A couple weeks ago, I started three “container gardens”, 2 Sterlite totes with holes drilled in the bottom, and a large plastic plant pot
the sterlite buckets have beets, carrots, peas, and soybeans planted in them (one tote with beets and carrots, one tote with peas and soybeans), and since I had some leftover seeds, I decided to create a “Darwin Bucket”, I mixed all the seeds together and just tossed them haphazardly in the DB
the DB will be completely ignored, and will be a true Survival of the Fittest, it’ll be interesting to see which plants win…
So far, the early winners in the DB are the beets and the soybeans
the beets in the sterlite container are coming in well as well, the carrots don’t seem to be growing (or they just take longer), the peas in the other Sterlite are starting to poke through the soil as well
early winners? beets and soybeans
I wonder what plants will win in the long run…
Carrots; out of the running
Beets; out of the running
Peas; going strong, but losing ground to…
Soybeans; taking over the Darwin Bucket, aggressive plants, those soybeans
I was sure this thread was going to have to do with something like some Cletus sticking his head in a bucket, getting it stuck, eventually freeing it, then trying again…
Someone game me their plant when they moved out of the apartment building, so I put it in my bathroom window. I tended to forget to water it, so eventually the plant died. But, I take long hot showers so the steam was enough for some seedling or another that was in the soil to start growing. So I got an entirely new plant that was fine with only occasionally being watered (though I was sort of happy about my steam plant so I was actually pretty good at watering it.) Looked fine. No idea what sort of beast it was, though.
A good deal of my gardening is ala Darwin, primarily due to laziness I must confess.
I was cleaning out the pantry and found some popcorn cobs from several years ago so I tossed them out in the backyard for the birds. A couple of the darned things sprouted so now I have a little plot of corn plants about a foot high. I wonder how big they’ll actually get?
When we used to grow sweet corn, it grew about 4-5 feet high, I’d imagine your corn should do the same
I may be starting another bucket experiment, a hydroponic bucket, one of those Home Depot orange 5 gallon buckets, line the bottom with AquaClear aquarium filter sponges as the growth matrix, and plop seeds in the sponges, fill water up to half to three-quarter the height of the sponges, drop a couple flourescent striplights on top and wait…
I hae adapted this approach to full scale gardening. Throughout the years i have amassed a variety of plants that are dought resistant, easy to divide/clone or will just naturally reseed, that have nice flowers, attract butterflies, or are just extremely weird and that grow well in my climate. It makes gardening easier when there is no gardening to be done.
As to the bucket, soybeans are quite robust and should outperform everyone else in the summer. Add some kudzu for a full on leguminous war.
Actually, I think the next plant I grow will be a stand of Moso Timber Bamboo, it can get up to 75 feet high in a single growing season, and it spreads via runners, so unless I want it to take over a portion of our field (which I DO <evil grin>) I’d have to make a special submerged planter for it to prevent it spreading
there’s just something inherently cool about a 75 foot tall blade of grass…
The peas and soybeans in the DB have reached a stalemate, we’ve had a few dry days and the soybeans are getting all wilted, the peas are unaffected, in fact, the peas in the dedicated bucket have flowered and are starting to produce pea pods already
the peas and soybeans in the DB are putting up a good fight though, they’re essentially tied…
… 
