Okay, here we go again: Another dried-up self-watering box. I have seen this before but apparently I haven’t learn the lesson yet. You need to place your self-watering boxes on something solid if you want to be sure that nothing grows through the bottom, perforating the box and destroying its ability to contain water.

It took me too long to recognize that the tomato plant in this box was drying out, for that simple reason that the plant was in a self-watering box – this shouldn’t happen I was very aware of the other tomato plants growing without a self-watering box, but they are doing just fine:

Let’s find out what’s wrong:

Yep – weeds growing through the bottom of the polystyrene box. (This will of course not be a problem if your self-watering box is made from a more solid material, like wood or something):

The weeds were having a great time inside the box:

Hello sunshine! Sorry to wake you from your beauty sleep:

Having a ball, are we? Looks like a killer slug (better watch my finger ):

The problem is that the tomato and cucumber plants have grown too big to be transplanted into the garden soil, and I haven’t got another box to grab the lower part from, so I’m going to cheat and plant the upper part of the self-watering box directly into the garden soil:

Fingers crossed that the roots will find their way into the soil and find enough water and nutrients to help the plants survive and start growing again: