We all love beautiful flowers but sometimes we forget to water them in the hot Summer or we only have a minute so we just splash some water on the plants and hope for the best. When we only water the surface, the roots of the plants don’t get the much needed water. Water on the surface just evaporates which is not what we want. To remedy this problem I found this great idea over on You Grow Girl about turning plastic bottles into water wells for large potted outdoor plants. It turned out great, I enlisted the help of my wonderful husband and it took us just a few short minutes to complete this little green project.
Supplies:
- Plastic Gatorade bottle and cap (or what you drink from)
- Screw Gun and small bit
- Sharp serrated knife
- Bulb digging tool or hand shovel
Directions:
First make small holes in the cap of the bottle with your screw gun. We ended up using a screw to drill into the cap because we couldn’t find a small bit. We really only needed one or two holes.
Next the bottom of the bottle needs to be cut off. A sharp serrated knife will do but my husband said he had the perfect tool to do this with so I let him use his special tool ;)
Now all that’s left to do is find a spot to put your bottle in and dig the hole. I put mine in the middle in one container and in the side of another. Ideally it would be better to insert the bottle before you plant your plants.
To dig the hole I used my handy little bulb digger but a hand shovel will do the trick just fine.
Then fill in the rest of the hole around your bottle…viola!
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I love this idea! Thanks for sharing.
Your welcome, hope it works for you.
I am laughing about Brad’s special tool. Our guys and their special tools – very funny! This is such a good idea Suzanne! A few questions – how big do the holes on the lid need to be and how much should the bottle stick out of the ground?
The holes don’t need to be very big at all I learned that I put too many holes in the lif and it drained rather fast. The idea is to slowly feed them. The bottle should be even with the ground or dirt in the container. Mine is a little high in the one picture but it was for picture purposes.
So I just made my plant dripper and it worked so nicely! I just used a hammer and a small nail to make the holes. I would probably only do 4 holes instead of the 6 that I made because the water dripped out a bit too much (learning for next time). I cut the bottom off with a knife (no special tool) and then saved it as a cap once I put the dripper in my garden. I had cut off a good section of the bottle to use as the cap so the sun wouldn’t evaporate all my water and to keep dirt and other things out (I have three little boys – you just never know!). Anyway, I am excited to get more water bottles and make more of these. Great idea and easy project!