I hadn't until last summer and they are amazing!
A wicking bed is a raised bed that has a water reservoir in the bottom that slowly wicks up water into the soil to water your plants. So you don't have to water your raised beds every day. Who doesn't like less watering!For the last few years our strawberries have struggled to compete with the dandelions and other weeds, no matter how much I weed, they just haven't done well. So I wanted to put them in a raised bed so they didn't have to compete with the weeds, but when I heard about these self-watering beds that you only had to fill a couple times a summer... I WAS SOLD!
So... I started to do some research....
here's a few of the websites that I found to help me...
1) understand how they work
2) and help me build one
It took a bit of work to dig up our whole patch of strawberries, re-landscape, build our bed, get it set up and replant our strawberries, but it was so worth it!!!
Our strawberries thrived!!
We had the largest strawberries we've ever had... all because of the consistent moisture from the bed, and I only filled it maybe 4 times the whole summer.
I was amazed how well it worked! It was quite a bit more expensive to build than a regular raised bed but I feel like it was worth the extra cost.
I will definitely be building more wicking beds in the near future!
Have a fun summer!