Recycling old duck water? - Page 2

Our house and property is on a gentle slope with the goose and duck pens at the top (beside the house) and the flower gardens and grassy yard just below. I tip the pools/containers and let the water run down into the grass. We have grass where for years there was nothing but stubborn bald ground refusing to grow anything and the flowers and roses and so on are HUGE. I will bail a little out with a bucket and dump in in various spots to let all the plants and grass get fed, but it has made a huge difference in our yard.

I also put the pen at the top of a hill.  I connected a drain pipe to the bottom of the pond and ran it out about 20 feet to the bottom of the hill.  That way, all I have to do is open a valve at the bottom to gravity drain the whole thing.  For our greenhouse needs, I typically only require a few buckets, so I just fill at the drain and carry them over.  The first few buckets are the best, because they have most of the sludge from the bottom of the pond.

When I have a use for more than a few buckets, I use a small sump pump to drain the pond through a garden hose.
 

I have a few pools scattered around the property.  I range my ducks in different areas to keep the garden pests under control.  If a bed performs poorly I keep a pool in it when there is nothing planted there, let the ducks forage around it & just soak the ground until I think it can't take it anymore.  The garden I treated that way last year is one of my top performers this year.

That being said, I also use an old pump sprayer - I fill the bucket & walk from garden to garden.  This gives me more control over where I water, and is a little easier than the sloshy bucket method I used last year.  Plus, I feel like one of the Ghostbusters walking around with that thing. 

When trying to decide how to refer to my "hobby farm"/"homesteading" etc. I decided they are "garden ducks", just an extension of my kitchen garden.  A very productive extension.  I got 16 duck eggs from 3 girls from Monday to Friday this week!

Yes, I put dirty duck litter from the duck house right on the garden. And all my duck pond water gets pumped onto the veggie garden every day (I let the water drain into a plastic tub that has been dug into the ground and from there it gets pumped to the garden using a submersible sump pump). My plants have never been happier!!