Water Wicking Trough Garden

Trying to grow food in a spot with low quality soil is a fairly common gardening challenge. Raised garden beds are a great way to get around the limitations imposed by the soil issues, and can yield greater soil fertility and bigger harvests, along with allaying health concerns from polluted soils. Raised garden beds offer some other advantages as well, in that they are often easier to work with for people that have a hard time getting down to ground level, can keep invasive weeds or grass out of garden beds, may extend the growing season (the soil warms up earlier in the spring, and can be easily covered as fall approaches), make for a neater and easier to maintain garden, and can also address other soil conditions such as lack of good drainage. To take the raised garden bed concept one step further, it's possible to build them as wicking beds, which will greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to water them, as well as reduce water consumption in the garden beds by as much as 50%. Building a DIY wicking, raised garden bed can be affordable and fairly simple to do. This is a wicking garden made from a water trough. I chose a one foot high trough that is 2'wide and 6' long. It will hold six inches of water and six inches of soil mix. Drill 2-3 1/4 inch holes for drainage that are 6 inches up from the ground.

Use a level and digging tool to create an even foundation. Choose a place that gets at least six hours of sunshine. To make the bed ADA accessible create a raised base from lumber, pipes or cement blocks.

The trellis was made from three 5' conduit pipes anchored by slipping the vertical conduits pipes over 2 re-bars that were hammered into the ground. The nylon trellis webbing is secured with zip ties.

To create a 15 inch long watering pipe for your trough, use a 1 and 3/4" diameter PVC pipe that was 5' long. It is cut with the bottom left uneven for good water flow. I used a wire cutter to angle the bottom. The top was hand cut with a thin coping saw blade. I taped the pipe in place.

Fill the bottom six inches of the trough with plastic peanuts

(not bio-degradable)

Cut landscape fabric to fit over the peanuts (or gravel) and tape sides to keep soil mix on top.

Ready to fill with water from the garden hose and/or rain. Excess water will drain out the drilled holes.

Mix soil from 3 equal amounts of vermiculite, peat moss and compost, approximately 2 cubic feet of each . Fill the top half of the trough.

Vermiculite