Page 27 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2025

Further to the Winter edition of the SV Magazine
article on how some NVS Members got on in their first
year with using various AutoPot products, we asked
our President, Medwyn Williams to share some of his
experiences which I hope you find useful. Below are
Medwyn’s notes which are quite technical in places,
but this is based on a build-up of experience through
the years to understand what various plants need.
Growing my way with the
AutoPot System
Both my son, Alwyn, and I were
introduced to the AutoPot system
some eight years ago and have found
it an invaluable help to grow a range of
quality vegetables to a high standard.
The beauty of the system is that it waters
and feeds the plants as and when they
require it through an ingenious valve
that works automatically without the
need for any electrical power.
The pots are available in three sizes 8.5
litre, 15 litre and 25 litre with the latter being
the size that I have used for my onions and
leeks. The tomatoes and cucumbers will
grow well in either the 8.5 or the 15 litre
ones. Many gardeners who rarely grow
vegetables will inevitably grow tomatoes
and this system lends itself perfectly for
these plants. After planting them, all you
have to do is to keep them tied up to a
cane or around string and just pinch out
the side shoots. There’s no need for manual
watering or feeding.
This method of growing saves me a lot
of time, time that I can spend carrying out
other duties in and amongst my range of
other vegetables.
FROM SEED TO HARVEST
We start most of our seed in trays using
Levington Seed & Modular Compost “F2S”
with the seed covered over with Superfine
grade Vermiculite. The seed trays are
then floated on a tray of water with an EC
(Electrical Conductivity) of 1.1 and pH of 5.8.
The water we have down on our Land is
taken from a bore hole that has a natural
EC of 0.7 and a pH of 6.7. to that end we
use “pH down” to bring the pH of the water
down to 5.8. The trays are then placed on
fibre Coco matting material in an AutoPot
“Tray2grow” system under lights at a
temperature of 21⁰C (70F).
When the seedling leaf is fully developed,
they are transplanted into cell trays
(Plantpak 20 or 60 independent cells).
Depending on the vegetable type, we use
the chosen growing medium that will be
used in the final pots. You can of course
use many other substrates as your growing
medium, but it does need to be fairly open
textured. We use grit or perlite or clay ball
to open it up. We tend to use a minimum
of 10 litres of grit or perlite per 50 litres of
compost. You can go as far a 50/50 mix.
An excellent product that we do intend to
use ourselves this year is a fertiliser from
Biobizz® called ‘Light Mix’®.
Feeding with an EC of 1.1 and a pH of
5.8. These cells are then soaked again and
placed on the Coco matting under lights
until the roots are visible from the bottom of
the pot. Leek pips are also started off in 60
cells using the same method as above from
Simply Vegetables 27