A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2005 unsightly septic feild

being a first time septic tank owner.... does anyone have any suggestions on what i can do to hide my unsightly mound which is my septic? it just got emptied before i bought the place, and the ground isnt settled where they dug it up, so i have this mound of bright green sod. of course it is right there below my beautiful deck, where i am sure i will be spending many-a-afternoon looking over all my flourishing hard work.

i was thinking about doing a deck extention, and having that as my lower deck. i could build a structure that is movable, so incase i need any work done, it would only be a matter of moving the 'raft-like' deck outta the way.

but maybe there is someone here who has done somthing else creative or seen something done

thanks for any suggestions!

well, what i have seen done (and have right now myself), and it works pretty good, is to use the cheap/cute edging and then throw wildflower seeds on it. make it a wild "bird/butterfly" garden of sorts. no mowing, no visiblitly of how much higher it is than the other part of the yard, and cheap to fix if it needs dug up again. you definitely don't want to extend your deck over it, cause sure as you do, you'll have to dig it up again!

had a spectic tank where I lived before, the flowers loved it. Lived there for several years and never had a problem, used rid-x to assist the spetic tank in doing it's job until I found out yeast would work just as well and was alot cheaper. Depending on the size of the tank and number of people in the house and weather you have a garbage disposal it may be a non-issue. The mound will probably sink they frequently do in washington state where mine was. 750 gallon tank, 2 people, no garbage disposal and using the rid-x/yeast and I might as well been on the city sewer.

thanks for the tips everybody. i love the idea of a wildflower patch! i will need to be creative in the fence...due to the fact that we have a huge deer population here, and my dogs arent on duty 24 hours a day (hard to get good help)

i was wondering what rid-x was? is it organic? does it help with decomposition?

one day, i am planning on bringing in a composting toilet to the scene. i love the idea of bringing everything back to the earth. we use absolutly no chemicals in our household..and nothing goes down the drain unless it is bio-degrabable. soon i will be using humanure for compost. but i think i will be using it for my trees and non-edibles only

I had the same problem. I put a white picket fence in an open v shape around the back of it and filled it in with flowers. What a difference.

The rid-x isn't but the yeast is. Just start it as usual and then pour it down the drain at night before you go to bed.

Buttermilk is a good natural alternative, as well as the yeast.

one nice thing about a septic tank the flowers love them.

Do you have a Sam's Club nearby?? They have bulbs on sale right now. I got 120 Gladiolus bulbs and 150 Anemone bulbs for $14 each. Maybe you could scatter the bulbs around??

I also heard about a carpet that you unroll and there are already wild flower seeds sewn into the carpet!!! You just unroll and water!?

There was a reason I mentioned those specific bulbs. The Gladiolus grow 3-5 feet depending on how much sun they get and the Anemone grow about a foot. So you put the Gladiolus in the middle (highest part) of the mound and the Anemone around it....it'll totally mask the hieght of the mound.