I thought they were close together, too, but I have no idea how big the plants are going to end up getting.
Maybe I just have flood and drain on my mind lately, but those washing machine bins look like they would be great for that. It's the same idea as your sub-irrigated container, but you don't need a wick. The media is the wick. You just build a shallow bin that will hold water and put the bins in it.
Mine was originally a hydroponic machine I built for greenhouse lettuce, but it killed my back to tend it, so now I just use the bin to water plants. The picture below is of small plants, but I have grown buckets in a kiddie pool this way before. When the plant needs water, pour a little in the bin and let it wick up into the plant. If you want to be fancy, you can include a drain, but after you get better at it, you will learn the amount to put in so that the plants wick up all of it. You can also mix in a light fertilizer and thus "fertigate" if you choose. I water all of my flowers by soaking them, and I am convinced that is a superior method of watering, especially as the plant becomes larger and the root ball more dense.
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