Build a Global Bucket Self-Watering Container Out of Two 5-Gallon Buckets

This "Global Bucket" system is probably the easiest and most durable self-watering container to build. They are also sometimes referred to as a "SIP" or Sub-Irrigation-Planter.

Everyone seems to build them a bit differently, but that's O.K. If it works and fits your budget, that's what counts.

In the video below, "budbackeast" explains his straight-forward method for building what he calls an Earth bucket. Note his use of the "net cup" to create a water-wicking feature.




All you need to get started on your self-watering bucket planter is:

• 2 five-gallon buckets from your local home goods store. Or you can even get food-grade buckets for free from a bakery or restaurant if you don't mind asking.
• 1 piece of PVC irrigation pipe about 20 inches long, depending on the height of your buckets, to create the fill tube to be able to put water into your bucket.
• 1 3-inch net cup.
• 1 three-inch hole saw, to create the hole in the center of the top bucket to insert the net cup.
• 1  hole saw slightly larger than the PVC pipe diameter to create the hole in the top bucket to insert the PVC fill tube.

Once you have the planting mix in the bucket, you can either use mulch, as he explains in the video, or you can just stretch black plastic or landscape fabric over the top and tie it to the bucket, then make a hole in the cover just big enough to install the plant.

There are various methods to fertilize the plant. You can use a 10-10-10 garden fertilizer by putting a cup of the fertilizer around the edges of the bucket. Or you can fertilize it weekly with some type of liquid fertilizer, or you can just use worm castings or worm tea. Experiment!

If you need a more detailed step-by-step explanation of the bucket construction, check out "Doc" Wilkey's video below. He uses a plastic cup instead of a net cup. Won't last as long, but it's cheaper.

Growing in an Earthbox® Self-Watering Container

The EarthBox® is a self-watering container that grows vegetables and herbs with incredibly little effort. Plants grown in an EarthBox® grow much faster and get much larger than plants grown in the ground. (EarthBox is a registered trademark of Novelty Manufacturing Co.).

Below, Graham from Kind Gardens explains what an EarthBox® is and how you set it up.




The EarthBox® was invented by a Manatee County farmer named Blake Whisenant. He's well into his 80's now but his family still runs the EarthBox Garden Center in Ellenton, Florida.

There are other companies that make self-watering containers that are similar to the EarthBox®. Some are less expensive, but they are not as durable as the EarthBox® brand, and don't have as many accessories available, like automatic watering systems.

You can also make your own self-watering containers for less money, but the durability and ready-to-plant ease of the EarthBox® can't be beat.

Advantages to using the EarthBox® include:

• EarthBox® gardening requires less fertilizer.
• Nutrients do not leach out of the EarthBox® into our waterways.
• EarthBox® gardening requires MUCH less water than a conventional garden.
• EarthBoxes® generally have fewer soil-borne diseases than a conventional garden.
• EarthBoxes® do not require weeding. Should I repeat that? That may be the only reason you need to switch to EarthBox® gardening.
• EarthBoxes® are made out of food-grade plastic, so harmful chemicals do not leach into your food.
• EarthBox® plastic does not deteriorate in the sun like other plastics. It is designed to last more than fifteen years. Commercial growers have proven the durability of the product over that period of time.

I garden exclusively in EarthBoxes®. Below are some photos of my garden.

Swiss Chard (left), and Collards (right) growing in my EarthBoxes®.

A great crop of Romaine Lettuce growing in an EarthBox®. I grew six plants in one box.

I even grow sugar cane in a self-watering container. This is not an actual EarthBox®, but is one of the copy-cat boxes. Not as strong, but it was cheaper. Won't last as long, but it got the job done. Wheels broke off prematurely.

How to Grow Broccoli with Big Flower Heads

In the video below, Regine Norman of AsianGarden2Table explains her secrets to growing fantastic broccoli.




Regine's videos are extremely detailed and well-produced and her knowledge is astounding.

Here's a secret from Regine: start with quality seeds from a respected supplier (avoid seeds from your local Home Depot). On her website, she sells seeds for the "Green King" variety of Broccoli.

Broccoli has a minimum of pest problems and continues to produce flower heads after the main harvest. I'll never forget the first broccoli I ever grew. The flavor and texture was so much better than what I was used to from the store. Below is a photo of me with my first broccoli harvest in about 1981.

My first broccoli harvest, 1981.

Why "Cure" Sweet Potatoes After Harvesting?

