Justaguy, Tom Mobley has a had unbelievable success with just 14 14 14 in his pot n pot method. I am totally new at this business, my dad who just past away this year at 99 always had a large veggie garden in NC, but I was never interested until now at 72 ! I have put some MG in the water once they started blooming, but this first big beef is unbelievable (seems to be my favorite word this morning :>)). Our weather here is very subtropical, I have two very large mango trees that people said would not survive this far north and west (away from the Atlantic and gulf stream), but put them on the South side of my 12 cbs wall of the hangar and they have done extremely well. People keep tomatoes producing here from fall until June when it apparently is so humid that they fail to set new fruit. Typical day high here summer is 92 and 90% humidity and 70 low at night. Lots of rain in summer, we've had zip where we're located here west of port st lucie this winter and spring. Sorry about how dark the pictures turned out and with my palmetto background it is really hard to see how large the first bigbeef is in the bucket. Will try again to make a picture. bernie

Im using two sub-irrigation planters from Walmart with my standard 1:1 perlite and peat-based potting mix or pine bark fines with some CR fertilizers and top dressed with a thin layer of compost. Neither the planters nor my potting mixes smell. IÂm, however, not using these self-watering planters as you are or as instructed by Earthbox. The Misco Wal-Mart self-watering planters IÂm using have exposed and removable bottom water reservoirs. Since I am gardening under semi-protective shelter on a balcony and for various unique and horticultural reasons, I opted not to use and cover the potting mix with plastic mulch during this trial period. My potting mixes in these planters are not protected from Texas downpours and humidity. Under recent prolonged rainstorms and not being able to deliver and retain the necessary fertilizers to correct prior nutritional deficiencies, my transplanted gardenias showed emerging water stress - increased yellowing and browning of the leaves; hence, I also chose not top off the water reservoirs after the first week of use. A few days ago, I relocated the pots to let the potting mix dry out between rains to facilitate the movement of oxygen to the roots more efficiently and only filled the reservoirs partially with a weak acid-loving fertilizer solution. Any visible progress was slow. Instead of risking damaging the roots by watering and delivering the needed soluble nitrogen and micronutrients to the potting mix and the roots or further delaying supplementing the needed fertilizers and micro-nutrients until the potting mix moisture is ready, I also made due with a temporary weak concoction of acid-loving fertilizer foliar spray. The temporary foliar spray made a quick visible difference. The two gardenias have stabilized and are both doing well in the Wal-Mart sub-irrigation planters and with empty and partially filled water reservoirs. I project based on my short-term experience of using the Misco sub-irrigation planters so far with my fairly light mix and under my current wet growing conditions, topping off the water reservoirs may only be necessary periodically during vacation or hot and active growth periods in mid-summer growing conditions. Odor invariably has to do with soil moisture control and air movement. The wet rag smell is due to poor aeration, which can be caused by many factors such as, waterlogged growing medium, overpotting  little or no water and air movement due to reduced plant respiration and transpiration, emerging bacterial/fungal population, the use of plastic mulch for the wrong plant, climate/zone/season, or on the wrong SW planter, stale, unmoving, under-utilized water in reservoir over prolonged period of time, or any combination of the above. In theory, all passive sub-irrigation planters, small or large, closed or open, and without the use of air and water pumps, work off the same principles. Unless a design violates and neglects some physical laws in a major way, any differences in the effectiveness between planters should not be significant enough that they can't be easily accomplished in another way or managed by proven horticultural practices. Moreover, any advantages over hands-off effectiveness and good designs of one sub-irrigation design over another may be neutralized and less essential as in meeting the diversity of growing conditions and horticultural needs of different plants. In any case, itÂs more economical and effective to increase soil aeration (and/or the effectiveness of capillary action) by modifying the potting mix directly rather than shopping for the best sub-irrigation planter. Even if one has the best passive sub-irrigation planter on the market, the composition of a potting mix is still a leading consideration with respect to the needs of the plant and specific unique growing conditions. Other than the viewable exposed water reservoirs (an advantage or disadvantage depending on perspective) that may compromise the health of roots in extreme micro-climates and temperature fluctuations, or may subject them to attacks from insects (not an issue yet in West-Nile country Texas but the opening can be covered or insulated), I kind of like the simplicity, the functional flexibility, and the prices of WM's welf-watering planters, especially when the same laws of physics apply in all passive sub-irrigation growers. While there has been a lot of intervention on my part with this current semi-open sub-irrigation setup exacerbated by frequent downpours while trying to correct certain nutritional deficiencies in the first few weeks of this trial period, I am satisfied with the progress made by my gardenias in the Misco Self-Watering Planters. There is some appeal in branding a method or a planter as hands-off user-friendly, but my primary interests in using sub-irrigation planters and hydroponic systems in gardening are not for hands-off benefits but to be surrounded by nature, eat clean nutritious foods, grow things well with less efforts and higher yields while conserving resources  water and fertilizers to reduce environmental pollution. There is no buyerÂs remorse so far, but without testing the planters over at least one summer and winter and in other pot sizes, itÂs still too early to reach a verdict about the value of the purchase or future purchases.

Thanks for the comments. Terrybull - maybe I shouldn't have said A1's SWC mix.. I'm basically using A1's 5:1:1 standard mix. But A1 stated in a thread that if you're using that recipe in a SWC, then up the Peat to 2 parts. So basically what I've got is a 5:2:1 (Pine bark fines - Soil Pep, Spaghum Peat moss, and Perlite. with Lime added) EG - I guess my problem with the finger test is that I'm not sure of the results. This "soil" has a bit of a different feel, and it's hard for me to determine the proper moisture. It's funny, I've been growing veggies and herbs for several years, but this first year using new soil and in SWC's, I feel like I'm just beginning all over again. I'm doing all of my fertilizing with Foliage Pro which feels different also. And since I'm not sure if the SWC's are wicking properly (and if the roots are reaching deep enough), I'm not sure whether to fertilize the reservoirs or top water-in the fert. I've been doing a little of both basically. But all in all the plants are not looking too hot, and I don't know if it's the extremely wacky weather we've had here in Boise, ID or the fact that my greenhouse went down a few weeks ago in a windstorm and dumped every container upside down.. Not a good season so far..

Sounds interesting. As someone who built the EarthTainers first time this year and has been using rain barrel water to painstakingly fill the tubes everyday, I wonder if it is better for my sanity to use pressurized municipal water and the AWS to feed the units everyday. It really wasn't so bad to fill 8 each day (three are nested 5-gallon bucket tainers), but as the summer has moved along and we got more rain than usual the systems became overloaded one week with too much water, tomato leaves yellowed and died. I began to question if I was over-filling from that point forward and still question it as we transition into the arid, dry autumns that put us water restriction in these parts. I noticed my tomatoes are not growing as large as they had in the beginning. Each tomato is about the size of a handball now, when in the beginning they were baseball to softball-sized. Since the over-watering with additional rain from the sky I think I reached some point of no return, so the system has remained too wet and certain varieties of tomato plants have not fared as well as others. I wonder if I add 4 gallons of perlite to each mix in each EarthTainer next year.. if that will help keep a drier mix. Will that make over-watering (either by your action or the weater) more forgiving?