How to Grow MORE Vegetables With LESS Water!

Construct garden Wicking Beds and save water! –

"The wicking worm bed is a highly productive growing system which not only produces more food from limited water, but also recycles waste organic material to provide plant nutrient and capture carbon. The essence is to form an underground reservoir of water or pond contained by a waterproof container or liner below the surface of the soil. Plants are productive because they have a continuous supply of water and nutrients." Colin Austin

We have extreme water restrictions here in Melbourne, Australia. All garden watering must be done by hand-held hose, and only on two mornings of the week, so this method of gardening offers a great solution. Water doesn't evaporate in the bottom of the wicking bed–it 'wicks' up to the roots, and, the top soil will stay soft, under the mulch. Now, we'll only need to water once a week in summer, and less during the rest of the year. 

See our instructional page, with step by step photo guidelines for easy DIY Wicking Beds, here:
http://www.maireid.com/wickingbeds.html

The inventor of this system, Colin Austin has clips on YouTube, showing how to do this in small plastic containers, for use in small spaces:
http://www.youtube.com/...mp;feature=channel_page
And here is his comprehensive and highly informative website: http://www.waterright.com.au
Here is another good website, with easy to follow instructions.
http://www.easygrowvegetables.com/
NOTE: I wrote to Colin Austin to ask for advice on the best level for water and drainage, and received a terrific reply, which I've posted (with permission) at the end.

We built our wicking beds using a combination of suggested methods, as follows:
The sleepers, soil, mushroom compost, and rocks were delivered to the front of the house, and carried by the two of us to the north garden, at the back of the house! Still, even with the hard labour, we get great satisfaction from working in the garden–and, like all passionate gardeners, we take deep pleasure in nurturing, 'knowing', eating, and sharing our abundant harvests with our excellent neighbours.

Materials needed for two 5x1 meter beds (16 feet long), one of which was terraced, so needed more sleepers:
23 red gum sleepers, each 3.5 meters (8 feet) long and 75 Ml (3 inches) thick. Red gum timber (or similar) is much stronger than treated pine, which will poison the soil and will rot on the ground anyway. The price is almost the same.
11 meter (36 feet) long (comes in roles 20 x 4 meter wide). We used black 200 um plastic sheeting, and we now think it just isn't strong enough. Next time we'll look for the orange industrial strength plastic, which would be much less sensitive to pointy things cutting through it, and since it won't be visible above the ground the colour won't matter.
HINT: we found a hole in one role of plastic, and sealed it with pool lining glue.)
10 meters (33 feet) 70% shade cloth (you can cut and overlap pieces.)
10 meters agi-pipe (33 feet) (perforated agricultural tubing) + plus pvc pipe (one length cut in half for the two beds) w/ elbows for attaching to agi-pipe.
NOTE: The garden bed gets watered from the top via this pvc pipe, creating an underground stream which waters the plants from below, hence 'wicking'.

Soil, compost, and rocks (A square meter = approximately one metric ton):
1/2 sq. meter 7mm or 14 mm screening rocks (not river rocks)
1 sq. meter of organic soil
1 sq. meter mushroom compost (combined with our own organic vegetable compost)
Small bags of Blood & Bone, lime added to the soil from the old beds.

We plan on adding worms to the wicking beds next season, when the soil is fully wet.
NOTE: We purchased double this amount of soil and compost to spread around the other in-ground garden beds, which we plan to convert also.