Chinampa on demand? Low Impact, portable, Self Watering Kiddie Pools, with wet composting.

I have an acquaintance that is  starting a farm, 2 hours away from Cincinnati.
That is where the family  land is, but he isn't moving there.
The family keep cattle , so his fertility is pretty well take care of.
Irrigation is his main issue.
Last year he had bumper crops, just by planting in sub irrigated half barrels.
Getting suitable barrels at the right price has proven difficult.
He's going to start in ground production this year, but the soil is such that he will be using a two man auger to create holes for compost pockets!

I detail his journey up to illustrate the parallel struggles that an urban farmer might face sourcing fertility, time, and growing space.
I think a shallow 2x4 frame, lined with plastic could substitute for the kiddie pool, in a self watering kiddie pools system.
One barrel would water all of the plants, using a float valve.
Plants would be in reused containers, not bags, to reduce evaporation.
Compost can be made of wood and alfalfa pellets.
I am hoping that cardboard could be used above and below the plastic, to help preserve it from damage.
Wood pellets, made into biochar, would replace most of the sand that would usually go between the containers.
That would be topped with compost and alfalfa seed, to reduce evaporation, as a green manure, and for looks.
All of these items could fit into a small car  and are pretty cheap or even free, and widely available.
I think this is a pretty solid scheme, but I am looking for input.

The wet composting  is one step further.
We add a solar powered fountain to the barrel, with a Venturi fitting to aerate the water, add biochar for the aerobic bacteria to live in, then we add compostable items to the barrel, containing them in a fine  mesh bag.
We would be fertigating, not with  compost tea, but with composting tea.
We could skip the aeration entirely, but I think the aeration would make it more neighbor friendly.

I have some ideas that would lower the amount of plastic used, substituting fabric-crete instead, but that is a more permanent installation.
I think the plastic could be preserved a long time, because it would be mostly covered.
When we decide to remove the system, all that should be left behind is well rotted cardboard.
We could even start a conventional bed with the biological contents of the old bed.

I love this idea of a 12ft wide by 100ft long by 1ft high  "pond" that is partially filled in with two long row of  "logs/soil/biochar/sand/pumice/compost/etc" you could even have some "pet fish" in the water between the the rows.

You can build the pond with pond liner. And maybe you can get alot of heat-treated pallets (make sure it is heat treated and not heavy metal treated), and that could be used for your soil/log.

This sounds very exciting.

That is exactly what Im talking about.
So many systems seem to trying to recreate a chinampa, as in plenty of nutrient dense water constantly available to plants.
I'm researching pond liners and other options.
This will be the most expensive part of the project.

Exciting project.  Be sure to share pictures!

Is his soil so sandy that it holds little water without the plastic? I have unearthed quite a bit of plastic under raised beds where a prior occupant tried to grow on what is now my property. I had been wondering why the plants in it were so much more thirsty more frequently than in the raised hugelish beds I built, and when I dug down to bury some wood in the winter I found the plastic liners. The plants could not get their roots down into the subsoil and the potting soil above dried out quickly, and had horrible drainage in the rainy winter so it went anaerobic, which is generally not good. Add in the fact that my soil was filled with garbage now that could be leaching into it, and I was cursing the person who did it. I would have a plan for removal, which will not be easy in my experience. Putting compost in bore holes or on the top seems much more sustainable to me.

I have also grown in felt pots in kiddie pools filled with compost and hydroton for aeration, and eventually added aeration stones, but the plants were still prone to root rot at the bottom of the pot. They were also greatly outperformed by plants in hugels. I had silty loam soil to work with there though.

My friend is trying to farm one or two day out of a week, that's why he chose sub irrigated pots.
He has a job he likes , and he isn't giving that up.
Since the land is 2 hours away, automation of some kind is required.
I'm pretty sure he is gonna use drip irrigation for his in ground growing.
He is very careful, you should see his grow room, it's very neat, and clean.

I only referenced him because we have similar challenges.
I have lots to grow on but I visiting them all takes a lot of travel time.
Automatic watering should my  increase  success rate.
I am considering timers, but they are not sensitive to actual conditions.
Last year I tried homemade ollas, with poor results.
I would like to try them again.
Wicking, be it from a fiber, a porous ceramic or just from below, is the only low tech /cost answer I know of.
I have a lot of wicking barrels, but expanding that is a bottleneck.
I love water heater tanks, but transportation is the bottleneck there.
I also am dealing with lots of poor or even toxic soil

Putting a thin sheet of plastic on the surface of the soil seems reasonable.
Using 2x4s makes leveling easy, and means we know exactly where the plastic is.
I'm not sure about the cardboard, not because it think its dangerous, far from it.
The amount of worms that cardboard on soil attract is amazing.
It can also attract voles, which would be the problem.
Right now I'm planning on driving pallet wood deck boards around the perimeter.


Before I build an on ground version, I'm using an existing osb/2x4 riser as the table top in a table version of this.
This will be home to cuttings and plant starts.

So, I threw together the wet table I was talking about.
The raised sides are only 1.5" deep, and that's plenty.
I've not set up any wet composting yet, instead I focused on the propagation of pear cuttings.