Creative Gardening Tools: The Kitty Litter Bucket Rain Barrel

The day after I planted the sickly tomatoes, the zucchini, and the onions and shallots, the good- weather reprieve was over and we were back to April weather. Three rounds of rain followed by hail that day, rain the next day, and rain yesterday have saturated the ground. Everything is soggy, and therefore my beans and cucumbers are not yet planted.

Luckily, the hail really only damaged one tomato plant, which I should have attached to the stake a little higher. I'm hoping when I tie it back to the stake it will recover...it already has baby tomatoes that I don't want to lose.

I did, however, have the foresight to put out some rain barrels--Fresh Step kitty litter buckets! I never know what to do with them and don't want to throw them away, but they make excellent rain buckets. I saved the lids this year so I can cap them and prevent skeeter babies from swimming around in them. I also had the foresight to put a rock in the bottom of each one so they wouldn't blow away in the gusty winds.

So here is a rundown of the short-term gardening projects I have left to complete if Mother Nature ever gives us a break:

1. Plant cukes, beans, and dill seedlings
2. Put up rabbit fencing around the garden
3. Add compost to the garden
4. Put together the gated arbor
5. Put together the bridge
6. Start remaining seedlings

Wow, the list seems overwhelming when I don't know when we will have dry conditions again. Keep your fingers crossed for a couple of dry days for me!

Catching Up

I know. It's been a long time since I have posted. I was planning to post more regularly, so I have quite a bit of catching up to do. I'll start with the tadpoles.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am using kitty litter buckets as rain barrels in my yard. For a while, we were getting quite a bit of rain, so the buckets were about 2/3 full.

Imagine my delight when I went out one morning to use the water from one of my makeshift rainbarrels and saw...tadpoles! Yessirree, I had lots of tadpole critters swimming around in my bucket. I wasn't entirely sure how they got in there, but figured a frog had jumped in the water from the tree stump the bucket was braced against and, well, laid eggs or did whatever frogs do to have tadpoles! (I must admit my ignorance here.)

Unfortunately, I didn't have an opportunity to take a picture of the friendly little swimmers since my camera is broken. The picture at left looks a LOT like my bucket (borrowed from the Aquarium Board Web site at http://www.aquariumboard.com/forums/articles/7.htm - pay them a visit to talk about aquarium stuff!).

Thrilled with my tadpole adventure, I went to work to discuss my new finding with my friend Michelle. "I am growing tadpoles!"

She could hear the excitement in my voice, and usually she is equally excited when I make a gardening discovery. This time, however, her voice was hesitant as she asked, "How do you know they are tadpoles?"

So I described the big heads and taillike bodies and the swishing way they were swimming.

"Um, I think they aren't tadpoles. They're mosquito larvae. Search Google for mosquito larvae images."

Heart sinking quickly (because I know Michelle is probably right since she usually is about all things gardening-related), I conducted said Google search and found--the picture you see above.

Mosquito. larvae. ugh.

She was disappointed, too. "I really wish they WERE tadpoles," she said.

Mosquito. babies. must. die.

So I went home, dumped out the mosquito babies' amniotic fluid, and stomped the larvae to death. And felt no remorse.

Does that make me a bad person?