Another aspect of the self-sufficiency book is areas of container gardens. The northeastern part of my yard plan calls for containers at each end of my raised keyhole garden (which doesn’t exist yet but one step at a time.) Seeing a bucket plant stand online seemed like a perfect match! Only 12 buckets don’t feel like a lot of plants or food source, so I had another idea to have 2 rows of buckets for each level. After thoroughly confusing myself trying to make it work, Marcus convinced me we should try a setup that’s already proven first.
We found a plan online and worked on it a whole weekend. A fair portion of our time was getting the hardware store to cut the boards to size- every other board seemed to cause some new confusion. Once we got home and mapped out all of the pieces though it was smooth sailing! Once it was built, we drilled holes in several 5-gallon buckets and filled them with various soils and manure bags.
In April we planted in the top, habanero peppers, peas, and 2 tomato plants from a flat we bought in town. The middle row had garlic, onions, and salad cucumbers, and the bottom had bell peppers, broccoli, and pickling cucumbers. Since we had a couple more tomato plants from the flat, we thought we might give growing them upside down a go too. The upside-down plants grew so much larger and faster, but the tomatoes were almost nonexistent. I think both plants grew 4 tomatoes altogether and 3 of them were eaten by birds or hornworms.
Updates on the plants:
The peas were the first to crash, it seemed too hot for them to survive. The onions seemed to rot- the stems were mush and detached so easily when we checked how they were growing. Maybe we overwatered them. We thought the drainage holes would help with any excess water retention. The broccoli started out great but overnight was nothing but stems. When we looked closer, we found these tiny green worms that blended in with the stems. Turns out, they’re the offspring of a pretty white butterfly I’m no longer friends with.
The cucumbers grew, but they seemed to get stuck halfway. One side of each cucumber would be round and full and the other end small and pointed. They were also all prickly which I found out meant that my two different kinds cross pollinated and I had all pickling cucumbers and no salad. The garlic is still there but look no different than when we planted them besides the stems. And lastly, the peppers actually made it! We’ve had a few rounds of stuffed peppers (inverted since I and my son are texture people) and Marcus has been waiting to try his habaneros. We read that you can overwinter pepper plants so we’re going to see how well that goes this year. Wish us luck!