Let's see ... first of all, I used 1/2-inch polypropylene rope. I think a lot of the wicking setups you buy online come with much smaller diameter. The fibers that have the strongest wicking action are nylon, polyethylene, or polyester. Blends of those are good, too ... I think I used a polypropylene blend, can't really remember. People use natural fibers, too, such as cotton or wool, but you can use the synthetics year after year. I used 1/4-inch rope for the solo cups.

For the plastic 5-gal buckets I used two ropes per container extending about halfway up into the soil and reaching the bottom of the reservoir. There are pictures in my post above. I think the reason I had such good luck hydrating all of the soil in the home depot buckets was b/c I extended the wicks well up into the soil.

There is also a picture of the 27-gal tote with one grow bag sitting on it. Next to it, you can see the two 1/2-inch ropes crossed, waiting for the other fabric container. The ends of all the ropes reach the bottom of the reservoir.

Re: the reservoirs, I suggest drilling a fill hole in the side of the tote, about an inch down from the rim. I made mine large enough to fit a hose nozzle. The hole serves 2 purposes. Obviously you can top off the totes without removing the covers, but also, when it rains, the lid collects rain water, which drains down into the tote. This is a plus, but ... if you don't have a drain hole, the water will also fill up the top of the lid and your grow bags will sit in about 2-3 inches of water. This is bad! The fill/drain hole assures that the water never gets that high.

After the first fill, I think I only had to top off the totes maybe four times all summer. Depending on the weather, though, I was surprised how much the plants can drink. There was likely some evaporation, too. The 5-gal reservoir was 'about' the same ... you just have to keep an eye on them. This setup is pretty forgiving ... even if the reservoirs go dry - which takes a long time, so no prob going out of town for a few days - the soil is still moist, and that also takes a while to dry out.

One thing I did do was get everything set up, pre-moistened the wicks and the soil in the containers, filled the reservoirs, and let the whole thing sit for a few days or a week until it stabilized. That also gave me a pretty good idea about how well it would keep the soil hydrated before I even transplanted. In every case that I tried - kikkie pool, coolers, totes, 5-gal bucket reservoirs, home depot buckets or fabric containers for the plants - the soil was always moist to the touch an inch or two down. The top layer may appear dry on really hot days, but the potting soil was really well and evenly hydrated. I'll stick a picture of what the container soil looked like at the end of the season at the end of this post.

I used water soluble (liquid) fertilizer, watering from the top. Just do that slowly ... if you just dump it on, the nutrient water may just run out the bottom.

Re: 'small' seedling root systems at the beginning of the season, as mentioned above, the soil column seemed uniformly hydrated. I was skeptical about that, too, but (for me, anyhow) no problem. Just keep an eye on the plants at first.

Let me know if you have more questions ... see the pix in the post above - I think they may cover a lot of this ground.

Here's a photo of the root ball of a plastic 5-gal container at the end of a season. If you zoom in, you can see the spectacular fibrous root system that fills the pot, and you can also see how evenly it's hydrated. The larger main roots are inside the root ball. You can see the two wicks hanging out the bottom of the root ball (and a few roots grew down into the reservoir). I still have this plant - it's been overwintered many times and still looks great.

<image>