Self-watering Herb Spiral – An Idea Worth Sharing

A herb spiral is a great idea to grow herbs on a mound of dirt. However, in hot and dry weather with extra radiant heat from stones even herbs struggle to survive. To keep them alive a regular watering and a fair a bit of water is required. For that reason a self-watering way sounds like the way to go. But how to make it work in a spiral with steeping soil for herbs to grow? Being an engineer I came up with a very clever but simple design idea which should work marvellously. So here is a description how we designed and built our herb spiral.

The spiral has three water reservoir levels as shown on the schematic. Each level comprises of the following layers (described from bottom to top).
  • Softening layer (carpet) to smooth ground surface to protect black plastic
  • Concrete underlay (black plastic 0.2mm thickness)
  • Protective layer (carpet) to avoid punching holes in plastic
  • Ag pipe across an entire reservoir and bended upwards to supply and spread water
  • Water holding medium (stones)
  • Soil around perimeter and in fill soil in the middle
  • Stone to build outside wall
The pictures show step by step how we built each water level. The plastic underlay is as high as the stone water storage so the excess can overflow. From the top level it overflows into a middle level, from there to the bottom level which then overflows into the ground underneath. Each level watering pipe has got a float (a wooden skewer in a styrofoam rounded piece) to indicate the water level.

At the bottom the soil is about 10cm deep. When it curves around the spiral the soil depth increases to about 40cm. That’s where the next level starts with 10cm deep soil again. So in that way we achieved continuously raising soil without any interruption.

Our self-watering herb spiral is about 2.5 metres in diameter and 1 metre high. We planted over 20 different herbs around it according to their needs (e.g. mint in shallow soil thus more moist facing east; oregano in deep – less moist soil facing north).

We (two people) built the entire herb spiral project in just over one day with mostly freely available material on our property. It cost us a couple of dollars for the black plastic underlay. We located it in our newly built kitchen garden less than 10 metres from our kitchen. It’s already been well used for every day cooking.

There are more bright ideas to come and share from our Spurtopia Homestead, so watch the space.












6 comments:

  1. Hi Roman and family, great idea.... I love the pictures as I am a visual learner, however i am unsure where the ag pipe comes in? Could you clerify if it connects all levels? Thanks. Simone.

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    1. Hi Simone, there is a L shape ag pipe at each level, stretching through each water reservoir and and bend up to get water in. I will take a photo of three ag pipes water inlets and add it to the post. Hope this helps.

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  2. Very clever - I love what you are doing at your new place. I am honestly still SO impressed that you saved up and paid cash for your new home.

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  3. The herb spiral looks fantastic. I love it!

    Thank you for posting your self watering ideas. These are very appropriate for our area as we don't get much rain.

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  4. Beautiful idea, I would like to try it.

    Congratulations on purchasing your own home. When I bought my current home I remember standing at one end of the empty yard (about quarter of an acre), and thinking wow, this is my land! That was 8 years ago and now it has a small orchard of fruit and nut trees, vegetable garden, chook house etc...Like Mr Home Maker I am also very impressed that you saved up in cash! Not many do it these days, and I always worried about house prices going up while I was saving up, so got a mortgage. But, I think by avoiding paying interest you will be way ahead of the game.

    Madeleine.x

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