I found at a craft store. These are wonderful useful things, if you ever need to cut a circle it's worth the two or three dollars it's gonna cost you to buy one of these, and then, of course, I'll be using my pocket knife to finalize some details. First of all, you're gonna want to make sure you find a pot that's gonna fit inside your container, without looking, well, ridiculous. So, I'm gonna take this and score around the edge a bit and the pen tip in the plastic will give me a general idea just where i need to cut. I'm going to put that aside though, flip over my container, and grab my circle cutter. The dial on the side of this allows me to move it to whatever size I need, and in this case I think I want it slightly larger than the bottom of the pot. So I'm just gonna tighten that up again, once I've got it at a position that I want. I'm gonna put my circle cutter right on that dot that represents the very center of the lid, and slowly start to drag my cutting edge along the plastic. With a newer cutting tool, this would be much easier but unfortunately I made the mistake of leaving this out in the rain on more than one occasion and it's a little rusty so not quite as sharp as it used to be. Guess it kinda reminds me of me that way. There you have it, a perfect circle removed from the top of the lid. Now, I'm gonna take my pocket knife and I'm going to slice, in a few different places right up to the edge. I'm not too worried about precision, I just want something that's gonna create a barrier that will hold my container in place, when I fill it with soil and place it in the reservoir. Quite simple so far. In some of my previous, wicking container videos, you'll notice I used an old dog towel. As a good friend of mine pointed out, this wasn't necessarily the best way to go and let's face it when I went to water them, it smelt like old wet dog. Who needs that? Since my garden is all about testing theories, have you ever noticed, when you step into a puddle, just how fast the dragging shoelace will absorb water? I have. So I picked up a packet of eight shoe laces from the dollar store and for this experiment we're gonna try those for the wick in my reservoir. Clearly this is much longer than I'll need, but having a shoelace tips should certainly make it easy to run through the bottom of the pot. Sure looks like that fits to me. So what am I going to do with all this extra shoelace? Tie a knot in it, and tuck it through again. Now that doesn't do a very good job of covering those bottom holes so I'm probably going to lose a fair bit of dirt when I first put it in here. Wait! I have an idea! I'll be right back. What could be more appropriate, than using a coffee filter? Llooks to me like that fits perfectly in there. So, I'm going to put some soil in next. now that's pretty much ready for whatever i decide to put in there. What I have here, are some Key Lime plants that I started from seeds, that I got from Key Limes that were reduced to clear from the produce department. We figured 'Hey, I wonder if it's got seeds?' It did. So we figured, 'Hey, I wonder if they'll grow?' and they did. so let's put one of these into a nicer container and we'll move it inside and see how it looks next summer. Now that I've pulled that up, it looks as though there are three key lime plants that will be going into this container. What wonderful, lovely, strong roots they have. So I'm encouraged that they'll probably live and do quite well. Now that i have my plants in there, I'm just gonna top up the soil level a little. Clean the dirt off of those guys, and here we have a container ready to go with what should be a fairly effective wick. Now we just need to fill the reservoir Before I set this all up, and set it in motion I'm gonna take my water jug and test my theory and just see how well a shoestring will wick up that water. I don't know if you can see how well it's climbing in the picture, but this is certainly moistening nice and quick. I'm going to say I'm happy enough with those results and I'm gonna fill my reservoir. Wick in first, now because I cut those slits in the side, I should be able to just press this down, and I have a fairly snug fit. Now that this is setup, we're gonna need to make sure that wicking functions nice and efficiently through those roots can get a good dose of the water waiting for the bottom. The string, or the shoelace, at the bottom will do this eventually but to speedup the process and to wash off some of the dirt from my transplanting I'm just gonna give them a quick spray, and that should do it. Thank you for watching our show today, have a great day and happy gardening!