My husband likes to automate things. We have remotes for the garage, the sprinkler systems, even the lights and fans. A lot of that comes from working for a home automation company, I”m sure. But I think it’s just in his nature. This year, his latest fascination has been building a new gardening “system”. I guess the garden boxes he built me a few years back aren’t good enough.
First, he had to find enough buckets. He eventually settled on 3 gallon ice cream buckets from the BYU creamery. So our little veggies have yummy names on their buckets, like Pralines and Caramel, Chocolate Vanilla Swirl, and bubble gum.
Without getting too technical (ME? Technical? Don’t make me laugh!), the buckets sit on a trough made from a raingutter, and they each have a little basket on the bottom of them, which sucks up water from the trough (that’s the technical term, you know) and is supposed to give the plant all the water it needs.
But when I planted a bunch of seeds in the buckets, I was disappointed when nothing sprouted for about two weeks. That was when we realized that they need more moisture at the top in the initial weeks, and then he covered them with plastic wrap to keep the water in. And look at how many little sprouts we have now! Not those tomato plants, mind you. I bought them as plants. I did, however, plant some tomato SEEDS in my other garden, and it looks like they are actually starting to grow! Probably not grow fast enough to yield any tomatoes, but a girl can hope.
The idea is that your garden should just water itself. And you would never even have to get up off the couch or leave your air conditioned house. Ever! Except to pick the lovely vegetables from the plants come August.
Right.
But if it gets my hubby excited about the garden, then that’s a good thing. In the past, he’s just let me pretty much plant what I want and take over.
Now if I could just find a way to get him excited about finishing the basement.
(Love you, Honey!)
I’ll have to post pictures later on and let you know how this method compares to our PLAIN old fashioned garden boxes. But we have planted about 12 tomato plants, a couple of giant pumpkin plants, chard, spinach, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, zucchini, chives, mint, lettuce, watermelon, honeydew melon, and peas. So something better grow besides sunflowers, right?
What would you do to grow green beans?
And how many lettuce seeds do you put in one bucket?
I really like the idea of not having to water them. Even with our automatic, underground pipe, watering system, we are constantly out there checking to see if the plants got enough water and checking to see if the quail have eaten all the tender plants. If the stuff was in buckets off the ground, they probably wouldn’t be able to get to them.
My problem is always the drippers.They always seme to drip to slow or to hard.
I never can adjust them so that they work asthey supose to do. Perheps Your husband can make a good working dripper for me? I’ve tryed several kinds but I never found a dripper that worked good.