Self-Watering Garden

My vision for a self-watering indoor garden with capillary mats has been realized. I am going to wait a while longer to declare it a complete success. I have two shelves that are watering my plants from the bottom, rather than me needing to water the pots individually with a watering can. This is a benefit to the plants, which usually appreciate bottom-watering.

Self-watering indoor garden: arrows indicate flow of water.
There is a reservoir on each shelf, with a capillary mat "wick" from the reservoir (the green boxes) to the adjacent tray, and another wick between each tray. Each tray has a capillary mat lining its bottom, which conducts the water through the holes in the pots, where the potting mix sucks up water and delivers it to the plant roots. I had to wet all the fabric mats to start the capillary action, and the trays have stayed moist for the past week. I add several litres of water to each reservoir per day, so the water must be going somewhere!

Capillary mat between reservoir and tray:

My edible indoor garden. There are spicy purple greens, cilantro, basil, and watercress as well as romaine, butterhead, green leaf and red oakleaf lettuces. My "Micro Tom" and "Red Robin" miniature tomatoes were just sown today. I can't wait to see my tiny, genetically-freakish tomatoes.

Lastly, I sowed a large number of Primula denticulata (Drumstick primula) seeds and got only three plants. I have tried these seeds before and only produced one plant from my efforts. They take an exceptionally long time to germinate and seem to grow very slowly. I am hoping to have nice robust plants by spring. Primula denticulata and Primula auricula are hardy to zone 2, thus are good selections for our climate. Has anybody else had experience growing drumstick primulas from seed?

Gardening Keeps the Post Office Busy

The people at the post office know us by name and at least one of them knows our box number by memory after putting so many parcel notices in our box. "I know you", he says, "you've got box xxxx!".

Other than the hot deals on ebay, our box gets some business from the fall gardening-related mail orders. Okay, I guess some of the ebay stuff is garden-related too. I get sucked in by novelty vegetables -- who can't resist an impulse purchase of purple carrots (seed, of course)!

The bulbs and fall plants haven't started arriving yet, but I did just get some red cozy coats and a large capillary mat from Lee Valley. The cozy coats are water-containing plastic frost shields for the tomato plants. I will try these after experiencing year THREE of tomato failure. I have eaten 5 cherry tomatoes from my 3 plants so far! Last year, I ending up picking all the tomatoes green just before frost and ripened them in my kitchen cabinets. You successful tomato growers should feel special! If I only had a greenhouse...

The capillary mat is a new addition to the indoor light garden. I have purchased new trays and plan to make the system self-watering, with a capillary mat wicking water from a reservoir (a shallow bucket or something) into the trays. Plastic pots sitting in the trays can soak up water through their drainage holes. This may make going away for short holidays an easier proposition. I'll try it out and let you know how it works.