My reservoir is actually 35-gallon barrels on their sides and plumbed together at the bungs. I cut holes in the sides (now the top) of the barrels and inserted the drain pipe. When I filled in the bed, the soil went down into the drain pipes to act as wicks. The reservoir fills from one end and overflows into the next bed, which I built about 4 inches lower than the first bed. As previously mentioned, these beds are plumbed into the overflow on my rain barrels. I initially filled them from the hose but I have never needed to add more water in the last 4 years. That includes the awful drought we had here in Kansas in 2012. Plants in these beds typically do better than my other beds. I think it is because they have all the water they want but their roots are not continually sitting in water. Plus the rainwater doesn't have chlorine, which I think makes a difference. While this system works great, if I were to build another bed I think I would dig the hole, line it with a pond liner, install short drain pipes vertically for the wicks, fill it with gravel (the bigger gravel size the better to increase the water volume), and use a landscape cloth, with holes for the wicks, to keep the soil out. It is just a simpler design plus I have had a trouble with tree roots invading these beds. A pond liner might keep them at bay.

Jodik,I am with you on this one. And good morning by the way:-)) No matter what I do, I can't keep one growing for anything! I have tried everything but the mounted technique though. How often do you spray the roots down when mounted indoors and how long? I have a greenhouse and I would like to give it a shot with a cheap plant or maybe a few. Sort of an experiment. I was at the nursery this weekend and saw many Phals that had not sold for a couple of months now. Some were in a barky mix and others in a just Spagnum Moss. I examined their roots and they all looked horrible. The only ones that had nice roots were the ones that had just arrived. Now what does that tell me? These methods work for people who provide an environment that can handle those type of mixes. As for us that drag them home for our pleasure, if the mixes the nursery has them in kill them over time, then it is up to us to figure out what mix works best for our plants with the environment that we provide. Sort of a balancing act. many I know just leave them in the same mix they came to their home in and wonder why they fail. It seems as if one has to repot them into a mix that matches the conditions they provide for them immediately. I guess I have my work cut out for me, and maybe a few dead Phals before I get it right.lol Mike

Betty, Did you take the broken rose branch and root it? Might as well make lemonade when life gives you lemons. The wind here is ridiculous today. It is a wonder the row covers haven't blown away but I do have them pinned down pretty firmly. I have tried to keep the peppers warm by having them in the greenhouse during the day, and bringing them inside the house if I think the greenhouse will drop below 40 degrees or so. My poor pepper plants barely know what real sunlight is because they haven't seen it in so long. I want to plant all the rest of my hot-season stuff, but have been waiting for some consistency in the forecast too. Since I couldn't direct-sow anything today (I would have had to remove the row covers), I started a lot of warm-season herbs and flowers in flats, and a few veggies like cukes, melons, watermelons, Armenian cukes, etc. I hope to pop them out of the six-packs and into the ground the minute the first tiny bit of green pops up out of the soil-less mix. I intend to put bean seeds in the ground tomorrow. They raised tomorrow night's forecast low from 44 to 48, so I feel like it will be warm enough. Our 3-day average soil temp dropped from the low 70s to the mid or upper 60s with with this last cold front, but the soil in the raised beds is still pretty warm. Likely the row covers have helped them stay warmer by holding in the heat. Carol, I am concerned about the weather too. I am hoping that the cold spells haven't lasted long enough to cause bolting. If they do, they do....there's nothing we can do about it. The reason I have covered my onion bed's hoops with the 10-degree row cover for every cold spell is not because I thought the onions might freeze but because I hoped it would keep them warm enough that they'd be less likely to bolt. I guess we'll know in the next couple of weeks if they are going to bolt, and I am hoping they won't because they are so lovely right now and will make a great crop if they don't bolt and if hail doesn't get them. Our Sugar Snaps are producing faster than we can pick them and eat them. I guess it makes up for the early heat wrecking the crop the last two years. Either we need to start eating them at every meal, or I need to freeze some. I planted mine in paper cups in February and then got them into the ground as early as I could, but I planted a certain percentage of them every week for 3 or 4 weeks, trying to spread out the risk of a late freezing getting them. I also staggered the potato plantings quite a lot. The first two beds that I planted are the tallest, and the third bed is not far behind. They are getting too tall to cover so we're in trouble if we get another cold front, which I hope doesn't happen of course. I was looking at the first two beds a few minutes before sunset, and the plants look like they've grown 6-8 inches since Tim covered up those beds on Wed.evening. You can see the plants pushing and straining at the row cover. I think it keeps them so warm that they grow faster while it is on them. I haven't planted a single bean yet, but hope to rectify that tomorrow. We have a lot of rain chances in our forecast for next week, and since lately our rain has come only in little bits....a few hundredths of an inch here, a tenth of an inch there, we really need that rain. Maybe if I get the beans in the ground and then it rains, they'll sprout quickly to make up for going into the ground so late. You still might get more parsley volunteers. Just this past week, volunteers started popping up like mad. I imagine when we rototilled all the soil repeatedly while rebuilding the beds this spring, we exposed a lot of buried seeds to sunlight. While weeding on Wed. right before putting on the row covers, I saw volunteer seedlings of all kinds---okra, watermelon, ornamental purple-leaved peppers, flowers of several kinds, tomatoes, etc. I even saw basil and corn volunteers. The basil can stay but I'll yank out the corn since it is in the middle of a row of garlic. I know you don't like cilantro and won't try to change your mind about it, but I grow it near potatoes and I do believe it helps keep the potato bugs away. I planted about 30 lbs. of seed potatoes so we have row after row of potato plants and I haven't seen a single CPB yet. Grasshoppers, however, have arrived in full force. Dawn

This is peat moss, perlite, gypsum, and dolomitic lime, essentially organic matter, something most all soils need. Add this to your garden soil with the understanding that the nutrients will be practically none existence (peat moss has none to speak of) unlike your kitchen scraps. Not anything I would add to my compost pile. kimmq is kimmsr