Friday, January 20, 2023

The stock tank pond: scheming on what comes next

Once again, it's time to rethink the stock tank pond. 

Frequent readers may recall that I've been doing battle with marauding raccoons for several years now, they're a constant source of frustration. The plants surrounding the stock tank have also changed things, they've grown and it's a much shadier situation than when I first planted up the tank back in 2014. This photo is from last September...

And this one from 2014, when the tank—and the whole northside of the garden—had just been planted. Kinda sparse, eh? (well, except for all those beautiful agaves)

Back then the "pond" was planted up with all sorts of things, and was amazing. Fast forward a few years and the racoons took away all the joy. They discovered it was a source of water for bathing, drinking, playing and digging grubs in the soil (of the water plants), and systematically destroyed anything and everything in the stock tank. Every damn year.

My solution last summer was to put a gunnera in the tall galvanized vent planter I'd sunk into the middle of the tank. It worked as far as keeping the plant from getting destroyed by the raccoons.

But going into this last autumn I decided to not try to overwinter the gunnera, to give it away and come up with a different use for the tank. I was however quite surprised when I pulled the plant out and saw just how big it was!

So, empty tank. Empty tank somewhat hidden by the ginormous Agave ovatifolia in front of it! I'm not complaigning.
Thinking about what comes next this is where my mind went, back to the exploding container crevice garden I saw in a Seattle garden in 2019 (here). I could do something like that in the stock tank. Wouldn't that be fabulous?

What kind of rock to use though? I wish I could get a really thin urbanite, something about 1/3 the normal thickness...what would that even be? Let me know if you can think of something.

In the name of materials research I visited Oregon Decorative Rock. This was the only material I liked.

Picking out piece by piece and hauling them home myself could get expensive and painful. But, I'm considering it.

Another idea; recently I was lamenting the fact I didn't have a great place in the garden for another table planting. Sure, I have a small fern table on an 18x18" paver, but I was thinking something more like this table at Lakewold Gardens up in Washington. Something where I could really go crazy mounding soil and planting plants.

Another example from a visit to Bosky Dell in West Linn, Oregon.

And one from Gillian Mathew's Seattle Garden...


It hadn't even occurred to me that I could use the stock tank for such a thing, until I ran across this image I'd cut from a magazine years ago and saved...


What would I use as the table top? I started to scheme! Then I realized I could just ("just"... as though it would be easy) turn the tank over and use the bottom as the planting surface. Of course I would still have to factor in the #$&%*@! raccoons, as I'm sure they'd spend several nights digging in whatever I planted. But it is an interesting idea...

If I went that route I could potentially use this glazed container to the side for an exploding crevice garden, since this poor Agave americana variegata turned to mush last month with our frigid temperatures and the container is now empty.

Those are my current ideas...what would you do? Please share any an all ideas!

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 All material © 2009-2023 by Loree L Bohl for danger garden. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

20 comments:

  1. Considering that there's much more shade now than originally, I think your table idea is fantastic.

    I love crevice gardens, but I think that even for a small space like your stock tank materials would be expensive. You probably would need a ton of rocks, literally. On the other hand, I'd love it if you went that route because it would give me a blueprint to follow :-)

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    1. Yes indeed, the expense (as well as wear and tear on aging me!) is part of the reason the large stock tank as crevice garden idea has dimmed. But... there's still the smaller glazed container!

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  2. I could immediately see the joy you would get from an exploding crevice garden, although I fully appreciate the difficulty in collecting, not to mention positioning, all that rock. Maybe you could get someone to help with just a few larger pieces of rock and then rely on lots of more-manageable smaller pieces? That project would require pacing yourself so not to strain yourself or smash any toes. I like the fern table ideas too. In my experience, raccoons are always drawn to water and while I regularly have problems with they're digging for grubs in large containers too, I've found that they prefer areas showing at least some uncovered soil. They'll dig around large plants, while upturning/destroying small plants but, they ignore areas that are solidly covered in plants.

