Hi all, I just joined this forum yesterday. Last Saturday I got my two tub gardens woken up from winter and they have now begun the season.
I have two plastic 55 gallon drums cut off to make my tubs. I got the drums from my workplace before I retired. I knew what had been in them so I was sure they were safe. I may have started using them back in 2012, but I'm not sure. I have one buried in the ground and the other above the ground. I actually have a third "tub" from the cut off piece of one of the tubs. Its maybe 8" deep. I have that above the ground and I have been fooling around with it for a few years now. I plant some Vallisneria in it each year directly in the gravel substrate mixed with mud on the bottom. I stuck in some mini Cattail last summer and I'm waiting to see if it survived freezing this winter-most likely did. Here is that tub:
Anyway, here's some photos showing what I did. First I removed water from in the inground tub. That is where I store my two hardy lilies and Iris versicolor and mini cattails. Once I dropped the water to the top of the first tub I pulled it out and placed it in a temporary tub I keep on hand. The photo shows my Iris growing nicely, even though it was totally submerged all winter. The cattails are white and stretched out. Plus they burned once I brought them up into the air and light. The waterlily is in the bottom tub. I bought it at Waterford Gardens in Allendale, NJ in 2019. That place opened in 1895 as Wm. Tricker and Son and I visited it as a boy with my father. He made a pond while in High School at his home in Bloomfield, NJ. That was around 1936. It was still holding water when we'd visit his sister in the late 1960's.:
The next photo is of my second lily. It is the same as the other: Nymphaea Pygmaea Rubra. It produces so many offshoots I have to divide it every 2-3 years. Waterford Gardens is very happy to get the divisions back!! They even take the divisions themselves and repot my plants.
The flower from July 2019 :
Next is the empty in-ground tub:
I didn't take any shots of how I use bricks to raise the plants to the correct depth, or of the finished tubs. More to come.
