Abstract: A device comprising a porous, open-celled block, such as wood or foam plastic, having substantially parallel, opposed, planar major surfaces and adapted in size to support a single flower pot. A plastic tape, which may be perforated or unperforated, is wrapped around the block and covers at least half of each of the major surfaces of the block. The tape has a thin, single-particle-thick layer of quartz sand attached to the inner surface of the tape in close, non-adherent relation with the major block surfaces. The sand particles are interspersed with a network of capillary spaces which are conductive to lateral spreading of water along the layer.The invention also includes a support block of a predetermined size and height having a single side panel that includes the plastic perforations and the quartz sand single layer proceeding up to the top plastic layer on the styrofoam block.

Abstract: The subirrigation of soil in a container for container-grown plants is accomplished upwardly through an opening in the container bottom by placing the container on the upper surface of a capillary sheet in the form of a sheet wettable plastic having a multiplicity of capillary openings therein and by disposing the capillary sheet so that its undersurface directly overlies in unbonded face-to-face contacting relation an essentially continuous and substantially smooth wettable surface presented by a substantially flat member comprised in a support bed for the container as, for example, by a sheet of plastic overlying a substantially rigid member or by a substantially rigid slab comprised in the support bed and feeding an aqueous liquid into the interface between said surfaces as through feeder tubes by gravity or by capillary travel from a reservoir disposed below the interface, whereby the so fed aqueous liquid becomes distributed by capillary action to any portion of the capillary sheet directly underlying a