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    1. Smashed toes! Ouch. There's a problem I hadn't considered. My raccoon concern is really just for the initial days, when they aren't hip to the changes, go where they've always gone for water, and then since there isn't any, they take a look around what has replaced it. Often when I plant sempervivum I go out the next day to find them torn out of the ground and tossed aside.

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  3. As a fern lover, I have to go with the fern table. The best ones seem to have enough space to really make a visual impact which the tank could do.

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    1. I think it's interesting that when I say table planting everyone assumes ferns. I might take it in a different direction!

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  4. I need to get serious and start drawing and laying out alternatives here. I appreciate your thought process and ability to switch and blend ideas you’ve seen. It’s always fun to see what you come up with!

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    1. Thank you! So are you contemplating something similar?

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  5. I have the same problem with raccoons causing all sorts of mischief in my 9’x9’ pond. Always on the look out for some sort of affordable(Ha) grating I could lay over the top. Something large enough for plants to grow through and small enough that raccoons couldn’t get through. Maybe 4” squares?( I’m not sure if raccoons are able to squeeze through very small spaces like rats and mice.I’d have to investigate that.) Maybe three 3’ x 9’ pieces would be easier to manage than one piece of huge grating for my pond. Anyway if you haven’t entirely given up on stock tank pond maybe a nice metal grate over top is your answer?Cece

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    1. Excellent ideas! This is something I got very serious about doing last year (or maybe the year before?). The ideas I really liked ended up being extremely expensive though.

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  6. I love both ideas, but the fern table gets my vote. I think having something a little higher than even the mounded crevice garden would be good there. I would use the stock tank as a base, but put a larger piece of wood or metal on top of it for the fern table.

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    1. Where would you source the table top? Just curious to hear your ideas. I thought about thrift shops and an actual table, but I don't know that I'd want to go with wood. Metal would be amazing, but $$$!

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  7. I'd be tempted to fill the whole thing with Opuntias and dare those masked bandits to visit.

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    1. Ha! That would be fun, I'd have to install a camera to catch all the action.

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  8. I find contemplating an idea is as much fun as physical creating. I suppose the sun vs shade is a big part of the decision, and maybe deciding which plants you can/want to use can be the starting point. (I wonder what a crevice garden adjusted to ferns' needs would look like).
    Whatever you decide, a to visit Marenakos, the rock supplier of the Garden and Flower Festival for decades, is alway fun. https://marenakos.com/products/
    Chavli

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    1. Indeed, contemplating is winter gardening, right? I like that you picked up on the fact that a crevice garden wouldn't necessarily mean the expected plants. Oh the possibilities!

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  9. The big problem I see is the lack of sun. Are you able to park on the street where you live? If so you could move the stock tank (and plenty of other pots) to the driveway. Personally I like water lilies; since the flowers aren't tall, you could have some type of grate or even plastic mesh ("deer fence") on top.
    If I lived there I would have demolished the garage and taken a jackhammer to the driveway in order to have more planting space, but I suspect Andrew may not like that idea.

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    1. We can park on the street, sometimes. There is a very active park at the end of the street and in the summertime there can be no street parking for blocks. It's not something we would want to do long term. There are already 3 stock tanks and a smattering of smaller containers in the driveway, and there's no way I'd want to loose the storage (for garden related things) that the garage offers. Plus growing water lilies with a cover over them isn't something I am interested in doing.

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  10. $55/lb seems crazy expensive for flagstone. Tho since bluestone is trucked from the east coast, most of the cost is diesel. Last I bought some flagstones the diameter of your beautiful ovatifolia, they were maybe $7 each.

    The exploding crevice container is nifty, but it vaguely resembles a graveyard. Maybe that's just the angle of the photo?

    I like the Bosky Dell and Mathews table examples more, especially the height of Bosky extended by the shrubs behind it, but probably the @sshat raccoons would like playing on tables, too.

    What ever you come up with will be cool. No doubt there.

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    1. I read that as .55cents/pound—very different. Thanks for the vote of cool confidence!

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