As I was thinking more about this, I will plan to flush the tanks monthly. Before I refill them, I can let it sit empty for a couple hours to get some more air to the bottom of the wick. Hopefully that should keep the mix happy for a few years. If you are using potting mix for the wick you do not need to worry about it's condition at all. The only purpose it serves is to wick the water upward and everything else being equal the more broken down it is the faster it will occur. Common advice when filling a container is to not tamp the mix down, but just water it in. This is to reduce compaction. This advice is reversed when it comes to filling the wicking chamber with potting mix. In this case you want to mash it down firmly so the particles make good contact with each other. Best to prewet the mix as well so it mashes down even better. This distance the water has to travel before it makes it to the growing area of the mix is considerable with your design. I would recomend testing the design this winter and see if water wicks efficiently, particularly when the reservoir is near empty. If not you can try using a different mix in the wicking chamber. Peat works exceptionally well in the wicking chamber. Basically the qualities you want in the wicking chamber are the opposite of what you want in the growing area. Your wick has to overcome gravity and if you need the water to travel upward 12" before contacting the growing media you want a water sponge. The climate here probably won't cause me to use too much water. I am about a mile from the coast and barely saw summer temps break 85. Oh, you will be fine then. Most of the folks reporting having to refill the EBs 2x/day with tomatos are dealing with hotter and drier conditions. For me it was never more than 1x/day with a 4 gallon reservoir and that was with 6'tall plants, unpruned and bearing fruit.

My grandmother raised most of her food. She canned and so had food for winter as well. My mother never canned in her adult life. As things go, I being from the next generation, and not having had to help a lot in canning as a teen, had an interest in canning when I became an adult. My MIL gave me her pressure canner many years ago. I have used it to can everything from vegetable soup to beef stew. I rarely use the pressure canner anymore. DH is not into gardening, so I grow only tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, herbs, and blueberries...lots of blueberries and figs. I am determined to have a little bigger garden next year. I am so fortunate that I have neighbors who have shared their squash, corn, okra and beans this year. I can jams and jellies, and pickles and pepper sauce, tomatoes, and sometimes (if I have plenty of tomatoes) salsa. In fact, today I canned tomatoes and blueberry jam, and I love to can the easy things like that. There is no feeling like hearing the little pop! pop! pop! and counting to make sure all of your jars have sealed. You feel as if you have really made something. If you would like to make jams, jellies, and pickles and/or can tomatoes, you can, without using a pressure canner. You need only a tall pot and boiling water. (and the jars, of course.) Buy the Bell Blue book. It is very cheap and will give you instructions for "water bath" canning of all of these things that are more delicious than you could imagine. And it is not difficult. If I can do it, you surely can. But I don't fool myself that I am self sufficient. I am nowhere near to being that. kay

One thing we need to respect is another's perspective. One grower might look at growing with the attitude that nothing is going to stand in the way of my reducing the effects of every limiting factor that impact my plants' growth and vitality. Growers like this tend to look at growing from the plant's perspective. Another grower might not be interested in entertaining the thought of changing anything, so long as the plant seems to be doing well enough. I've found this to be especially true if the chance involves more effort or expense - this is more a view from the grower's perspective - how it affects ME, rather than the plant. Neither perspective is wrong, they're just different ways of looking at things and ordering priorities. We all go through the same considerations, but some people come down on the plant's side & others on the grower's side. A prime example of this can be seen in the form of people arguing vehemently against the effort involved in finding ingredients and then making either the 5:1:1 mix or gritty mix. Almost always, the argument against comes from growers who have never tried either mix, and are content with the results they get from a from-the-bag mix because it's easy. Not all of us orders our priorities in that fashion. My good enough may be her poor; and good may in fact not be good enough for her. I know a lot of people like that and admire them for their desire for continual improvement. Rachel's question is a very good one, and her commentary clearly illustrates she's been thinking the issue through (from the plant's perspective) and looking for some input. Any teacher would give her high marks for that. I say often that our plants are already genetically programmed to grow to be beautiful specimens. The ONLY thing we can do to help is to be proactive in continually reducing the effects of ALL things that have the potential to limit growth/vitality. Remember, if everything is perfect except ONE thing, that single limitation can wreck the entire growing experience. One thing for Rachel to consider is that water in plunged pots behaves differently than it does in conventional container culture. That they are partially buried turns them into mini raised beds, hydrologically speaking. As long as they are not plunged into clay, the earth will quickly wick any perched water from the soil she chooses; so she has roughly the same potential for growth/vitality using soils that would otherwise be too heavy (water retentive) to be well suited to container growing as she does if using the gritty mix or the 5:1:1 mix. Since there is little notable loss in potential, based on her growing method, if using a heavier soil, we need to look to the interval between when the pots are lifted and moved indoors and when they're returned to the garden or beds and buried. Normally, there would be considerable concern over accumulating salts during the over-wintering period; this, as a result of having to water a heavy soil in small sips to avoid the soil being wet for any extended period. Since I believe she will be watering rather infrequently, it may not be a serious issue. Just a guess - if she's watering less often than every two weeks, I think she should be ok until repot time. Also, if she's willing to cheat the state out of a little rain water and use that to water with, it pretty much makes it a nonissue. I think Rachel's free to use a heavier soil if she wants to, and it shouldn't have any notable effect on her plants. If she has a suitable bark on hand - maybe something like a 5:2or3:1 bark:peat:perlite would be good - or even a bagged soil. The only real disadvantage to a peaty soil for this particular application is that it makes repotting more difficult. So - there's a little about perspectives and growing for you to consider. I hope there's enough there for you to set course with a little greater degree of certainty. Time to get out in the yard before it gets too hot again. It looks like another day that will be pushing 100*. Take care - thanks for the kind words. ;-) Al

ntaylor_2006, I would try 3 and I would make each of them long enough to go around the inside of the pot one time. I would then space them 2-3 inches apart like stacked donuts near the middle of the pot using soil to space them apart if possible. If you are trying to apply them to an existing plant ball I would try tying them in place abd pulling the wicks trrough the borrom as I eased the plant back into the pot. Once you have them in, completely wet the pot until the wicks are acting like drains. You want to make sure the wicks establish a water to soil bond :) phann100, To post pictures you need to store them on the net somewhere and then post the link here to pull the pictures from. I use pbace.com but there are many others that will work. The picture command is "<_img src="link" location>" You usually have to add ".jpg" to the link location inside the brackets to get it to work. Also leave out the underline at the start which I had to include to get it to display :) John