Caroline,
I hope this discussion is agreeable with you, don't want to hijack your thread.
Linda,
I read the threads on DG last year when ya'll came up with your design and saw the results, very impressive. I had never tried growing in self-contained boxes, but thought tomatoes needed a larger container and bigger water reservoir, so when Home Depot had their 30 gallon storage boxes on sale for $9.95 last spring I made 3 as shown. The water reservoir holds 6 gallons. The 1 1/2 inch pipe has the bottom 1/2 removed to allow for overflow and provides a 2 inch air gap between the water and the potting soil. The top of the pipe is even with the top of the pots. The 6 - 6 inch pots can be clay or plastic as long as they have a hole in the bottom. The 1/4 inch hardware cloth is covered with nylon screen. The potting soil goes from the bottom of the pots to the top of the box and holds 2 cubic feet. When I planted (2 tomatoes at opposite corners) I filled the pots almost full, put the plants in place and finished filling, this gives the plants about 9 inches of soil to grow in. Then I covered with red plastic with slits for the plants to pass through. Finally I made a dip stick 1/2 inch x 1/2 inch x 24 inches by pouring a gallon of water into the reservoir and marking where the water came to and repeating until the water ran out the drain.
All 6 plants grew and produced fruit and were uniform in both growth and production. 11 pounds of tomatoes per plant for a total of 66 pounds. During the heat of the summer, each box was wicking 4 gallons of water per day to its 2 plants. What do you think? Claud
