End of Summer Update

Well, I've shut down my two garden buckets for the winter. It was winding down anyway, and then we had a ton of rain from a TS that exacerbated my one tilted bucket. So, it made sense to shut down and prepare for a re-tooling for next Spring. This winter, I'll be building a level platform for three buckets to sit upon. And I think I'm going to try to run PVC pipe across the top of each bucket in a grid pattern to drip water down, rather than dumping all the water into one end of the bucket. This new approach will allow me to drain from the bottom, rather than the top, which should completely avoid any of my over-spilling issues that I had this year. More pipe = more costs, yes, but I think the effort will be worth it. I also plan to design in such a way as to be able to easily add more bucket capacity, should I want to or need to. Here are some more flowery shots from the pond area.

Great blue lobellia

Swamp sunflower

Tall tickseed

Bullfrog (thanks web4deb)

Blooming

Just a quick update to share some flower photos. This is a great blue lobellia and a cardinal flower (also a lobellia) in the wetland bucket. The fish are all doing well and enjoying the now twice daily feeding. They are getting big, and the plants are loving it, too. For next time, I will definitely start the fish out on twice daily feeding to ensure adequate nutrients for the plants. We've had a ton of tomatoes come in, the peppers are starting to ripen, the basil is growing, and the flowers are really getting big. I'll definitely post again when they bloom. Water is still crystal clear. The new pump is awesome!


So, there was a comment to see the whole setup, so this is it. The pond is in the foreground tapering to the waterfall which is centered in a raised bed of native plants in soil. In the background in the fenced in area are the two veggie buckets. Those are shown in greater detail in the next two photos. I uploaded the big images, so you can click on these to see everything in better detail.