At the end of last summer Dollar General put these kiddy pools on sale for $2 each. I cut down some old PVC pipe I had left over from a long ago project. And. some scraps of fencing I'd picked up at a garage sale. 6" concrete mesh and rebar, I was given for free, make the cover frame, clear plastic for the sun shade. This thing is cheap.

Does anyone remember when clear plastic was clear? I had a hoop greenhouse and I'd put plastic on it in early Oct. and take it off in May or maybe June. Then one year all I could find was this milky stuff (at the same price). I put it on in early Oct. and it had deteriorated so bad from UV that it fell off in mid Feb. no snow load, no bad weather, just poor quality. Now you have to buy the special "greenhouse plastic" if you want clear, or if you want it to last.

I'll be cutting off plastic, bit by bit, to give the plants more sun as they harden off. Unless it just falls off.

        

Very ingenious!

Greysmith,
Thanks for sharing the pictures.
Nice simple setup.

Good thinking!

Nicely done!!!

Very cool. Nice setup.

I just made a pepper planter for the cook (As you value your quality of life, keep the cook happy). It's the same thing I'll be doing for the figs when they up-pot and need more room. So I thought I'd show some construction details.

To get even watering to all the bags the bottom needs to be level. The easiest way to do this is to set up two level rails that you can work a scree board across. Trying to just trowel it will take all day.

 

If you don't buy premixed, you'll need a modern efficient mixer.

 

Fill bags and plant. These are the WalMart reusable grocery bags. They cost 50 cents each, $2 for the pool, I used local dirt and composted cow manure. I haven't figured the perlite, sand, and peat (mulch) but they weren't much. You're suppose to surround the bags with pea gravel to keep mosquitoes from breeding in the standing water. I don't have any pea gravel but I do have bark. So, I may use that, or, I may just let it dry out a bit every few days.

 

When I see how my mix wicks I'll put a hole in the side of the pool to set the max water depth. There are float type automatic waterers you can use but I'm just going to water by hand for this small a setup. I have a raised bed that's getting overrun with Johnston Grass and I'm thinking of digging it out, lining it with plastic, and going to this kind of setup. If so I'll probably put an automatic waterer on that.

Good looking stuff! I'd caution that constantly wet bark/mulch will rot and stink badly. Plus the tannins might leach into the water, not sure how that would be for the plants.

Great ideas! I was planning on picking up a kiddie pool for some floating seed trays I bought directly from the manufacturer. They're too big for standard trays.

That's a good point about the bark rotting. I think I'll just go with letting it dry out periodically. I think that's better for the plants anyway, make them stretch their roots a bit.

I've been thinking for some time of doing something similar to this on a large scale...enough for 100 or more pots.  Just haven't figured out what I would use for the basin.  I'd like to be able to go away for more than a couple of days without worrying about my plants (none are suitable for permanent SIP, I either will sell them or plant them in the ground.)

Larry Hall is the guru for this kind of thing  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sanol21Lmbc  He acts as a clearinghouse and has a load of videos out on all sorts of stuff. You can use anything for a basin that you can level and line with plastic. Just a hole in the ground for that matter. Here's one where he's showing some other ideas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QyOeC8SEKo  (starting at the 6 minute mark). Or, there's that one where he put the net cups in the bags on a rain gutter, that looked pretty good.

Like I said, I've got a raised bed with a solid frame and too much Johnston Grass so I want to convert it to this system.

I started this thread in the beginning of April. Thought I'd update it, as of the beginning of Sept., to show how it's been working so far.

I up potted from those initial bags and took the wire platform out so the bags are resting on the bottom of the kiddy pool. With the bigger bags I had to start another pool. It's reached the point where I have to move the larger plants out of the first pool because they are growing through the shade support wire.
 

I have been pinching these guys back, right from the beginning, to make them spread. Sometimes they'd put up just one stem when pinched instead of spreading but all in all I'm quite happy with how they've grown. HC and MBVS are the ones that have gotten so big. VdB and an unknown are much smaller, but they branched well and are dense. Kadota was a rescue from a Home Depot close out and it's looking healthy but it is way behind the others.

I really like this, thanks for posting!