Curing is an important step after harvesting sweet potatoes, even for the home gardener, for two reasons, as explained by Iowa State University Extension Vegetable Specialist Ajay Nair in this excellent video (my comments about the video below the video):



The video above discusses both grading and curing. While home gardeners are not particularly concerned with grading, I recommend watching the whole video just to learn. If you prefer to go right to the information about curing, you can skip ahead in the video to the 3:35 point.

Sweet potatoes sustain small injuries during the harvest process. These injuries provide openings for disease which leads to rot. To store sweet potatoes for several weeks or months, these injuries need to be healed. The sweet potatoes themselves will heal if placed in the correct environment for a couple of weeks.

Also, "curing" the sweet potatoes helps improve their flavor and sweetness.

To cure, place the sweet potatoes in a well-ventilated environment maintained at 85 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 percent humidity for about two weeks. They will cure at somewhat lower temperatures, but it will take longer.

Gardeners use various methods to create the right environment for curing.

After curing, the sweet potatoes should be kept in a cooler, drier (but not too dry) environment. Usually, 55 to 65 degrees is the temperature I see recommended most often.

Curing sweet potatoes in a 5 gallon plastic bucket.

I cure my sweet potatoes by putting them in a 5 gallon bucket and placing the lid on loosely. I put the bucket on the south side of the house on the porch with a concrete floor. Even during the cooler months the sun heats up the concrete floor and the bucket enough to cure the potatoes in a couple of weeks. I live in Florida, so this works well for me. In colder climates, even in the South, this may not work well and you'll have to try something different to keep them warm and moist.

Growing Sweet Potatoes in Containers

Sweet Potatoes grow fairly well in containers, though the best harvests seem to come from growing sweet potatoes in the ground or in mounds or raised beds. I believe the sweet  potato plant senses the limits of the container and limits its own production.

Nevertheless, not everyone has space to grow a large garden and must grow in containers. The larger the container, the larger the potatoes will be. The container can be made of any material that will hold up without decomposing during the long growing season. Large pots, fabric bags, buckets, trash cans, and self-watering containers all make good containers for growing sweet potatoes.

A couple of tips:

• If you are using fertilizer, use a low-nitrogen fertilizer. Too much nitrogen will result in excessive leaf growth at the expense of the potatoes.
• Use the largest container you can.
• Use a soft, sandy, well-drained soil. Sweet Potatoes need plenty of moisture, but they don't like to stay wet and soggy.
• If insects are a problem, mix diatomaceous earth into the soil. You can get it at most garden stores or big box stores.
• Sweet potatoes love plenty of sun and lots of hot weather.

I planted some sweet potatoes in a self-watering container and had pretty good results. This would work well on a patio or sunny balcony. You can see my harvest in the video below:

How to Grow Sweet Potatoes, From Starting to Harvest

LDSprepper has an excellent video series on growing sweet potatoes. He harvested 139 pounds of beautifully formed sweet potatoes using the method he explains in the video playlist below which contains 8 videos. You can just let them play and the next one will start automatically after each one finishes:



The videos in the series are as follows (length in minutes of each video is indicated):

1. How to grow sweet potato slips: getting started.   3:34
2. How to grow sweet potato slips: week 2, GMO and organic.   6:15
3. How to grow sweet potato slips: week 4.   5:26
4. How to grow sweet potato slips: week 6.   7:17
5. How to grow sweet potato slips: week 8.   4:02
6. Planting sweet potato slips.   11:06
7. Amazing sweet potato harvest: 139 pounds from three potatoes.  7:01
8. How to bake the perfect sweet potato recipe.   2:53

To grow the sweet potatoes he uses Mittleider gardening weekly feed fertilizer mixture.

If you are a strict organic gardener, don't let that stop you from watching. There is still a lot to be learned if you are not an experienced gardener.

Biggest Sweet Potato Harvest You'll Ever See

LDSprepper harvests his sweet potato garden on November 30, right after a light frost:



His secret to a HUGE harvest:

Raised bed.
Soil mixture contains 75% sawdust plus 25% coarse sand.
Fertilized weekly with Mittleider weekly feed mineral fertilizer.

LDSprepper has an entire video series on how to grow sweet potatoes, from starting the slips to cooking your harvest. 

Sweet Potato Tower

YouTuber "A Day Late" gardener in Virginia shares his experience growing sweet potatoes in a homemade vertical tower. I think his 35 pound harvest of sweet potatoes is excellent!



His comments about the vertical tower:

"Overall the work and maintenance to grow this was rather low. Most of the work was in setting it up and shoveling in the dirt. Harvesting was a breeze and was literally just unwrapping the fencing and pushing the dirt over to remove the potatoes."

