# Stock Tank Gardening

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/beyond-the-garden-basics-5638242/stock-tank-gardening
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/beyond-the-garden-basics-5638242/stock-tank-gardening.md
Podcast: [Beyond the Garden Basics](https://stenobird.com/podcast/beyond-the-garden-basics-5638242)
Published: 2026-02-20T14:03:33+00:00
Episode link: https://gardenbasics.substack.com/p/stock-tank-gardening
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/188412870/be11b7ec4cbbe7d7ffbad126920d479c.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/beyond-the-garden-basics-5638242/episodes/stock-tank-gardening
Duration seconds: 434

## Resource

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit gardenbasics.substack.com Some passersby or visitors might think you have a yard full of shiny coffins in your front or backyard. OK, using large steel cattle watering troughs as gardening containers might not appeal to those who heed form and design before function. But that staple of rural areas for supplying water to horses, cattle, and sheep is also damn practical for the gardener looking to remain more upright while working with food and flower crops. Opting for watering troughs as large garden containers also helps avoid vexing in-ground soil issues such as perpetually soggy clay soil, rocks, thin soil, as well as soil that might be rife with pests (hello, gophers!) and soil-borne diseases such as verticillium wilt, nematodes, fusarium and more. Besides, you can mute the “coffin comments” by prettying them up…with the right paint. In today’s newsletter podcast, we talk with Sacramento County Master Gardener Gail Pothour about using steel watering troughs as large containers for food and flowers. Not only does she have them in her own yard, she and her fellow Master Gardeners at the vegetable section of the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center in Sacramento County, California are showing visitors their value for growing vegetables, annuals, and perennials. Beyond the paywall in both the podcast and newsletter today , we discuss the benefits and drawbacks of using regular steel and galvanized steel as containers for edible crops. One of the big drawbacks to galvanized steel: the chances of zinc leaching into the soil and into the roots of your plants…and then into you. We will look at the available scientific literature (and there’s not much, really) that discusses the dangers of using a container made from gal…

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## Transcript

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