Easy To Manage “Bucket Garden”

Easy To Manage “Bucket Garden” FARM HOME Food Ken Hovet of rural Browerville Minn plants his entire vegetable garden in plastic 5-gal buckets It’s a simple idea but an easy way to grow tomatoes potatoes peas beans and other vegetables He cuts a 3-in dia hole in the bottom of each bucket inserts a plastic net filter cup into the hole available at aquarium stores and then fills the bucket with soil The net cups set inside rain gutter troughs that are reinforced on both sides with two-by-fours Each piece of rain gutter rests on cement blocks covered by carpet and holds nine 5-gal buckets or 11 smaller ones The troughs arranged in rows are connected with black hoses to a 250-gal water tank Float valves automatically gravity-feed water into the troughs whenever the water level gets low Hovet advises using black hoses since white ones seem to encourage algae growth and also get brittle and deteriorate in the sun Algae can plug hoses but he hasn’t had a problem since he switched to the black ones He also covers the outside of the water tank with black plastic to keep out algae Algae in the troughs though isn’t a problem This “beneath the bucket” irrigation system allows the soil to soak up water without having the bottom of the bucket standing in water Hovet says it works really well except during extremely dry spells when the top of the soil might dry out a little more There’s only a little evaporation from the troughs and no water is wasted as can happen with overhead sprinklers Hovet says it costs about $66 for the material and equipment for each trough set up if you buy new   The entire system is reusable year after year   Hovet says “We’re into our fifth summer using this system but we haven’t had to replace anything yet So on an annual cost we’re spending about $13   You can’t get anyone to pull weeds for $13 Also the system is scale-able so it can be enlarged easily over time ” About the only garden crops that Hovet doesn’t grow in buckets are corn squash and melons Corn takes up a lot of space Vines growing from the top of the buckets and then draping over the rims tend to get crimped and don’t do well At the end of the growing season Hovet dumps the contents of all the buckets onto a tarp then folds the tarp over to cover the pile In the spring he shovels the soil into a cement mixer along with a little fertilizer and water “I fluff it up good ” he says “and then fill the buckets up again ” Contact: FARM SHOW Followup: Ken Hovet Browerville Minn 56438 ph 320 491-8928; hovet@wisper-wireless com

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