So I'd like to expand my current system and do some larger veggies that don't necessarily grow well in my flood table. I'm speaking predominantly about Peppers and Tomato plants (they take up too much room) and I had a friend suggest to me something called Bucket growing (or something to that effect).

He explained to me that if I pump water from my pond into a bucket and have a plant suspended in the lid using a Net Pot that I could then distance the bucket from the pond itself providing I have enough plumbing to return the water to the pond. In theory to me this just sounds like creating a small flood table for just one plant which is pretty standard however I realize that if I add two 5 gallon bucket plants into my system that will drop my water level severely in my pond (and it already loses half of it's water to fill the flood table which is takes 40 gallons).

So I'm thinking if I were to make these buckets "continuous" flow rather than flood and drain each bucket would "in theory" expand the over-all water carrying capacity of the system itself.

How do you pro's feel about this?

Is this a good way to grow larger veggies away from the smaller ones with out having to create a whole other pond system?

Would these buckets in a continuous flow set up require an air stone and air pump for each bucket or do you feel with pond water (around 75f) will contain enough Dissolved Oxygen?

I really detest air pumps and air stones because it adds so many more tubes and wires into the system, however if need be I would compromise to make this kind of thing happen.

Thanks so much for reading