His advice for "curing" the sweet potatoes:

"When digging your potatoes you need to be careful with the tubers. Be gentle and take care not to bruise or rip the delicate outer skin. Lightly brush off clumps of dirt and lay out in the sunlight for a day. It's ok to have some dirt on the tuber, and this little bit of dirt will dry up. Sweet potatoes need to cure before you store or prepare them to eat. It's recommended to place them in a dry dark area at about 85 degrees (F) for 10 days. Then after that store them in a dark cool place."

I grew sweet potatoes in a raised bed, but was slightly disappointed in the results because I didn't make it deep enough. As you can see from the tower constructed by "A Day Late" the sweet potatoes used up every bit of the tower. I'm going to try this method.

While he doesn't giver step-by-step instructions on how to construct it, most anyone can reverse engineer it by watching him take it apart. 

Growing Sweet Potatoes in Wood Chips

Sweet potatoes can be grown in the ground or in containers. Containers can be limiting, and in some areas the ground may be too hard, too dry, or too wet. Growing sweet potatoes in wood chips may be a viable alternative. It sure is a lot easier to harvest from wood chips than from the ground.

In this Nat Geo video, Tony, an Appalachian agriculturalist, shows us how he grows sweet potatoes in wood chips on his property:




As an example of harvesting a bounty of sweet potatoes 90 days after planting in wood chips, this couple in Virginia published this video from their one acre garden:



At 0:30 in the video they question the green coloration on one of the exposed sweet potatoes and wonder if it is poisonous like green-skinned regular potatoes.  The short answer is no.

Regular potatoes are in the nightshade family and produce something called solanine, which can be toxic if you eat enough. Potatoes grown under the wrong conditions or stored improperly can produce toxic levels of solanine.

Sweet Potatoes are in the morning glory family and do not produce solanine.

Mother Earth News has a great article about potatoes and solanine.

The LA Times asks an expert about green-skinned sweet potatoes.

What are Sweet Potato Slips?

Getting sweet potatoes started in your garden, whether you are planting in the ground or growing your sweet potatoes in containers, involves planting "slips" which are like cuttings.

A sweet potato slip is a piece of sweet potato vine stem with roots and leaves. Sweet potatoes are not grown from seed, but are vegetatively produced.

The easiest way to make your own slips is to go to the market or grocery store and buy some organic sweet potatoes. You need to buy organic because the non-organic sweet potatoes are treated with a chemical to prevent sprouts from forming.

Below is a photo of some small organic sweet potatoes I bought from Publix supermarket. There were several varieties in one package. I left them alone for a week or so and you can see that the sprouts are already starting to form.

Close-up of a new "slip" forming on an organic sweet potato.

Another way to get slips is to take some cuttings from a sweet potato vine and place them in water. The hotter the weather, the faster they will root. In the photo below, I placed some cuttings into a vase with water.

The weather was quite warm, so the cuttings produced roots in about 2 days (photo below). I left them in the vase until the cutting formed a lot of roots, which took about 10 days or so.

After one of my harvests, I had a lot of sweet potatoes that were too small to clean and cook, so I just left them in a pile in the yard until I decided what to do with them. It was late summer and we were getting daily rains, so they quickly sent up sprouts (photo below), which could be harvested as slips to plant.

As you can see, there are several ways to produce sweet potato slips.

In the video below, gardener Wendi Phan explains how she grows sweet potato slips.



If you don't want to bother with growing slips yourself, you can buy them online during the springtime and early summer.

You may also be able to find rooted sweet potato slips, like the ones in the photo below, at your local garden center.

Sweet potato plants from Home Depot garden center. Variety: Beauregard.

Growing Sweet Potatoes: Getting Them Started

Sweet potatoes are a warm weather crop started from "slips," which are also called "draws." Of course you can purchase sweet potato plants that are ready to set out in the garden or in a container as soon as danger of frost is over.

The best sweet potato production comes from allowing a sweet potato to produce leafy sprouts, then breaking off the sprouts once they reach a certain size, then planting those sprouts, which are then called "slips" or "draws" into the ground.

In the two videos below, Danny, from Deep South Homestead, explains in a relaxing southern accent how he has success with sweet potatoes on his homestead. The videos are slow-paced, but are absolutely full of sweet potato wisdom and experience.

In this first video, Danny shows how to plant out "seed potatoes" that will produce "slips" or "draws."






In this second video, Danny explains how to harvest the slips and set them out into the garden for the best chance of success.