Some hidden benefits of a Bucket of Doom
This is the second year we’ve used a Bucket of Doom in the garden, and I wanted to document some of the stacked functions that can happen with the buckets.
A couple of years back author and naturalist Jo Brichetto developed the Mosquito Bucket of Doom, based off of an idea she saw in a Doug Tallamy video. It’s a simple mosquito honeypot that requires little upkeep and theoretically cuts down on the number of mosquitos in your yard. The idea behind the Bucket is that if you make something that looks like a great place for mosquitos to lay their eggs, then they will lay their eggs there. When you add in a mosquito dunk (which contains the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, or Bti) you effectively neutralize the mosquito’s life cycle.
This is the second year we’ve used a Bucket of Doom in the garden, and I wanted to document some of the stacked functions that can happen with the buckets.
The first is a constant water source for wildlife.
On one of the smaller buckets we added a small platform to the bucket. It’s a bit sturdier than the escape stick that Jo suggests, but it allows birds and squirrels a chance to get a drink during the dry summer months.
But birds and other animals can use any of the buckets for a water source, if the bucket is full enough. Keeping them topped up allows animals to help themselves from the edge of the bucket without having to climb in.
The second is far more exciting: FROGS.
Frogs everywhere.
A cacophony of croaks at night.
We already had a large population of frogs due to our habitat pond, but they quickly spawned in the Buckets. The adult in the picture is a Cope’s Grey Tree Frog (Hyla chrysoscelis) but there’s no telling what species the tadpoles are. This picture was from early in the summer, and the buckets are still full of frogspawn and tadpoles.
Not all of these tadpoles will grow up to be frogs, but some will. And not all those small frogs will survive long enough to lay more eggs, but some will.
And once those tadpoles grow legs each of them will start eating insects, like mosquitos, further adding to the anti-mosquito properties of the Bucket of Doom.
The abundance of tadpoles opens up avenues of other things to learn.
We scooped some out of the bucket and built a small habitat in an unused fish bowl. Over the next several weeks the kid and I fed them greens and lettuce, since they are vegetarians at the start of their lifecycle, feeding on algae and leaves. The kid learned about the life cycles of both frogs and snails, as we had some stowaways on the aquatic plants we added to the bowl.
One day, suddenly, they started growing back legs. And then just as quickly they grew font legs,and we knew it was time to take them to the pond. Once they grow out all their legs they need to be eating protein (insects) to grow.
The rest of the frog life cycle. Once they grow legs they are taken out to the pond, and eventually they move into the garden to eat insects.
Another great benefit of the frogs is that they’re always a pleasant surprise when you find one in the garden.
You can be cutting flowers, pulling off tomatoes, or harvesting basil and notice you have a passenger along for the ride.
They’ll eat more than just mosquitos, too. A garden with an abundance of frogs has an abundance of pest control, for everything from biting flies to crop-eating caterpillars.
The setup for the bucket is easy and can bring so much life to your outdoor space, and a big package of BTi dunks are cheap at any hardware store. I’d encourage anyone to make one and reap the benefits of having a tiny static pond in their garden, even if it’s just for the spring and summer months.