Lazy gardening

Discussion in 'The Green Patch' started by ditch witch, Apr 29, 2012.


  1. ditch witch

    ditch witch I do stupid crap, so you don't have to

    Lazy gardening - Pic heavy

    The easier it is to plant or tend or pick, the better I like it!

    This year we're going almost 100% container gardening. Last summer wiped out almost everyone's garden in town because they couldn't supply enough water to the plants. 60 mph winds and 100F+ just sucked the life out of them. My container stuff did great though.

    This bed has roses, rosemary, blue salvia, echinacea, lavender, dill, thyme, oregano, cilantro, common sage, and green basil growing in it. Or well, the green basil should be coming up soon as it reseeds itself every year. The tin cans are protecting the young dill and cilantro right now because the chickens have been all over the lavender trying to eat butterflies and moths. The bathtub is growing red potatos and sweet yellow onions.
    herb-garden.
    The tater tub starts off with straw at the bottom, then a layer of soil. The starts are set on top of that soil, and another layer of soil goes down, just enough to bury them. That got covered with straw. Once 6-8 inches of leaf was sticking up, I put down enough dirt to leave about an inch of leaf sticking out, and covered that in straw. I repeated that until the level came up to the drain at the back of the tub.
    tatertub.

    This bathtub has hot peppers, black diamond watermelon, canteloup, cilantro, and nasturtium. Hot peppers include Tam and M jalapenos, ghost, habenero, serrano, and anaheim. The dirt is actually just 6 inches deep, and sits upon a base made out of plywood. In the center of the plywood is a hole that allows a 5 gallon bucket to drop down to the bottom of the tub. The dirt goes down into the bucket, which has holes drilled in the bottom and along the bottom edge. The PVC pipe that sticks up is where you fill it with water. The tub holds about 30 gallons which slowly wicks up to the plants via the dirt that's in the bucket underneath. Keeps the dirt at the perfect moisture. The drain hole that sits below where the faucets would be allows the water to drain out when the reservoir gets filled to the right level, so you don't flood it. The old janitor's mop bucket holds cucumbers, and is done the same as the pepper tub. I just drilled a hole in the side about 6" up from the bottom to set the water level. This worked great for my cukes last year because the water supply was always at the same constant, never flood one day and drought the next. Good for going out of town too. [beer]
    peppertub. cucumberbucket-e1335717653475.

    We had started an aquaponics system but too many projects this year to get to it. Rather than just leave the beds lying around, I filled one full of totes with holes drilled in the bottom. The bed box itself is kept about 1/4 full of water that the totes draw up as needed. This one has mostly tomatos in it with a few assorted peppers. There's also a few black diamond watermelons in there that will come over the edge and go to the ground, and one has cucumbers in it that I'll pull to the side and run along a stock panel once they're big enough. Some of this looks a little iffy this morning because we had a hail storm last night and my cover blew off.
    matertote.

    I just put the tomatillos in pots and set them into buckets that hold water. So far no dang potato beetle slugs on them. Seems my tomatillos always get infested with those.
    tomatillopot-e1335717636102.

    Yesterday we cut a bunch of 55 gallon plastic drums to make more container beds with. Will post some of those as they get built.
     
  2. -06

    -06 Monkey+++

    Nice. We went to raised beds a few yrs back. We have them about ten feet from the end of our home where we can easily water them. We put "weed cloth" down on top to make it easier to control the grass plus it slows evaporation. We have them over the drain field so it stays damp underneath "naturally". Will be adding two more(six total) beds this fall plus a small green house on the South East end. Tired of paying "through the nose" for groceries. A bud who does store windows is giving me enough "insulated" glass to do the green house-yahoo.
     
  3. tulianr

    tulianr Don Quixote de la Monkey

    Great photos. We've gone to raised beds and containers as well, even though we now live in the land of too much rain at times.

    My wife and I moved from West Texas, south of Sweetwater, ten years ago, as town after town around us ran out of water. We picked a spot on the map that got sixty-three inches of rain a year, and said, "That's for us." Our old mare thought she'd died and gone to heaven. She literally laid down in the knee high grass when we let her out of the trailer, and ate lying down.
     
  4. durablefaith

    durablefaith Monkey

  1. DKR
  2. Asia-Off-Grid
  3. Asia-Off-Grid
  4. DKR
  5. janderson
  6. AxesAreBetter
  7. Asia-Off-Grid
  8. Asia-Off-Grid
  9. natshare
  10. Ganado
  11. Dunerunner
  12. Ganado
  13. Ganado
  14. Yard Dart
  15. Asia-Off-Grid
  16. tedrow42
  17. Mindgrinder
  18. ditch witch
  19. melbo
    Resource

    Growing in Containers 2014-01-07

    [ATTACH]
    Posted By: melbo, Jan 7, 2014 in category: Agriculture
survivalmonkey SSL seal        survivalmonkey.com warrant canary
17282WuJHksJ9798f34razfKbPATqTq9E7