Nylon rope or soil wick for wicking containers, which is better?

I'm building some new wicking containers, bug ones, and I'm considering trying nylon rope for the wick.
In the past, I have always used a soil wick, just more of whatever soil mix I was using , extended down into the reservoir.
The advantage I see for using the nylon is simplicity.
No big holes to cut, no pipe to buy.
But I've never used nylon rope, so I'm concerned it won't get the job done, or that it will take a lot of rope to match even a modest soil wick.

Does anyone out there have experience with using fabric wicks in wicking  containers?

Hi William,

Nylon is synthetic, and if I'm not mistaken petroleum based. So Im not sure how well capillary action will work with nylon. Cotton would be better for capillary action in my opinion. Though if your worried about soil ending up in your resivour, have you tried old cotton fabrics, like old warn out shirts, used between your soil and resivour space? By the time the cotton degrades, the healthy micro-biome holds the soil together fairly well, keeping your resivour open for business or should I say water. Just cut the old cotton shirt or fabric to lay down over the resivour, and then firmly tamp down the soil over the cloth leaving no voids except your resivour.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for your reply!
I think I'm going to try it multiple ways at the same time.
I can take a  season to see how well it works.
If a method is  totally failing, I'll replace it immediately.

I recently saw an interesting version of a self-watering pot that used short chunks of wood as wicks. Like 2-4" round branches cut short to fit. I cannot for the life of me remember where I saw that, sadly.

I do remember wondering how well it would work, and putting it on next years balcony garden experiment list.

What I used for my resevoir was scavenged convoluted drain pipe, with a weed barrier cloth on top. I don't use the weed barrier anywhere else in the garden but had a roll that I lay over the top of the drain pipe tucking it into the valleys keeping dirt out of the resevoir but using the soil as the wick.

We have a Plastic Injection Molding Plant in India.
We are planning to develop a Plastic Planter / Plant Pot with wicks.
As cotton wicks decompose in soil, we are planning to use Polyester Rope.
This rope will be dipped 3 inches in water and we want to carry moisture for 4 inches vertically.
So maximum vertical movement shall be 7 inches when water level is minimum.
Can any one guide if this will work.
Thanking You.

I don't even like planting in plastic planters, if I have the choice. I personally consider plastic a sub-optimal material to use in a living biological context.

I think having water pass between strands of bundled plastic threads is a likely recipe for introducing microplastics into the environment at large, and into the bodies of those eating any food grown in such a manner.

Here's a thought: why not embrace decomposition? The above-mentioned wooden wick is a terrific long-lasting wicking material, and though it will eventually decompose, I think I am much more sanguine with the thought of the intersection of fungi and plant biology with decomposing wood than I am with the same in the context of slowly degrading plastic.

Pressed cardboard would be preferable, as the potentially problematic elements are limited to bleach residues, adhesives, and binding agents, all of which would likely be more easily handled by ambient fungi than plastics.

One possibility the biological ramifications of which I don't know is the potential use of vegetable-derived plastics to act as wicks and vessel material. Substances like tomato peels are apparently rich sources of raw material for plant-derived plastics, but I don't know if their degradation resembles that of plants, or if the polymerisation leaves them in plasticised microparticles no different from the petrochemical article. If anyone has any information on this last, I would be most interested to find out.

How did the original project work out, William? How did you decide to proceed? Do you have a thread up?

-CK

Something you might look at on YouTube is "Gardening with Leon"  I tried a few tubs last year with some pretty acceptable results. An aversion to plastics could be addressed by using metal or pottery containers as the tub.

Thanks, Robert. I prefer pottery, preferably unglazed. The only metal that holds up at all is usually galvanized, and that's a lot of zinc to deal with.

I view plastics as a plague, a bane to all biology. The only way I have thought of to properly remove microplastics from the environment is to find where they accumulate most, and then gather whatever that medium is and pyrolise it in an oxygen-free retort at a high enough temperatures to crack the microplastics into their constituent components.

I will check "Gardening with Leon" out. Thanks for the lead.

-CK

The best wick cord is nylon.  Cotton is good capillary rates, but not as good as nylon.  This is according to a study below...

Also cotton eventually rots because bacteria will slowly eat the cotton, so eventually it needs replacement.  It is not a long term solution.  If you want less work, nylon out performs cotton.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269730344_Performance_analysis_on_inclined_solar_still_with_different_new_wick_materials_and_wire_mesh

Every study on water transport with wicking pots I've seen says that nylon wicks the best. It also has the advantage of being repeatedly reusable. And the disadvantage of being plastic and possibly shedding microplastics, which I don't think has been studied with wicking pot use but seems likely.

Other wicks will also work though, for those who choose to avoid plastics.

Currently playing with strips cut off a polyester micro fiber towel.  With it, I am going to say I am getting slightly better lifting power than the cotton fabric and the nylon in my informal kitchen top experiments.  I have semi open bottom tree pots.  Cut a little square of latch hook plastic grid to drop in to sort of close the bottom of the pot.  Cut the cross bars off in a spot in the middle wide enough to run the strip folded double thru it. (push it thru with a table knife.) Put a wide thin scrap of wood thru the loop on top to keep it from falling out and dangled the 2 ends out the bottom for the water.  Sees to be fast and easy to implement.  Not in favor of the plastic but if I keep it out of the sun and water / acid rinse the salts out of fabric every few years hopefully I can use it for decades.

Ive settled on a "soil" wick as best for my purposes.
Last wicking containers I built used nylon rope and I did not like their performance.

I have bed a coumunity garden that has woodchips as the "wick".

Here are two salvaged stock tanks and using dirt as the wicking .  I am using  4 inch corrugated drainpipe and a layer of weed cloth over the top to prevent the soil from getting into the reservoir. I also have a stock tank that I use for just cuttings that are used for rootstock or planting. I have used the nylon rope in my version of a grobox. It seems to be working well. This is my first try with a semi grobox copy system and a tree.