Hi Bunks, I'm also in Australia, practising mad summer watering skills (this is my first year gardening & I'm a bit scared of the looming summer to be honest!). I don't live in an apartment but have tomatoes and things growing on my porch, where the water tends to gather & go bad in the centre of the concrete- I imagine it isn't doing the concrete any favours. I soak it up with old towels. Not a great solution. Be very happy to hear of anything better. How deep are the trays under your pots? Have you had any mosquito issues? I know I need to add some sort of water reservoir system to my pots but I'm paranoid of mosquitos.

Thank you for your responses. I suppose my goal is to construct something like an earth-trainer but with removable pots. The terrace is about 40 feet of stairs above the ground level and it'll be rough carrying a 15 gallon container of dry soil up there and then back down come fall. The pots themselves are about 16 inches tall, so would provide at about a foot of soil above the waterline, from where I intend to wick directly into the pot. Looking at Earthtrainer the idea (to me) looks similar: http://www.earthtainer.org/images/earthtainer_diagram_2__18av.jpg But instead of the whole lower section of the pot being submerged only portions of it dip into the water. If this is a critical detail then I could basically add in a layer of filter fabric and filler in the base of the pots so that only a section of the container soil dips into the water - would that address the issue of waterlogging somewhat?

gyna It looks like there's no soil wicking chamber for this gadget, so, yes, you'd better add a wick that dangles down into the water reservoir from the soil. Can you make a slit or hole in the bottom of this reservoir-provider for the wick? Lots of posts address the best wicking material in this CG forum, and you have several choices. Your soil should not be dry, just pleasantly damp. But even worse, there's another issue: no provision is made for watering it too much. Your plants can die for lack of oxygen because water covers their roots. You'll need to drill a small overflow hole in your container at the top of the water chamber (just below the base that holds the soil). That way your overflow hole will allow for the draining of too much water but still leave you with the deepest possible reservoir. Put some kind of water-saucer under your container to catch any watering overflow, or else water it where it can drip. You can certainly mulch the plant once this thing works. It'll prevent water evaporation from the soil surface. What are the instructions for containers that have drainage holes? I'd think you'd have to stop them up some way.

Mirrors is a bit extreme. You don't have to bounce the light back into the atmosphere (or into your neighbor's eyes). The temperature in the shade of a mirror is the same as the temperature in the shade of a sheet of cardboard. Dig a hole roughly the size and shape of your reservoir and drop it in. Cover it up to keep critters and crud out of it, but make sure it's not a hassle to get to it so you can check temperature, pH, and ppm. Put it in the shade, either natural shade or DIY shade. It doesn't have to be fancy. In fact, if you're growing bushy plants you could even position them so they shade their own reservoir. But don't forget to keep the accessibility in mind. You don't want it to be buried behind a wall of monster tomato plants later.