Wicking beds
History
I had been conducting research into ways of making more effective use of water when I was asked to visit Ethiopia to look for ways of growing sustenance food in times of drought.
I learned that the problem was not a simple lack of water but the variability of rainfall. If only took a few weeks break in the rainfall just at the critical times when the seed heads should be filling out to result in famine in the following season. Crops would be green but there was no growth, what they called a green drought.
A better way of storing water, even for a short period was needed.
Limited water was available from springs but attempts to use this in furrow irrigation were not successful.
Soils in Ethiopia are poor, having been farmed for centuries, they lacked body, so water would soak in at the start of the furrow creating a bog and however long the water was applied it would never reach the end of the furrow.
I experimented by concentrating the flow by irrigating many small areas in
sequence; - I called this micro flood - better but not a real solution.
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I next tried burying a sheet of plastic film under the furrow so the
water could not leak straight down.
Better - but the water moved sideways then leaked down. |
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I thought that if I formed the plastic sheet to make an underground
pond the plants would die from having their roots immersed in water, |
But far from dying, they gave better, more productive crops than I had experienced.
Question - why use a furrow when water can be run underground using a slotted
drainage pipe. This would cut down evaporation and give a larger area for
planting?
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This worked well but why not combine several sections
into one bigger section to form a larger underground pond. |
The debate is that this would mean that plants would be growing directly
above the underground pond. Would the water form a stagnant pond and
become anaerobic?
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Well it worked beautifully with no sign of anaerobic
conditions. It now looked very good so we started to install many
wicking beds. |
But now the problems started to appear. Some beds were working really
well with excellent production, much better than conventional methods but others
were not so good. Why? We could see that there were differences in
the types of soils we were using.
We needed to conduct many experiments so instead of using in ground beds we
set up multiple boxes.
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The beds that were working really well had excellent soils, with a high
organic content, largely well rotted compost. The poorly
performing beds had been filled with soil straight from the surrounding
area- a very poor heavy clay.
Adding fertiliser helped greatly with the established plants but we
still had a problem with germination. We tried using a layer of
commercial potting mix on the surface, but germination was still poor.
Of course the surface with an underground pond system is dry so we
experimented with a period of overhead watering to get the plants
established.
But the results were not that good so we decided to peruse with
underground watering even for germination.
Setting up something like this is quite simple and the befits are really amazing. For those who like to manage a self sustaining growth of vegetation, wicking beds are the way to go. Many of us who really love rustic environments for either weddings or even catered parties can set up wicking beds with plentiful vegetation. One really great idea for wedding invitations is to send a wedding invitation with a photo of the beginning developments of your wicking bed. The wedding invitations can come from such places like http://www.mixbook.com/cards/wedding-invitations and who wouldn't want a personalized wedding invitation with the plesent foreshadow of green things to come. |
There are benefits from watering from underneath, primarily the water is
continuously flushed upwards so there is no stagnation.
There is less soil compaction than with overhead watering and evaporation is
reduced. However with a poor soil there is insufficient wicking action.
We found that worm casting were far better than any other soil medium, giving
excellent germination and growth. This lead to the idea of making
the bed into a worm bed.
We felt that many people would like to experiment with a wicking-worm bed.
Instruction on setting up wicking bed are on this website but if you have
question you can
email me
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