Ok so I’ve just pulled out the erm, watering spike from one of the plant pots and I can in the following day and this was empty. So I’m just going to assume that this volume of liquid takes about 24 hour of maybe 15 hours really to empty. I’m going to make another two, for the other two plants pots but I’m kinda toying with the idea of having a larger reservoir that feeds these three bottles.

So while you watch me make the other two spiked bottles and in case you haven’t watched the previous video, I’m using caulking nozzles to do this, I’ll explain how I might make and attach the larger reservoir.

If I could drill through a bolt, length ways, I could bolt that bolt using a nut into a hole that I’ve drilled upon the reservoir bottle.  Rubber washer on either side would keep the bolt from leaking and I could bolt or tap a fitting onto the protruding end. This could be a compression, push fit or even aquarium hose tail fitting.

This is the bolt that I’m going to try drill through, and I’m going to start with it on the edge of this vice and then move it across. And I’m going to be drilling with a 3.5mm bit.

Nooo!

Maybe if I had better drill bits I could actually get through.These are, well it says 8.8 CW. I don’t actually know what that means.

So after getting sharper drill bits, I drilled a 3.5mm hole through the entire bolts and 5mm about half way down the threaded end.  I then drilled the bottle top so the bolt would fit through, and tighten that in place with rubber washers between the nut and bolt. The 5mm opening fitted an aquarium air valve perfectly which will regulate the water feed.

It’s worth mentioning you can get nylon nuts and bolts, which would be far easier to drill through.

On the opposite end I could attach a hose like this, and then that could run into a pot the next stage of the watering system.

So I needed to sort out the place where these plants are going in the studio, and there’s only one window so I don’t have much choice. The window was pretty hastily installed, before my time and when I had a look at it, I realised it some mahoosive gaps between the frame and brickwork. So I filled those up with expandable prrrt and went about building a fitted table for the plants. It would be quite high and have plenty of room underneath for storage.

To say this corner is a bit awkward is an understatement, as nothing is straight and the walls are still a little damp. But this is a rented space which we’ve got at peppercorn rates so I’m not complaining.

The sides were fastened to the wall using rawl plugs, and I lined up the cross pieces between them, marking from the underside, cutting and pocket drilling into place. The pocket hole technique according to wikipeida has its roots in ancient Egypt, where the angle of the pilot hole is exactly the same as that the slope of a pyramid.

I used a scrap bit of ply that had some cement mixed on it, which is why I’m using a hand saw… feel my pain.

It’s not perfect but I didn’t want to make several cuts like that, and filled the gaps in with scrap at a later time.

Ok so I still need to cut the expandable foam away from the edge of this window frame but I kinda like the way it looks. It’s just bulging out like some monster trying to get in from the outside. The nice think about terracotta pots is you can touch the pot and tell how damp the soil is. You can kinda feel it. This one is still a little bit dry as with this one here – just not really coming out.

The spiked drip system is a little unpredictable, possibly because the soil is not deep enough in the other two pots but I’ve also not drilled any holes in bottle to allow for air to easily enter.

I’m going to save the drip feed valve for another video and I’ll leave a link here for when that’s uploaded.

Thanks for watching and remember woodworking begins with plants. If it wasn’t for plants there’d be no woodworking.