Beginner Gardening: How big is your vege garden?, 1 by Gymgirl

Gymgirl wrote:
Kbumgar, Glad to return the favor!

Funny you should ask right now, 'cause I'm in the process of converting my two-bucket system to a ONE-bucket system, to expand my growing space! Check out the discussion here.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=6790298

But to answer your question above:
1. Since my ground space is extremely limited, I'm growing most of the brassicas in eBuckets: cabbage, cauliflower, mustard and collard greens, and broccoli in particular. They did really well, as you can see from the pics. Each bucket holds a single plant (I'm only growing for 2 people).
2. Filling the bottom bucket. I water from the top down until the plants are completely established and the roots grow down enough to drink up water from the reservoir. I can tell when the plant has started sucking up from the bottom with a counting system I use (just a quirk of mine, but some may actually find it helpful). I start counting from the time I start watering in the fill tube, to when the water runs out the overflow hole, "one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two....etc. I count every time I fill up. I can tell when they're drinking on their own, cause I'll get to somewhere around "one-thousand-fifteen" and I'm still filling. I can also tell when I've neglected my watering OR when the plant is REALLY drinking, cause one time my real EBs went up to one-thousand-forty, just a day later!
3. Since the system is SELF-watering, there's no over- OR under-watering! The plants take what they need from the reservoir.
4. This fall, I'll line my eBuckets up and install Bocabob's automatic watering system. There will be a line from the main faucet, on a 6-cycle timer. There will be additional, smaller lines from the main hose that fit into the fill tube of each eBucket. Once it's set up, all I have to do is check for bugs, spray as necessary and keep em cool in summer, and sunshiney in winter!

I've included the pic of my Bonnie cabbage grown in a two-bucket eBucket.

I'm going to a one-bucket design to expand my growing space. Each bucket equates to approximately one square-foot garden, so if you google their planting scheme, you see how much can be planted per bucket. Most of those brassicaes grow so big, you can only do one per bucket, but there are other veggies you can grow more per bucket.

Hope this helps, and wasn't too wordy!

Linda