Fall Garden 2010 (SWC buckets)

16 years ago

Hello all,

Thank you all for your help so far. I have been reading and reading and reading. I am sure I will still make mistakes, since this will be my first "garden" since my childhood when my Dad had a quarter acre of different crops. I had planned to go for 15 buckets, but decided to go ahead and scale that back to around half in order to get a feel for things, and then I can double it in the spring. I started with the UF Gardening Guide and planted veggies that they recommend for my zone around Aug-Sep.

So far I have:

2 buckets - Landreth Green Beans

2 buckets - White Acre Peas (white crowder)

1 bucket - Dwarf Summer Crookneck Squash

1 bucket - Early Prolific Squash (straight neck)

I plan to do 2 more buckets. One with Golden California Wonder Bell Peppers. And one with Regular (red) California Wonder Bell Pepper.

I started all but the peppers in paper towels with a weak solution of chamomile tea (thanks Byron!) After a night's soak I then transferred them to solo cup's with Jiffy Mix seed starter soil. The peas surprised me at how quickly they came up. I started the peppers in the jiffy peat pots.

So it begins...

Here it is all put together for now:

I'll try to keep this thread updated. Thanks again to everyone's help and I hope to have a good harvest!

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Comments (9)

melsmile
16 years ago
That looks like a lot of fun. Great idea for those in small places to grow a some veges.
wayner123
Original Author
16 years ago
The garden is coming along nicely. I moved the buckets to where they could get more light, but I might need to move them yet again to get even more. I still have a couple questions.

1. When people say their plants are getting 5 hours of sunlight, does that mean direct sunlight?

2. I plan on using Foliage Pro 9-3-6 for my feritlizer. Can anyone tell me when I should start using it? These plants are 3 weeks old right now.

Here are some pics:

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engineeredgarden
16 years ago
wayner - It's good to see someone growing in buckets this fall - as I do the same each year, myself. Due to the size of the squash plants and the relatively low "N" content of the fertilizer, it's safe to apply it now. The beans should be ok too, I figure. I'll be growing cauliflower and broccoli in self watering planters made from buckets later myself, and you can follow my progress/failures at the link below.

EG

Here is a link that might be useful: click here
hotzona_2007
16 years ago
Nice! Everything looks like it's coming along beautifully.
wayner123
Original Author
16 years ago
Here is 1 month after putting these seeds in jiffy mix seed starter:

L to R: Early Straight neck squash, Crookneck Squash, Landreth Green Beans (2)

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Here are the white acre peas:

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I will be staking these this week and doing a semi Florida Weave to help hold them up. I have read some reports that doing so may also increase yeilds. We shall see.
gymgirl2
16 years ago
Wayner123,
Does your 2-bucket design have a wick and an overflow drainage hole? I'm not seeing it...

P.S. I'm new to this website. How do you post a pic?

Linda
wayner123
Original Author
16 years ago
It's not my design. I used the plans/videos from global buckets.

If you look at pictures 4 and 6 you can see the drainage holes about 3 inches from the bottom of the lower bucket. And unless I was to pick up the top bucket you would not see the wicking cup. Hope that helps.

This is an HTML format site. You must post host yours pics somewhere, then insert with the html format.
gymgirl2
16 years ago
Wayner123,
Got it! Thanks!
wayner123
Original Author
16 years ago
Well here is week 6:

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My White Acre peas (second picture) are doing great, and after finding what was eating my bell pepper's, they are doing great as well.

However, my green beans are doing poorly. I don't know what went wrong. At least the new growth is looking healthy on them.

The summer squash's are putting out flower's right now, however they look to be too small for that. Can anyone give advice on whether early flowers is a bad thing?