When I did build one with a cloth pot (geopot 10gal square) using 4 inch perf pipe I laid down a layer of vermiculite (holds a lot of moisture) under the pot atop the SIP lid. With holes drilled around the wick foot on the SIP lid you might want to lay down some sort of cloth to prevent the vermiculite from falling through those O2 holes, but this thin layer helps the moisture spread evenly along the bottom even though it is not directly connected to the wick foot/reservoir. I hope I’ve explained that clearly enough. If not lemme know and I’ll try to illustrate.
The other consideration is to assure that the material in the wicking foot is extremely well packed. The issue is that lightly packed material will settle over time and you run the risk of it losing contact with the pot due to this settling. Go back a page and look at the soil/root ball shown by
@farside05 and down where the wicking portion begins you can see that the material is starting to pull away from the above soil. In this case it may just be from the unique conditions of being removed from the bucket, however it does still illustrate the problem quite well. Pack those wicks tight!
Anyway, I thought I’d raise a few seedlings in the two different DIY mini SIPs I’ve described on here and share the process on this thread.
In my experience these are ideal methods; specifically, they’ll help you avoid the growth stall-out that usually takes place with SIP transplants coming from traditional containers.
So anyway, here’s a couple of of the pop bottle builds, I’ll do a couple nursery baggie SIPs in another post. One is made from a 2 litre bottle, the other a 1 litre bottle. Here’s the illustration I shared earlier that these are copies of.
These are hard to photograph… there will be more and hopefully I’ll get better at it. They are close copies of the illustration other than the wick material, which I omitted and the system works fine without it. These little guys have air gaps, holes in the planter floor to access this air and overflow holes that I made big enough to also use as fill ports. All of the moisture that enters the planter comes up through the normal drinking hole via capillary action.
I ‘ve got some Cherry Blossom
seeds (non-CBD) germing in these at the moment, planted in a mix of 30% peat, 30% my custom 420 worm castings, 40% perlite. We’ll be germing some proper Sativa seeds for the next seedling SIPs (baggies) in a day or so.
Anyway