You are probably getting tired of this particular bucket, but it amazes me. It was picked from a friend’s trash heap, then I planted a huge, awesome looking cucumber (which turned out to be a pepper plant). Next, I planted pretty flowers on top to keep moisture loss down. Then, I added used up jiffy pots as another moisture keeper. Except that they weren’t used up. It turns out that some lurking seeds were waiting to sring into action. Here you see a Delicata squash with 2 huge fruit growing off of the top. The peppers are growing well too. Four new babies are growing from the bottom.
Just to the left of this bucket is a 4 gallon bucket with a grape tomato on the bottom (very prolific, already given about 50 tomatoes), and on top is a bird house gourd and red basil. These are all part of my experiment to see how much is too much. How much one teeny container can grow without committing suicide. We are still weighing the produce. For all of June our total output was 15 pounds. We did that in about 2 days for July.
This is lettuce and spinach for our first salad. (Oh, um, best not to tell the kids about the spinach – they picked out all of the mushrooms and thought that was all they had to worry about for “unapproved” items). We also had our own huge, fat radish. Soon to come: celery, carrots, and tomatoes. We can make our own dressing, and Ursula points out, our own croutons, from our own bread, from our own wheat…
It was yummy! They all came from our 3 x 3 raised bed. I also have two other containers started, and will probably start one a week for a while to ensure a steady supply. This was too good!!
This is the Square foot garden which is now ALL planted! The back row has two grape vines and a clematis. The front row is marigolds, behind that are 4 of the broccoli from the “broccoli experiment”, they are doing better than the ones with the blueberries, but not nearly as well as the ones in the SWC’s. Other than the chive you see, which I just divided into 4 other clumps, the blank spaces are filled with cutting flower. To the right is the potato bag row (an upcoming post on this will explain!)
On the far right is a blackberry bush in a cut up barrel. Beyond that is a lasagna bed with 5 blackberry and five raspberry canes, some lillies, and a cabbage. To the left is a rain barrel and a yet unplanted lasagna bed.
Here you see the five blueberry bushes in 1/3 55 gallon barrels, the one at the far right also has 2 of the broccoli plants. They have NOT grown at all. (Blueberry soil to acidic perhaps)?
To the left of the shed are two bean poles, wired to the containers, a square foot garden (originally 4 X 4 – but that wood rotted so Tom boxed it in with newer wood making it now 5 X 5). Just past that is his new 4 X 8 raised bed.
These SWC are made from one, two and three liter bottles. I had nine plants and decided to see how they would grow in containers. My goal is to see how much nutrition I can get from as little space and effort as possible. The one on the left is by far the biggest, the ones in the ground are about half this size. Will they catch up? Who will win? We shall see…
(PS the gray thing on the right is a solar light. We wanted something that could charge by day and be easily portable into the house in case of power failure. These are great! The base is granite, and the light is very bright. More than enough to read or play games by. We’ll see how durable they are.)
If you look closely, you will see that this is one 55 gallon barrel on the bottom. Part of it has been spray painted silver with a “plastic” spray paint. If I am going to fill my yard with white barrels and pieces of white barrels, I don’t want it to look like my yard is full of white barrels!
On top of that barrel is the bottom third of another barrel. I haven’t decided if I want to make a SWC out of this or just drill drainage on the bottom and sides. I was thinking this would be a neat eye level container for low maintenance things like carrots, onions, or herbs, that would add interest and height to the rain barrel area.
I plan on having 3 barrels right here, connected by hoses, raised on cinder blocks, with the overflow of the main barrel aimed at the raspberry bed. What do you think?
I am also dreaming of a strawberry bed made of – what else – barrels, as well as a compost tumbler and, in deference to Tom’s new “special interest”, chicken nesting boxes. That last one is also waiting for me to design a chicken tractor to go along with it which will be portable and maneuverable to put over the “conventional” raised beds that we have.
Tom and I (well, mostly me) have been fascinated with the idea of cutting up 55 gallon barrels (we can get them from Pepsi for $5.00) to make useful items. I am determined to make a self watering container for deck/patio use. Until I am able to perfect that idea, I have been making do by cutting barrels into thirds to use as quasi raised bed borders for trees/blueberry bushes and grapes vines.
I started with a rain barrel that had sprung a leak anyway. I cut it up and develped my drill and slice technique. More on this later.
Dirty barrel
