Last weekend, Mary Ann and I used directions from the internet to build a pair of self watering tomato planters called EarthTainers. They are made from big 31 gallon Rubbermaid containers, the directions can be found in PDF form at TomatoFest‘s website. The bottom of a donor container is cut off and holes a drilled in it to let water through. A plastic perforated basket of dirt acts as a wick and and the whole thing goes in upside down in the intact container. The rest is filled with dirt and now you have a great little device that holds ~3 inches of water that continuously wicks up into the dirt of the container for what ever is planted inside.
It took us about an entire day to build because there is a lot of cutting with a jig saw and there was a lot of learning involved. Now that we understand the process, I bet together we could build one in just a few hours. We’ve got two tomato plants in each of the two containers. You can find more pictures in the Tomato Planters album.